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The Generator news service publishes articles on sustainable development, agriculture and energy as well as observations on current affairs. The news service is used on the weekly radio show, The Generator, as well as by a number of monthly and quarterly magazines. A podcast of the Generator news is also available.
As well as Giovanni’s articles it picks up the most pertinent articles from a range of other news services. You can publish the news feed on your website using RSS, free of charge.
 

  • Leak finally plugged but Obama faces his own Gulf crisis

     

    “We will lose more coastline from this catastrophe than from all four hurricanes – Katrina, Rita, Gustav and Ike,” Mr Nungesser said.

    A Democrat senator, Bill Nelson, whose home state of Florida could yet be hit by the  slick, said if BP’s latest attempt to plug the leak failed, Mr Obama would need to seize personal control of the effort immediately.

    A Louisiana resident, James Carville, appealed to the President. ‘‘Man, you got to get down here and take control of this, put someone in charge of this thing and get this thing moving. We’re about to die down here.”

    The White House insists the administration has been doing all it can, having dispatched more than 20,000 personnel to help with containment, while drafting 1300 vessels to assist with dredging and skimming.

    Mr Obama, who will visit the Gulf for a second time today, has made great play in demanding that BP put things right and compensate all those hit by the spill, while foreshadowing  tough new drilling regulations.

    But some political strategists believe that the Deepwater Horizon blowout looms as Mr Obama’s “Katrina”, a reference to how an inadequate response to the 2005 hurricane tainted the administration of George Bush.

    The administration  backed the so-called ‘‘top kill’’ procedure in which underwater robots have been forcing a mix of drilling mud and cement deep into the well, more than 1.6 kilometres below the surface. Several hours after the effort began  on Wednesday afternoon, BP officials said the signs were hopeful.

    “What you’ve been observing coming out of the top of that riser is most likely mud,” BP’s chief operating officer, Doug Suttles, told reporters in Houston.

    “The way we know we’ve been successful is it stops flowing.”

    Documents have revealed that the volume of leaking oil was likely to have been far greater than the company’s public estimate of 5000 barrels a day.

    BP’s own documents put an upper estimate of more than 14,000 barrels a day.

  • The three stupidest things said about the BP oil spill

     

    4. “I don’t honestly think it opens up a whole new series of questions, because, you know, in all honesty I doubt this is the first accident that has happened and I doubt it will be the last.”
    — Robert Gibbs, White House Press Secretary, April 23, 2010, inspiring all kinds of confidence in the safety of offshore drilling three days after the spill

    5. “The reality is we will be depending on oil and gas as we transition to a new energy future. You are not going to turn off the lights of this country or the economy by shutting it all down.”
    — Ken Salazar, Secretary of the Interior, on May 18, 2010, in response to Senator Bernie Sanders’ question about reinstating the moratorium on offshore drilling
    NOTE: Petroleum accounted for less than one percent of electricity generation in the U.S. last year. Oil does not keep the lights on.

    6. “We need the increased production. The president still continues to believe the great majority of that can be done safely, securely and without any harm to the environment.”
    — Gibbs, White House Press Secretary, April 23, 2010

    7. “There were good reasons for us to put in offshore drilling, and this terrible accident is very rare in drilling. I mean, accidents happen. You learn from them and you try not to make sure they don’t happen again.”
    — Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), May 4, 2010, on why the new American Power Act includes new offshore drilling

  • Gunns chairman John Gay quits

    Gunns chairman John Gay quits

    Updated 15 minutes ago

    Retiring Gunns chairman John Gay

    Gunns chairman John Gay is quitting the timber company and all its subsidiaries. (ABc News: Josh Goodyer)

    Gunns chairman John Gay has announced he is quitting the timber company and all its subsidiaries.

    In a statement to the Stock Exchange, Gunns Limited says Mr Gay is retiring from the board of Gunns, its subsidiary Southern Star Corporation and all related subsidiary companies, effective immediately.

    Mr Gay stepped down as chief executive of Gunns almost a year ago, but retained control of the controversial pulp mill project.

    He has been under pressure from major stakeholders to leave.

    Mr Gay began with the company in 1973 and was managing director for the past 24 years.

    The board says Mr Gay was instrumental in the rationalisation of the Tasmanian timber industry.

    Gunns’ share price plummeted this week despite the company announcing it had sold its retail arm for $40 million.

    Tags: company-news, forests, timber, tas, hobart-7000, launceston-7250

    First posted 18 minutes ago

  • Kevin Rudd to backflip on mining tax rate

     

     

    BHP Billiton chief executive Marius Kloppers declared last night that any thought the petroleum tax would work for minerals was “naive” and demonstrated “a lack of knowledge as to how investments are made”.

    “Most importantly, we must understand that for each mineral we are competing against other investment destinations, and each set of minerals has a different set of competitors and those competitors set the price,” Mr Kloppers told The Australian.

    And Xstrata chief executive Mick Davis said from South Africa: “The government needs to do what it should have done all along and enter into full and open consultations with the industry where every aspect of the super tax is open for debate. Tinkering at the margins will not avoid the significant long-term damage this tax could do to mining investment in Australia.

    “The government should stop negotiating with itself and start consulting with the industry.”

    Rio Tinto chairman Jan du Plessis told the company’s shareholders that Australia’s reputation had already been damaged by the super-profits tax proposal.

    “We are concerned that the proposed resources super tax will erode Australia’s competitiveness, severely curtail investment and limit jobs growth,” Mr du Plessis said yesterday. He said that some of the government’s arguments for the tax and some of the statistics that had been produced to support them “could only be described as scandalous, totally scandalous”.

    Wayne Swan continued his criticisms of the mining companies yesterday, telling parliament they were still paying only 17c in the dollar in tax compared with the “headline rate” of 30 per cent. The Treasurer vowed to keep the 40 per cent rate for the new RSPT.

    “What we have to do is extract the maximum value for the Australian people as we go forward to reform our economy, to invest in our economy and to ensure our prosperity as we go forward,” Mr Swan said.

    Earlier, he said the government was “interested and fair dinkum about consultation”.

    “The government is involved in consultation,” Mr Swan said. “First of all, we have our consultation panel. Over 80 companies have been through that panel process and are talking to that panel. In addition to that, the government is continuing to talk to many mining companies about their views.

    “What we are going to get for the Australian people is a fair share of the resources they own 100 per cent, a fair share – a tax which encourages investment and growth in the industry.”

    The government’s consultation panel, headed by Treasury deputy secretary David Parker, will give its first report to the government tomorrow. It is expected to go beyond its strict limits for discussion and recommend the raising of the threshold for the super-profits tax to be lifted from 6 per cent, the long-term government bond rate, to about 11 or 12 per cent, the bond rate plus five or six percentage points.

    As reported in The Australian on Monday, the lost revenue would be covered by the withdrawal of the 40 per cent compensation for failed projects to enable the government to keep its budget projections, including a $1bn surplus in 2012-13, intact.

    Mr Parker said yesterday the proposed RSPT as a result of the Henry tax review was “the architecture of reform, not the engineering drawings”.

    “With such reforms, there will always be winners and losers, with some groups more vocal than others,” Mr Parker said. “The challenge is to work together to address the issues that will inevitably arise.”

    Government sources confirmed that the panel was expected to recommend major changes to the proposed RSPT, including raising the threshold, but others warned it was unlikely there would be an early settlement of the negotiations with the mining companies.

    In Adelaide, Mr Kloppers said a 40 per cent tax rate may have been considered appropriate when it was devised for the petroleum industry in the 1980s after two years of consultation but it was “a giant, naive extrapolation to think miraculously the same one is the appropriate rate for every mineral in 2010”.

    “BHP Billiton, being in the oil and gas industry and in the minerals industry, has experience on both sides and, more than other players, we understand the difference between the products themselves and between minerals more broadly,” he said.

    “Retrospectivity on this tax is the key determinant for Australia as a destination for investment.

    “It goes against the core offering that Australia has, which is being a stable place for investment.”

  • EU carbon trading scheme failing to cut pollution, campaigners warn

     

    The EU ETS is facing a number of problems which may leave it redundant. To prevent this from happening and rescue the EU ETS Sandbag have highlighted four fundamental problems with the current system that must be addresses to salvage the scheme.

    Problem 1: Inappropriate targets

    The traded sector, which accounts for just under half of the greenhouse gasses in the European economy, currently aim to cut emissions 21% against 2005 levels by 2020 as part of a wider programme to achieve economy reductions of 20% against 1990 levels by 2020. With a drop in emissions of 11.6% in 2009 across the EU, the target of 20% suddenly does not look to difficult. Ambitious targets are critical in tackling climate change as well as giving Europe a head start in the global green economy which is estimated to be worth some $2.3trillion by 2020.

    Sandbag recommends the EU move to the proposed 30% midterm emissions target reduction which would reflect in a 34% target for the traded sector. This would save an estimated 1.4bn tonnes of CO2.

    Problem 2: Sectoral ovrallocation

    The ETS is currently oversupplied by 233 million allowances, however, this net position disguises asymmetries in the effort required by different sectors under the cap. Where the power sector carries most of the burden, heavy industry and a significant number of manufacturing plants are currently failing to shoulder any of the load. 70% of participants in the scheme were given more allowances than needed to cover their emissions (have a look for yourself using our new and improved emissions map of the EU). Successful lobbying by industry has meant they have been able to secure generous allocation which does not reflect their actual emissions.

    Sandbag recommends deriving Phase III caps from historical emissions rather than from Phase II allocations which are distorted by overallocations. Sandbag has calculated the Phase III cap against recent historical emissions, drawing a baseline from generous estimate of average 2005-2009 emissions delivers a Phase III budget some 2.3 billion smaller than the current proposal

    Problem 3: Carbon lock-in

    Emissions have dropped across Europe, however, this has almost exclusively been the result of recession rather than shrewd policy. Perversely though, the current design of the ETS prevents us from capturing any environmental benefit of this downturn. Rather this carbon saving is allowed – under the ETS Directive – to be banked and saved for a rainy day. This means that the 233 million tonnes of spare permits left over from 2009 will be used to allow future emissions to take place, emissions it seems are now predetermined.

    Sandbag recommends that a strategic carbon reserve be established, which would hold back a quantity of permits in case of a sudden drop in demand. A reserve could protect the scheme from excessive surplus in the event of a repeat recession, with an annual share of the reserve released into the market after each year which passes without incident. A reserve would also allow the scheme to respond more quickly to new scientific assessments of climate risk.

    Problem 4: Unused offsets and New Entrants reserve

    A further 1.4 billion credits are likely to be introduced into the scheme, this figure is made up of unused permits from the New Entrants Reserve which are likely to be released into the market at the end of Phase II, as well as some 830 million unused Phase II offset credits and a further 375 million offsets are expected to be available in Phase III. Together with the Phase II surplus, a 1.5 billion permit carryover could allow emissions to grow unabated until 2017.

    Sandbag recommends an EU wide agreement to control the quantity and quality of offsets, this is to prevent offsets entering the EU which have originated from projects with no or limited sustainable development benefits for the host country. It is also recommended that unused NER permits are cancelled; France, Ireland and Malta have already declared their intention to cancel unused NER permits at the end of Phase II. An EU agreement to cancel unused NER permits would prevent an estimates 192 million permits becoming available in Phase III.

    The ETS is vulnerable to being rendered irrelevant if the system is unable to adapt to the dynamic system of which it operates. Tightening the cap remains of paramount importance, for saving carbon, spurring green investment and helping Europe to move toward a green economy in a more cost effective way.

  • A summer heatwave will not affect our ground water

     

    Because water enters the aquifers for part of the year but drains from them continuously to support the flows of many rivers, water tables rise and fall in an annual cycle; as they fall, stream networks shrink and flows decline naturally. This is particularly apparent in chalk areas, where the annual fluctuation of the water table may be more than 20 metres. Given the shallow slope of chalk valleys, the head of the stream may move several kilometres up and down the valley, giving rise to the familiar winterbournes.

    The last three summers have been exceptional in that for some periods, especially in 2007, the rainfall was so heavy that soil-moisture deficits were reduced or eliminated in some areas and there was, unusually, a rise in water tables and an increase in the flow of some ground-water-fed rivers. However, far from being just sufficient to keep these streams flowing, as Brown implies, this pushed some of them to record flows for summer months.

    Of course Brown is right that removing water for household supply also lowers water tables and decreases river flows, as does obstructing a river by building a dam; but the issue is often confused. In 1988-92 and 1995-97 a series of dry winters lowered water tables, leading to complaints from those living in winterbourne valleys about the disappearance of their streams. The winter of 2000-01 was so wet that some of the same householders were complaining of flooding and asking water companies to remove more water.

    The predictions of climate change are that rainfall will become less predictable, so stream networks will expand and shrink more markedly than we are used to; maybe the past two or three decades have seen the first signs of that. But ground-water levels last month were at or above average.

    In simple terms, we don’t buy water for public supply, we just rent it – so most of it should be returned to the river with little net loss of downstream flow. This happens to a degree in the Thames catchment, and at Winchester where sewage is recharged to the chalk aquifer, but too rarely in other areas of Britain. This is where more effort might pay dividends.