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.

  • Life’s a bitumen nightmare as cities get hotter than hell

     

    The streets, glowing red in the image taken, recorded a maximum temperature of 33 degrees. The bitumen surrounded by concrete were fully 4 degrees hotter than the maximum temperature recorded at Observatory Hill that day. The most conspicuous red zone on the map was the huge rectangle of concrete at the Hungry Mile, west of the Harbour Bridge. (The Hungry Mile is officially known as Barangaroo, a ridiculous name for a major new precinct.) What is proposed for the Hungry Mile/Barangaroo? A new forest of office towers with barely a fig leaf of trees. What is proposed for the expansion of Sydney? More density, more tower clusters, more hot spots built along major transport arteries.

    That is why, contrary to the weather reports we see each day, it is not the outer suburbs, furthest from the moderating coolness of the sea, that are the hottest, it is the areas with the highest concentrations of roads, traffic and high-rise towers. Their stored heat leads to more air-conditioning at night, and so the heat-sink cycle goes.

    Modern culture is built around creating urban heat sinks, yet governments obsess less about this real-world, everyday problem than the more abstract problem of carbon pollution. Fixing the first problem would help ameliorate the second.

    But are there any grand plans for turning the web of our major city’s blacktops into pale-surfaced roads? No. Any master plan for increasing the vegetation on footpaths and common areas? No. Any plans for retrofitting the kerb guttering and stormwater system so more water can soak into roadside green areas? No.

    All this is fantasy stuff for our engineers and planning departments. Instead, we build desalination plants, install more air-conditioners, and cram in more office and apartment towers, while the Rudd government runs a gangbusters immigration program, with an extra 300,000 people a year coming through legal immigration and backdoor immigration via the student visa program – the plan they chose not to tell voters about before the last election.

    Sydney will absorb more of this than anywhere else. The heat sinks in Sydney and Melbourne will just get hotter. Multiply this by thousands, and you have a defining global trend.

    Humanity recently crossed a historic divide. In 1955, 68 per cent of the world’s population lived in rural areas and 32 per cent in urban areas. Last year, the majority tipped the other way. More people live in urban areas than rural areas. In 20 years the balance is estimated to be 60-40 urban-rural, a momentous change in less than a century.

    So the impact of climate warming caused by the urban heat sink effect is real for the majority of the world’s population. Beyond that, the story becomes more complex. In December, 2007, professors Ross McKitrick and Patrick Michaels argued in a paper (published in the Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres) that half the global warming trend recorded from 1980 to 2002 could be attributed to the urban heat island effect.

    More provocatively, McKitrick commented that the most widely published graph showing a dramatic global temperature rise was ”an exaggeration”, adding, ”I have also found that the UN agency promoting the global temperature graph has made false claims about the quality of their data.”

    This was a direct affront to the UN’s scientific consensus, which argues urban areas had made little impact on global warming trends. Some of the bedrock research for this position was done by Phil Jones, head of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

    One of his papers was published in Nature in 1990, co-authored by Wei-Chyung Wang, who studied data from Chinese weather stations. Their paper concluded that urban heat caused a negligible effect on rising recorded temperatures. After Jones became a figure of controversy, he was asked for the location of the weather stations used in the study. Only after intense pressure were details released, but the locations of the rural weather stations were not included. When Wang was asked about the omissions he said he could no longer find the records.

    Last October, McKitrick wrote in the National Post: ”I have been probing the arguments for global warming for well over a decade. In collaboration with a lot of excellent co-authors I have consistently found that when the layers get peeled back, what lies at the core is either flawed, misleading or simply non-existent. The surface temperature data is a contaminated mess.”

    Last Thursday the University of East Anglia announced an ”independent external reappraisal” of the research produced by the Climatic Research Unit. Jones, already suspended, will remain stood down during the inquiry.

    So should the argument that the world’s urban population exploding from 900 million to 3.4 billion in little more than 50 years has had a negligible impact on the earth’s temperature and the world’s weather stations. That, too, is due for a reappraisal.

  • Victoria vulnerable to another Black Saturday: Cesar Melham

     

    “Instead the safety of the state is being left in the hands of volunteers.”

    Mr Melham, whose union represents full-time staff at the Department of Sustainability and Environment, said the state was “abusing the generosity” of its Country Fire Authority volunteer firefighters.

    Related Coverage

    While the government claimed it could draw on more than 3000 staff, many of those were part-time or casual employees or bureaucrats and many were not able to take part in fighting fires, or in prescribed burns.

    He said there were “too many chiefs” in fire agencies and not enough fire fighters.

    “We need a professional full-time fire fighting force,” he told the commission. “You can’t go and fight a war with a part-time army.”

    Mr Melham said that even more damning than its failure to act on its promises to boost numbers after the 2003 Esplin Inquiry into Victoria’s bushfires, the latest state budget had cut the department’s funding by $47 million, “notwithstanding Black Saturday”.

    Mr Melham also said the Victorian government’s target burn of 130,000 hectares annually should be tripled to 385,000 hectares, as recommended by a parliamentary inquiry last year, and resources needed to be multiplied 10 times “if we are fair dinkum”.

    He said the state’s bushfire strategy was fragmented and uncoordinated and marred by lack of resources and trained staff.

    He said a single fire authority, such as the old Victorian Forest Commission, should be re-established.

    “We need to put all the resources back together,” he said. “It just makes sense. It would give us a better fighting chance to fight these fires when they hit us.”

    Mr Melham’s comments went unchallenged by state government lawyers at the royal commission, who had no questions for the union leader.

  • China using ‘mind blowing’amount of fertiliser

    China using ‘mind blowing’ amount of fertiliser

    Ecologist

    14th February, 2009

    Overuse of nitrogen fertilisers in China is leading to rapid soil acidification and is causing lasting damage to ecosystems, according to soil study

    Nitrogen fertilisers used to increase crop yields in China are having ‘extreme’ environmental consequences, according to a study from leading soil scientists.

    Scientists from China, the UK and the United States measured the pH of soil samples taken from agricultural land across China in the 1980s and 2000s and found widespread acidification caused by nitrogen fertilisers.

    On average, the pH of soil across the country had decreased by 0.5 in 20 years. In parts of Hunan province, in south China, the pH of the soil had dropped to between 3 and 4.

    Most crops are suited to a neutral range between pH 6 and pH 8.

    Intensification drive

    Dr Goulding, head of soil science at Rothamsted Agricultural Research Centre, said Chinese farmers had been encouraged to use more fertilisers to drive up yields, but had not been warned about the risks.

    ‘The message from the Chinese government was very simple: put nitrogen fertiliser on your crops and get more yield. The result in many parts of the country is extreme acidification,’ said Goulding.

    Professor Peter Vitousek of Stanford University, who worked on the study, said the amount of fertiliser being used in China was ‘mind-blowing.’

    ‘Whereas on a grain farm in Illinois, an average of 200 kg of nitrogen fertiliser are being used per hectare, on a maize farm in China that could be as much as 800 kg per hectare.

    ‘More than half of that is not going into the crop: instead it’s having grave environmental consequences downwind and downstream,’ he said.

    Cutting fertiliser usage

    Professor Vitousek said the research had shown that farmers could cut the amount of nitrogen fertilisers used almost in half without affecting yields.

    ‘This would be an absolute benefit to the environment and farmer costs,’ he said.

    Useful links
    Report in full

  • Chinese farms cause more pollution than factories, says official survey

     

    Despite the sharp upward revision of figures on rural contamination, the government suggested the country’s pollution problem may be close to – or even past – a peak. That claim is likely to prompt scepticism among environmental groups.

     

    • Anti-pollution riots break out in China
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    • Chinese citizens set to launch first ever environmental lawsuit against government

    The release of the groundbreaking report was reportedly delayed by resistance from the agriculture ministry, which had previously insisted that farms contributed only a tiny fraction of pollution in China.

    The census disproves these claims completely. According to the study, agriculture is responsible for 43.7% of the nation’s chemical oxygen demand (the main measure of organic compounds in water), 67% of phosphorus and 57% of nitrogen discharges.

    At the launch of the paper, Wang Yangliang of the ministry of agriculture recognised the fall-out from intensive farming methods.

    “Fertilisers and pesticides have played an important role in enhancing productivity but in certain areas improper use has had a grave impact on the environment,” he said. “The fast development of livestock breeding and aquaculture has produced a lot of food but they are also major sources of pollution in our lives.”

    He said the ministry would introduce measures to improve the efficiency of pesticide and fertiliser use, to expand biogas generation from animal waste, and to change agricultural lifestyles to protect the environment.

    While the high figure for rural pollution is partly explained by the immense size of China’s agricultural sector, it also reflects the country’s massive dependency on artificial farm inputs such as fertilisers.

    The government says this is necessary because China uses only 7% of the world’s land to feed 22% of the global population. An industrial lobby is pushing for even greater use of chemicals. It includes the huge power company CNOOC, which runs the country’s largest nitrogen fertiliser factory in Hainan’s Dongfang City.

    But the returns on this chemical investment are poor. According to a recent Greenpeace report, the country consumes 35% of the world’s nitrogen fertiliser, which wastes energy and other resources, while adding to water pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

    “Agricultural pollution has become one of China’s gravest environmental crises,” said Greenpeace campaign director Sze Pangcheung. “China needs to step up the fight against the overuse of fertilisers and pesticides and promote ecological agriculture which has obvious advantages for human heath, the environment, and sustainable development of agriculture.”

    Wen Tiejun, dean of the school of agriculture and rural development at Renmin university, said the survey should be used as a turning point. His research suggested that Chinese farmers used almost twice as much fertiliser as they needed.

    “For almost all of China’s 5,000-year history, agriculture had given our country a carbon-absorbing economy but in the past 40 years, agriculture has become one of the top pollution sources,” he said. “Experience shows that we don’t have to rely on chemical farming to resolve the food security issue. The government needs to foster low-pollution agriculture.”

    But in what appears to be a statistical sleight of hand, the government said the new agricultural data and other figures from the census would not be used to evaluate the success of its five-year plan to reduce pollution by 10%.

    Zhang Lijun, the environmental protection vice-minister, claimed China was cleaning up its pollution problem far faster than other countries during their dirty stage of development.

    “Because China follows a different pattern of development, it is very likely that pollution will peak when per capita income reaches US$3,000,” he said, comparing this with the $8,000 he said was the norm in other nations.

    If true, it would suggest the worst of China’s pollution problems may already be over. According to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, per capita incomes in China have already passed this point. If exchange rates and a low cost of living are factored in, Chinese incomes may be equivalent to more than $6,000.

    But Zhang’s claim is contestable. As countless pollution scandals have revealed, many industries and local governments routinely under-report emissions and waste.

    Many harmful or controversial forms of pollution are either not measured – as is the case for carbon dioxide and small particle emissions – or the data is not made public, as is the case for ozone.

    Zheng said the government would expand its monitoring system in the next five-year plan.

    Extracts from China’s first pollution report (for 2007):

    • Sulphur dioxide emissions 23.2 million tonnes (91.3% from industry)

    • Nitrogen oxide emissions: 18 million tonnes (30% from vehicles)

    • Chemical oxygen demand discharges: 30.3 billion tonnes (44% from agriculture)

    • Soot: 11.7 million tonnes.

    • Solid waste: 3.8 billion tonnes (of which 45.7m tonnes is hazardous)

    • Heavy metal discharges: 900 tonnes

    • Livestock faeces: 243 million tonnes.

    • Livestock urine: 163 million tonnes

    • Plastic film on cropfields: 121,000 tonnes (80.3% recycled

  • Boots, KFC, MsDonalds ignore rainforest destruction survey

    Boots, KFC, McDonalds ignore rainforest destruction survey

    Ecologist

    10th February, 2010

    Marks and Spencer and Sainsbury’s have been praised for disclosing their ‘forest footprint’ but experts say that consumers are still not aware of the impact of their daily diet

    A project has been lauched to inform consumers and investors about the link between corporate activity and deforestation. 

    Similar to the Carbon Disclosure Project, the Forest Footprint Disclosure Project (FFDP) calls on companies to disclose their ‘forest footprint’ and provide information about what they are doing to reduce it. 
        
    More than 200 of the world’s leading companies were surveyed on their involvement with ‘forest risk commodities’ such as timber, palm oil, beef, leather, soy and biofuels.

    A number of notable companies operating in the UK failed to respond to the survey including Boots, KFC and McDonalds.

    Boots said it was unfair for it to be associated with deforestation.

    ‘We use 0.1 per cent of the volume of palm oil that Sainsbury’s use. On the one hand we want to be open, honest and transparent but there has to be a sense of reality over volume and usage,’ said Richard Ellis, Head of Corporate Social Responsibility at Alliance Boots.

    Eating the rainforest

    Forest Footprint Disclosure (FFD) chair Andrew Mitchell said that consumers still have little awareness of the impact everyday products have on forests.
        
    ‘Consumers “eat” rainforests daily in beef burgers, bacon and beauty products, but without knowing it.
        
    ‘Because of growing demand for beef, soy, and palm oil, which are in much of what we consume, as well as timber and biofuels, rainforests are now worth more cut down than standing up,’ he said.
        
    Mitchell called on governments and companies to make urgent investments to avoid the costs of further deforestation. 

    ‘There will be no solution to climate change without a solution to deforestation. Our disclosure approach is intended to make companies sit up and take notice of their corporate responsibility to make downsizing their forest footprint a priority,’ he said.

    Hamburger certification?
        
    The report also highlighted that 80 per cent of land deforested in the Amazon between 1996 and 2006 was now being used for cattle pasture and recommended a certification system to enable buyers to make informed choices on animal products.
        
    However Simon Counsell, Executive Director of the Rainforest Foundation urged caution on the potential of voluntary certification schemes as a means of eliminating negative environmental impacts.
        
    ‘If the project’s real potential is to be fulfilled, we would really need to see governments, and especially the European Union, acting to regulate trade in these destructive products,’ he said.

    Useful Links
    The Forest Footprint Disclosure Project
    The Rainforest Foundation

  • India bans planting of first GM crop food

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    ‘…till such time as independent scientific studies establish to the satisfaction of both the public and professionals the safety of the product from the point of view of its long term impact on human health and environment, including the rich genetic wealth existing in brinjal in our country.’

    Biodiversity threat

    Bt Brinjal would have been the first GM food crop approved for release in India, which has allowed the use of GM seeds for cotton production since 2002.

    But campaigners said the possibility of cross-contamination would have threatened the 2,000 or more traditional varieties of aubergine currently grown in India.

    ‘India is the origin of the brinjal family of plants, so containing the GM trait once the GM brinjal is released could prove impossible,’ said GM Freeze campaigner Peter Riley.

    ‘There are also doubts about how effective the insect resistance would be in the long term,’ he added.

    Friends of the Earth’s food campaigner Kirtana Chandrasekaran said the GM crop would benefit ‘big business and not local farmers or hungry people’.

    Useful links
    Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds Company

    9th February, 2010

    Ecologist