EcoRadio

Category: Sustainable Settlement and Agriculture

The Generator is founded on the simple premise that we should leave the world in better condition than we found it. The news items in this category outline the attempts people have made to do this. They are mainly concerned with our food supply and settlement patterns. The impact that the human race has on the planet.

  • Fires fuelling global warming :study

    Fires fuelling global warming: study

    By Wendy Zukerman

    Posted Fri Apr 24, 2009 11:36am AEST
    Updated Fri Apr 24, 2009 11:37am AEST

    Members of the CFA tackle a bushfire at Bunyip

    Bushfires appear to contribute to one-fifth of anthropogenic CO2 emissions, say researchers (User submitted via ABC Contribute: Mr Bettong)

    Carbon emissions from deforestation fires have a significant impact on global warming, according to an international study.

    The study, which appears in today’s edition of Science, provides the first consensus on the affect of fires on climate change.

    “Fire has been underestimated as a contributor to climate change,” says study lead author Professor David Bowman of the University of Tasmania.

    “In the past it was thought that fires were a steady state.”

    Bowman says scientists have assumed that the carbon released into the atmosphere from burning plants, was equivalent to the carbon reabsorbed when plants regrow.

    But the study’s authors note a marked reduction in fire events since 1870, which they speculate may be the result of intense farming and grazing, along with negative attitudes towards fire.

    As a result, says Bowman, increased fuel loads and climate change has resulted in more intense deforestation fires. These fires release more carbon into the atmosphere, place increased stress on forest recovery, and result in less carbon being sequestered from the atmosphere.

    “If you change the climate then you can see that you’re creating a disequilibrium,” says Bowman. “The forests are struggling to recover from it.”

    He says the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria and recent wildfires in southern California are consistent with the direction of global warming.

    Wide-ranging effects

     

    The researchers used data from a range of sources including the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report along with deforestation fire modelling to calculate the impact of fire on climate change during the past 200 years.

    They compared the amount of landscape burnt in deforestation fires with the amount of carbon dioxide released from burning.

    The researchers found that deforestation fires alone contribute up to 20% of human-caused CO2 emissions since pre-industrial times.

    They also found that between 1997 and 2001, biomass burning accounted for about two-thirds of the variability in the CO2 growth rate.

    Fire also influences climate by releasing atmospheric aerosols and changing surface albedo (surface brightness), they write.

    The study’s authors add, “Regionally, smoke plumes inhibit convection, and black carbon warms the troposphere, thereby reducing vertical convection and limiting rain-cloud formation and precipitation.”

    Dr Jennifer Balch of the National Centre for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at the University of California Santa Barbara, and co-author of the study, says the models show fire has an impact on greenhouse gas levels, including carbon dioxide, methane and aerosols.

    “Fire influences the majority of those terms,” says Balch.

    According to Balch, a key to managing fire is accepting that it is as an intrinsic part of the planet.

    “Fire is as elemental as air or water,” she says.

    The study’s authors say future IPCC assessments of global climate change “should include specific analyses of the role of fire”.

  • Conservation coalition debunks Coral Sea Hertitage Park Myths

    Marine

    Conservation coalition debunks Coral Sea Heritage Park myths

    Date: 29-Apr-2009

     CAIRNS: A coalition of conservation groups today debunked several myths about the proposed Coral Sea Heritage Park.

    “The proposed park is in a remote area that is visited by only the few anglers with the means to head out far into the open ocean,” said Mr Steve Ryan, Marine Campaigner, Cairns and Far North Environment Centre. “A small number of recreational fishers have been misleading in their claims about the proposal leading to the end of fishing along the coastline.  This is totally incorrect.”

    The proposal for a Coral Sea Heritage Park was publicly released last September. If declared, the Park would extend from the eastern boundary of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park (GBRMP) out to Australia’s maritime borders with Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and New Caledonia.  The proposal calls on the Federal Government to protect this deep ocean area. 
     
    “Some misinformation about the Coral Sea Heritage Park proposal has unnecessarily caused concern in Cairns.  We believe that once people are better informed, they will see the potential locally for being the gateway to the world’s largest marine park,” said Ms Imogen Zethoven, Coral Sea Campaign Director, Pew Environment Group. 

    “The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority has confirmed that fishing in the GBR Marine Park will continue as usual, regardless of what happens with the Coral Sea Heritage Park,” said Ms Amy Hankinson, National Liaison Officer, Australian Conservation Foundation.

    “This proposal is about honouring the natural, military and civic heritage values of Australia’s remote Coral Sea, where Australians fought heroically in a Battle that turned the tide of WWII in the Pacific and where precious marine wildlife now abounds,” said Ms Nicola Temple, Coral Sea Campaigner, Australian Marine Conservation Society.

    The groups – the Australian Conservation Foundation, Australian Marine Conservation Society, Queensland Conservation Council, the Pew Environment Group and Cairns and Far North Environment Centre – made the following clarifications about inaccuracies that have been aired in recent discussions about the park proposal:

    • Recreational fishing along the coastline and in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park (GBRMP) will not be affected at all by the proposed Coral Sea Heritage Park. It’s business as usual in the GBR Marine Park.
    • There is no link between the Coral Sea Heritage Park and the GBRMP zoning plan review which will occur sometime after 2011 (the Federal Environment Minister must decide the date).
    • Most charter fishing occurs inside the GBRMP, between Cairns and Lizard Island, along the Ribbon Reefs. Charter fishing inside the GBRMP will not be affected by the Coral Sea proposal.
    • The Coral Sea Heritage Park is totally compatible with, and will help secure, a vibrant tropical coast charter fishing industry operating in the GBRMP.
    • The Cairns economy will benefit from the Coral Sea Heritage Park as it will create new tourism opportunities and new jobs in Cairns. The proposal is good for Cairns.
    • Commercial fishing in the Coral Sea would cease under the proposal, which can only be good for game fishing in the GBRMP.

    “99.9 percent of the world’s oceans are open to fishing,” said Ms. Zethoven. “With our oceans under increasing pressure, governments need to set aside a few large areas that can be kept as safe havens for marine life so our children and their children can appreciate unspoilt places in the future.”

    The Australian Coral Sea Heritage Park initiative has the support of a broad range of agencies, non-governmental groups, and civic leaders including:

    • Vice Admiral (Rtd) David Shackleton AO (Chief of Navy 1999-2002)
    • Vice Admiral (Rtd) Chris Ritchie AO (Chief of Navy 2002-2005)
    • A group of six professors of marine science led by Professor Terry Hughes, Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, recent winner of the international Darwin Medal
    • Battle for Australia Commemoration National Council

    See below for resources.

  • Shaping the post-carbon economy

    Shaping the post-carbon economy

    With the right levels of willing and resources, we can achieve tough new targets on carbon emissions likely to be agreed by the United Nations

    At the end of this year, representatives of the 170 nations that are signatories to the United Nations framework convention on climate change will meet in Copenhagen for what they hope will be final negotiations on a new international response to global warming and climate change. If successful, the centerpiece of their efforts would be a global deal on how to reduce harmful greenhouse gases, by how much, and when. The agreement would go into effect in 2012, when the current Kyoto accord expires.

     

    Research at McKinsey into the effectiveness and cost of more than 200 mechanisms for reducing carbon emissions – from greater car efficiency to nuclear power, improved insulation in buildings, and better forest management – suggests that only concerted global action can ensure levels that the scientific community says is necessary to avoid the disastrous consequences of climate change. Our detailed analysis, conducted in 21 countries and regions over two years, suggests that every region and sector must play its part. If this isn’t daunting enough, consider this: if we delay taking action by even a few years, we probably won’t hit the required targets, even with a temporary decline in carbon emissions associated with reduced economic activity in the near term.

     

    The good news is that we can achieve what’s needed, we can afford to do it, and we can do it all without curtailing growth. The latest version of the McKinsey global carbon abatement cost curve identifies opportunities to stabilise emissions by 2030 at 1990 levels, or 50% below the “business as usual” trend line.

     

    Making these reductions would cost about €200-350 billion annually by 2030 – less than 1% of projected global GDP in 2030. The total up-front financing would be €530 billion by 2020 – less than the cost of the current US financial-sector bailout plan – and €810 billion by 2030, which is well within range of what financial markets can handle.

     

    Developing and developed nations alike must invest in reducing emissions. But the lion’s share of these investments result in lower energy usage, and thus reduced energy costs. Capturing the energy efficiency prize is critical both to climate and energy security – and it relies on a well-known set of policy signals and a proven set of technologies.

     

    None of this lowers growth or increases energy costs, and some of it potentially stimulates growth. Similarly, a global change to a new, more distributed power sector – with more renewable energy and a smarter grid infrastructure – could have growth benefits.

     

    Making all this happen requires moving toward a new model for ensuring that we are more productive globally with core resources that we have long taken for granted. To the extent that we invest across sectors and regions to improve our carbon productivity (GDP per unit of carbon emitted), we will weaken the pollution constrain on global growth.

     

    Improving carbon productivity requires improving land productivity. Forests and plants remove carbon from the atmosphere, potentially accounting for more than 40% of carbon abatement opportunities between now and 2020.

     

    Without carefully managing tropical forests – 90% of which grow in developing nations that have pressure to clear the land for other economic purposes – we cannot meet our global targets for reduced carbon emissions. Helping soybean farmers, palm-oil planters, and cattle ranchers from Brazil to south-east Asia to use land more productively, thereby reducing pressure on tropical forests, must be an integral part of the solution.

     

    If increased agricultural productivity is necessary, so, too, is improved water management. Given that agriculture uses 70% of the world’s reliable water supply (and the potential impact of climate change on water reliability), a comprehensive approach to climate security will need to embrace better water policies, better integrated land management, and agricultural market reform. Our research suggests that annual growth in water productivity must increase from 0.3% to more than 3% in the coming decades.

     

    In other words, resources and policies are inter-dependent. Moving to a model in which carbon emission levels and growth move in opposite directions – what we call a post-carbon economy – may start with agreements in Copenhagen to reduce carbon in the air. But it can succeed only if we embark now on an agenda to boost natural resource productivity more broadly and on a more integrated basis.

     

    What this suggests is that we need new global rules of the road for total resource productivity. If we are to achieve the necessary levels of energy, land, water, and carbon productivity, we must develop an integrated global framework that recognises resource inter-dependencies. A developed nation cannot meet carbon emission targets by outsourcing its dirtiest production to a developing country, and a developing country cannot meet its targets by chopping down forests to build the plants or expand low-productivity agriculture.

     

    To get to the post-carbon economy, countries will have to recognise their inter-dependence, strengthen global coordination of resource policies, and adapt to new, more contingent models of sovereignty. The opportunity in Copenhagen is to begin shaping some of the new collective-action models upon which we can build the post-carbon economy.

     

    Jeremy Oppenheim is global director of McKinsey & Company’s Climate Change Special Initiative; Eric Beinhocker is a senior fellow at the McKinsey Global Institute

  • Hoarse men of the Apocalypse

    Hoarse men of the Apocalypse

    • Sacha Molitorisz
    • April 25, 2009

    The end is nigh, apparently. The economy is tanking, the terrorists are winning, the globe is frying. Armageddon is arriving on the next train. The only question is, which platform?

    One of the doomsayers is Neil Strauss, an American author whose new book is called Emergency. “This book will save your life,” says a cover that is fire-engine red, a colour of alarms and evacuations.

    Spooked by Timothy McVeigh, September 11, Afghanistan, the Iraq War, George Bush’s re-election and the rest, Strauss has become convinced that a cataclysm looms, and that his government won’t be able to cope when it comes. The result will be chaos, social breakdown and large-scale loss of life.

    “Something changed in me, as it did for many people, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina,” Strauss writes. “It felt like the day I first beat my father at arm wrestling. In that moment, I realised that he could no longer protect me. I had to take care of myself.”

    To prepare for whatever is coming, Strauss learns how to slit the throat of a goat. He learns how to kill a man and get away with it. He learns how to navigate without a compass, scale barbed-wire fences and apply emergency first aid.

    A prominent music writer at The New York Times and Rolling Stone, Strauss has previously co-authored Jenna Jameson’s How To Make Love Like A Porn Star and Motley Crue’s The Dirt. Then he wrote The Game, a hit about seduction techniques that spawned a bestselling sequel.

    Whether he is knee-deep in rock’n’rollers, porn stars or pick-up artists, Strauss has a talent for tapping into the zeitgeist. And here he has done it again, unearthing a thriving subculture of survivalists, ranging from the stereotypical rednecks shacked up in rural compounds to billionaires weighing up whether, in the event of a disaster, they should escape by submarine or helicopter.

    With Emergency, Strauss may well have hit the zeitgeist jackpot. In recent years, I have heard various friends, relatives and colleagues express concern about some impending catastrophe or other. If it isn’t the growing threat of economic collapse or the malevolent shadow of terrorist attack, they ask how quickly disorder will erupt if the supermarket shelves suddenly empty of food.

    In response, several have taken tentative steps towards self-sufficiency. People I know have started growing vegies, keeping chickens or taking their families on weekly fishing trips to Middle Harbour. Meanwhile, seachangers and treechangers are seeking new lives removed from city stresses – including the stresses of potential car bombs or influenza epidemics.

    Certainly, city life is dangerously disconnected from nature. Food magically appears on supermarket shelves. It is hard to know which fruits are in season when most are available all year round. Kids can grow up thinking food comes not from the earth but from the freezer at Coles. A teacher friend tells the story of an inquisitive preschooler who asked why the word “chicken” (the animal) is the same as the word “chicken” (the food). When he learned that he had been eating the animal, he was horrified. From then on, he was a vegetarian.

    With this in mind, Strauss’s book is a timely reminder for city dwellers to become more self-sufficient. It’s a rollicking good read – I enjoyed Strauss’s book – but his overriding message of paranoia and pessimism left me cold. So the end is nigh? Again? Isn’t this looming Armageddon just another Y2K? Another Waco?

    For starters, Strauss’s apocalyptic doomsaying arises only because he is a US citizen. Much of Emergency is devoted to his attempts to obtain a second passport. Seeking a safe haven, he even considers Australia. In Strauss’s eyes, Aussies have little to be jittery about. Even in Australia, though, Strauss will find a willing audience, unable to resist the temptation to worry about an unspecified but imminent cataclysm. This week alone the economic headlines have shrieked, “A pall of gloom”; “Worse to come”; and “One in four firms to cut staff”.

    Someone who continues to resist the temptations of pessimism and paranoia is Billy Connolly. The Scottish comic remains defiantly positive. “I hate the way humans are given the blame for everything,” he writes in a new book, Journey To The Edge of The World. “The human race isn’t given enough credit. Sure, we have made some horrible mistakes but we have also done some immensely big and good things. That’s what keeps the ball going around and around.”

    Apart from anything else, the problem with survivalism is its selfishness. The idea is that, in the event of a catastrophe, only a handful of the super-prepared and extra-paranoid will survive at the expense of everyone else. What sort of world would it be if only the paranoid and prepared survived? An enclave for a handful of trigger-happy neat freaks? Count me out.

    Sure, let’s learn first aid. Let’s grow vegies and keep chooks. Let’s create communal market gardens from Avalon to Bundeena and everywhere in between. But let’s not follow Strauss’s suggestion and turn our credit cards into knives. Let’s not abandon all hope.

    I’m hoping for rain to bucket down on this parade of pessimism. On the other hand, I’m hoping for clear skies for today’s Anzac Day and its solemn march to remember a horrific past. For many more than the 8709 Australians who died at Anzac Cove, the 1915 campaign in Turkey was the apocalypse. Isn’t our time better served by pondering past cataclysms so to avoid repeating them, rather than fretting about how to cope in case another disaster is on the way?

    After Alec Campbell of the 15th Battalion Reinforcements returned from Anzac Cove, he worked as a jackaroo, a carriage builder, a carpenter and with the railways. He took an economics degree and a government job. He married twice, had nine children and was politically active. He was an avid reader, a boat-builder, a boxer and a hunter. He milked cows and mended shoes.

    When Campbell died in Tasmania in 2002, he was the very last Anzac. As far as I can tell, he hadn’t wasted one moment of his 103 years hoarding tins of tuna.

    Annabel Crabb is on leave.

  • Bolivia: water people of Andes face extinction

    Bolivia: water people of Andes face extinction

    Climate change robs Uru Chipaya of lifeline that had sustained them for millennia

    ‘If there is no water, the Chipaya have no life’ Link to this video

    Its members belong to what is thought to be the oldest surviving culture in the Andes, a tribe that has survived for 4,000 years on the barren plains of the Bolivian interior. But the Uru Chipaya, who outlasted the Inca empire and survived the Spanish conquest, are warning that they now face extinction through climate change.

    The tribal chief, 62-year-old Felix Quispe, 62, says the river that has sustained them for millennia is drying up. His people cannot cope with the dramatic reduction in the Lauca, which has dwindled in recent decades amid erratic rainfall that has turned crops to dust and livestock to skin and bones.

    “Over here used to be all water,” he said, gesturing across an arid plain. “There were ducks, crabs, reeds growing in the water. I remember that. What are we going to do? We are water people.”

    The Uru Chipaya, who according to mythological origin are “water beings” rather than human beings, could soon be forced to abandon their settlements and go to the cities of Bolivia and Chile, said Quispe. “There is no pasture for animals, no rainfall. Nothing. Drought.”

    The tribe is renowned for surviving on the fringe of a salt desert, a harsh and eerie landscape which even the Incas avoided, by flushing the soil with river water. As the Lauca has dried, many members of the Uru Chipaya have migrated, leaving fewer than 2,000 in the village of Santa Ana and the surrounding settlements.

    “We have nothing to eat. That’s why our children are all leaving,” said Vicenta Condori, 52, dressed in traditional skirt and shawl. She has two children in Chile.

    Some members of the tribe blame the crisis on neglect of the deities. The chief has lobbied for greater offerings and adherence to traditional customs. “This is in our own hands,” he said.

    Scientists say rising temperatures have accelerated the retreat of Andean glaciers throughout Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. A ski resort in Bolivia’s capital, La Paz, the highest in South America, closed several years ago because of the retreat of the Chacaltaya glacier. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned in 2007 that warmer temperatures could melt all Latin America’s glaciers within 15 years. A recent World Bank study sounded fresh alarm on the issue.

    Indigenous groups from around the world are meeting in Alaska this week to discuss global warming. “Indigenous peoples are on the frontlines of climate change,” said the host, the Inuit Circumpolar Council. A new Oxfam report, meanwhile, has warned that within six years the number of people affected by climate-related crises will jump by 54% to 375 million.

    Evo Morales, Bolivia’s president, told the Guardian that his government would form a united front with indigenous groups for a “big mobilisation” at a summit in Denmark this year to draw up a successor to the Kyoto treaty. They intend to push industrialised countries to cut carbon emissions. “We are preparing a team from the water and environment ministries to focus not only on the summit but beyond that.”

    One of South America’s poorest countries, Bolivia is struggling with competition for natural resources. Water scarcity has hit La Paz and its satellite city, El Alto, prompting conservation campaigns. The shortage is nationwide. The Uru Chipaya accuse Aymara communities, living upriver from the Lauca, of diverting more and more water supplies. “It’s a dual cause: climate change and greater competition. The result is an extremely grave threat to this culture. I am very worried,” said Alvaro Díez Astete, an anthropologist who has written a book on the tribe.

    With so many of the young people migrating to cities, where they speak Spanish, the Uru language could disappear within a few generations. Some Uru Chipaya fear the battle for cultural survival could already be lost. The rutted streets of Santa Ana are largely deserted and little disturbs the stillness of the dry plains that once were fields.

    Several dozen, mostly elderly, people gathered on a recent Sunday to share soup from communal pots. “We are at risk of extinction,” said Juan Condori, 55. “The Chipaya could cease to exist within the next 50 years. The most important thing is water. If there is no water the Chipaya have no life.”

  • Barnaby puts land rights ahead of land

    He also congratuled the landholders at Monday’s meeting in Rockhampton in forming an alliance to tackle the issue head-on and make all Queenslanders aware of what was at stake.

    “It’s extremely important that people understand what this is – it’s yet another incursion by the government into the private asset held by the individual, without payment,” Senator Joyce said.

    “People across Queensland, whether they’re from an urban environment or rural enviroment, must stop seeing this as some sort of environmental crusade and call it for what it is.

    “It is the government putting their hands on your asset and taking away the value of your asset without ever paying you for it.

    “If the State Government feels so strongly about regrowth then they’re welcome to put out a tender and see how much they can buy.

    “But if they don’t want to buy it, then it doesn’t mean that much to them, so stay away from it, because it’s called theft otherwise.

    “Freehold title is the storage of wealth – it is where people store the efforts and labours of not only their generation but most likely of the generations that went before them.

    “And when you take away the capacity for wealth to be stored in land, you completely undermine all the effort that went into the creation of that wealth as personified by the land.

    “Therefore you have taken away the fundamental building block of commerce – that is, what is the point of going to work if someone can steal the asset off you.

    “It’s not only a slap in the face for the person who owns the land, it’s a slap in the face for those who managed it before them.

    “It is the skin cancers on your face, it’s the callouses on your hands, it’s the marriage break-ups, and restless nights, not only of your generation but the generations who went before you.”

    Senator Joyce said rural Queensland shouldn’t waste its time trying to attract green preference, but agreed talking to Queensland’s rational urban constituents and engaging in a “philosophical battle” was a better move.

    “The Greens will always support the Labor Party – they proved at the last election that they’re quite happy to build Traveston Dam in their path of supporting the Labor party. They’re fraudulent in their own desires,” Senator Joyce said.

    “Rural Queensland needs to say to urban areas, ‘how would you feel, if by edict of the government, they said from now on you’re not allowed to use your second bedroom, and you can only use your kitchen with one eye closed’ or to say ‘as of tomorrow you can’t mow your lawn’.

    “People would say that’s outrageous because it takes away the intrinsic value that’s represented in your house, and so paying off that mortgatge is kind of pointless.

    “The State Government is putting incumberance after incumberance after caveat that waters down the meaning of what that asset is.”