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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.
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  • Canada sets aside its boreal forest as giant carbon vault

     

     

    The sheer scale of the forest conservation drive is somewhat of an anomaly for Canada, whose government has been accused of sabotaging the global climate change talks by its development of the Alberta tar sands and its refusal to make deep cuts in its greenhouse gas emissions.

     

    Last week, a former adviser to Barack Obama urged Canada to do more to keep up with America’s moves towards a cleaner energy economy.

     

    In the latest addition to the carbon storehouse, the provincial premier of Manitoba, Gary Doer, this month announced a $10m (£5.6m) Canadian fund to protect a 10.8m acre expanse of boreal or evergreen forest. It was one of Doer’s last acts as premier; he took over as Canada’s ambassador to Washington this month.

     

    The $10m will go towards efforts by indigenous leaders to designate boreal forest lands in eastern Manitoba as a Unesco world heritage site. The Pimachiowin Aki world heritage project, which straddles the Manitoba-Ontario border, extends efforts by Canadian provincial leaders to protect the wide swaths of pristine forests in the north. It also ensures the survival of one of the best natural defences against global warming after the world’s oceans, environmentalists say.

     

    A report by the International Boreal Conservation Campaign said the forests, with their rich mix of trees, wetlands, peat and tundra, were a far bigger carbon store than scientists had realised, soaking up 22% of the total carbon stored on the earth’s land surface.

     

    “If you look across Canada one of [the boreal forest’s] great values to us globally is its carbon storage value,” said Steve Kallick, director of the Pew Environment Group’s International Boreal Conservation Campaign. “There is so much carbon sequestered in it already that if it escaped it would pose a whole new, very grave threat.”

     

    Canada’s cold temperatures slow decomposition, allowing the build-up of organic soil and peat. The forest floors beneath its evergreens hold twice as much carbon per acre as tropical forests, such as the Amazon.

     

    It is unclear how long Canada’s forests can continue to serve as carbon vaults. “As the climate warms, the place is going to dry up. There will be a problem with insect infestation. There is going to be increased natural carbon release due to fire or wetlands drying up,” said Sue Libenson, a spokeswoman for the International Boreal Conservation Campaign.

     

    But she added: “The general premise is that there is still a hell of a lot of carbon in there.” Its release would be a climate catastrophe.

     

    Canada’s 1.3bn acres of boreal forest store the equivalent of 27 years’ worth of current global greenhouse gas emissions, a Greenpeace study found. The destruction of those forests, scientists warn, would be like setting off a massive “carbon bomb” because of the sudden release of emissions.

     

    That threat appears to have concentrated the official mindset in Canada, which otherwise has a poor record on action on climate change. On a per capita basis, the country is one of the worst polluters on the planet, producing about 2% of the world’s emissions even though it has just 33m people. It holds one of the worst track records among industrialised states for living up to its commitment under the Kyoto accords. By 2007, greenhouse gas emissions were 34% above the target Canada agreed at Kyoto.

     

    Canada’s prime minister, Stephen Harper, is resisting doing much more, committing to just a 6% cut over 1990 levels of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. “I see Harper’s policy as a continuation of the Bush agenda,” said David Martin, climate director for Greenpeace Canada.

     

    A key advisor to Obama made a similar point last week, comparing Canada’s current climate change policy to the inaction in America under George Bush. “The Canadians would be well served by keeping up with what’s going on in the United States with respect to this push towards clean technology,” John Podesta, who oversaw Obama’s transition team, told a conference in Ottawa.

     

    Environmentalists also fear that Harper intends to exclude the Alberta tar sands – the heavy crude deposits that have fuelled the rise in emissions – from any future greenhouse gas emissions regime.

     

    But the Harper government did relent on forest protection, working with the Sahtu and Deh Cho First Nations to set aside 40m acres in the Northwest Territories.

     

    Canadian provincial leaders have moved even more aggressively in recent years, with Ontario committed to protecting 55m acres, or about half of its forest, and Quebec committed to protecting 150m acres. “Canada is torn between wanting to promote the tar sands and make money off it now, and wanting to live up to its promises under the Kyoto accord. But as far as protecting carbon rich ecosystems, particularly the boreal forest, Canada is a world leader,” said Kallick.

  • Liberals lose faith in action on carbon

     

    POLL: Do you understand how an ETS would help cut greenhouse gases?

    They are now urging the Opposition Leader to take a harder line in negotiations and to reject Labor’s legislation unless the government accepts the Coalition’s proposed amendments in full.

    And they believe their best chance in next year’s election is to attack Labor’s proposals as leading to higher costs for consumers.

    The shift has been on for the past few weeks and has gained pace since Liberal MPs were briefed on Tuesday on party research indicating voters overwhelmingly want action on climate change but do not understand the detail of the ETS proposals.

    Several sources said party director Brian Loughnane told the meeting that when interviewers explained the implications of an ETS to survey respondents, they were negative about the proposed scheme.

    News of the shift emerged yesterday before today’s launch by Liberal ETS opponent Cory Bernardi of a highly critical assessment of the European Union’s emissions trading scheme which estimates it has cost consumers up to E116billion ($190bn) since 2005, with little environmental benefit.

    The study, prepared by Britain’s Taxpayers’ Alliance, says climate change policies there form 14 per cent of household electricity prices and that electricity generators have made windfall profits at the expense of low-income earners and the elderly.

    The Coalition has been negotiating with the government for more than a week on proposed amendments to the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.

    Kevin Rudd told parliament this week the bill would be introduced in the Senate on November 23, before the UN’s global climate change conference in Copenhagen in December.

    If it is rejected the Prime Minister can use the Senate vote as the basis to call a double-dissolution election for both houses of parliament next year.

    Mr Turnbull, a strong supporter of the need for a properly designed ETS, wants the government to amend its scheme to provide greater support for industries affected by a shift to carbon trading to adjust to the change.

    Yesterday, the government rejected a Coalition bid to force an early vote on the scheme in the House of Representatives.

    While Mr Loughnane refused to comment on party research yesterday, accounts of his briefing to MPs were broadly similar from sources on all sides of the ETS debate, with their differences relating to conclusions about the meaning of the findings.

    Some said the research made clear that the party should not back Labor’s legislation unless the government embraced all of its amendments — an unlikely prospect.

    “There is a move afoot in our party, depending on what happens, to say we should actually dump an ETS as a policy and go with something better and more effective,” one source said.

    But another shadow cabinet source said the research demonstrated that the party could not afford to accept the Nationals’ approach of an outright rejection of carbon trading, and therefore must press hard for its amendments.

    “The message he was sending was that this is a dangerous zone but that because of the public acceptance that something must be done on climate change, doing nothing is simply not an option,” the MP said.

    Whatever the interpretation, Liberal frontbenchers who previously supported the idea of passing an amended ETS and then holding the government accountable for the outcome have shifted their view, insisting that only a “wholesale capitulation” from the government to Coalition demands would stand any chance of winning Coalition backbench endorsement.

    Senior Liberals are now saying the party polling, and public polls, show increasing concern about the costs of an ETS. They believe the best political option is to run a campaign against the government based on increased costs to households and industry.

    Another MP said voters were starting to doubt the seriousness of climate change.

    It is also understood backbench pressure is growing from marginal seat holders who fear they will lose their seats.

    The Taxpayers’ Alliance says the EU’s ETS “has failed to perform and is imposing serious costs on ordinary families”.

    According to the EU’s own figures there were only minor reductions in most European countries in greenhouse gas emissions between 2005 and 2008.

    Senator Bernardi, who is leading the Liberal revolt in the Senate and running a direct opposition campaign, said yesterday the British report showed an ETS was “a massive economic impost that has no real environmental benefits”.

    “An ETS in any form is bad for business, bad for families and bad for our economy,” he said.

    “With clear evidence of how ineffective and expensive it has been in the European Union, there is no way an ETS should be introduced in Australia.”

    Last night the author of the report, Matthew Sinclair, said from London that the European ETS had failed to “produce a stable carbon price, leaving consumers with an unpredictable addition to their bills”.

    Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce said he was not surprised by the Liberals’ research, which reflected his long-standing position.

  • Senate Democrats push for climate bill ahead of Copenhagen

     

    They were met with strong opposition from a powerful Democrat as well as Republicans on the environment and public works committee.

    With the clock running down to Copenhagen, the administration wheeled out four top officials to make the case that failure to act now on climate change would relegate America to lower tier status in the global economy. “When the starting gun sounded on the clean energy race, the United States stumbled,” Steven Chu, the energy secretary, told the environment and public works committee. “If we don’t choose to begin the development of this new technology, China and other countries will.”

    American legislation on climate change is seen as essential to reaching a meaningful deal at Copenhagen. But the White House held up action in the Senate on a climate change bill to focus on healthcare reform. The proposed law, which now stretches for more than 900 pages, would cut America’s greenhouse gas emissions by 20% over 2005 levels by 2020 and encourage the development of renewable energy sources like wind and solar power. Democratic leaders in the Senate are now struggling to advance a bill – which does not have solid support even among their own party – before the meeting in Copenhagen.

    In an ominous sign for those prospects, Max Baucus, who ranks second on the environment committee and chairs the finance committee which will also review the bill, said the proposed 20% reduction target was too steep. “I have some concerns about the overall direction of the bill,” he said. “We cannot afford the unmitigated impacts of climate change but we also cannot afford the unmitigated effects of legislation.”

    For weeks, the White House, Democrats, and environmental organisations have lobbied hard to frame the bill as an economic opportunity.

    Obama picked up the theme again in a visit to a solar plant in Florida where he announced $3.48bn in government grants to projects modernising America’s electrical grid. In introducing the bill today, Barbara Boxer leaned heavily on an analysis by the Environmental Protection Agency that showed the shift away from oil and coal would cost just 22 to 30 cents a day.

    Global warming isn’t waiting for who is a Democrat or who is a Republican. Either we are going to deal with this problem or we are not,” she said.

    John Kerry, who co-wrote the bill with Boxer, said it would usher in a technological revolution akin to the rapid growth of the internet in the 1990s. “We are going to create the equivalent of five or 10 Googles and that is going to drive the economy of our country,” said John Kerry, the former presidential candidate who is the other co-author of the bill.

    But their arguments appeared to make little headway with Republicans
    on the committee. James Inhofe, the Okalahoma Republican who notoriously declared global warming a hoax, called the bill a “temple of doom” which would cost Americans up to $400bn a year.

    Some Republicans pressed for investment to build 100 new nuclear plants over the next decade, or to expand offshore oil drilling to meet America’s future energy needs. Others argued that America would be damaging its own interests if it embarked on costly energy reforms – while emerging powers like India and China did not.

  • Climate change threatens Australia’s coastal lifesyle, report warns.

     

     

    Australia has no national coastal plan despite the prospect of losing large swaths of coastal land as each centimetre rise in sea levels is expected to carve a metre or more off the shoreline. If sea levels rise 80cm by 2100, some 711,000 homes, businesses and properties, which sit less than 6m above sea level and lie within 3km of the coast, will be vulnerable to flooding, erosion, high tides and surging storms.

     

    It argues that Australia needs a national policy to respond to sea level rise brought on by global warming, which could see people forced to abandon homes and banned from building at the beachside, according to the committee on climate change, water, environment and the arts.

     

    The prime minister, Kevin Rudd, said the report was a reminder that “Australia has more to lose through continued inaction on climate change” than most other countries. “The real cost for Australia of continued inaction on climate change is deep and enduring and damaging to our economy and damaging to the nation’s environment,” Rudd said.

     

    Skirmishes between residents and local councils are already erupting up and down the coast over erosion by the sea. On the far north coast of New South Wales, the state government has intervened to allow residents in the Byron shire council to build seal walls to protect their homes from rising sea levels. A similar battle is being waged further south at Taree. Meanwhile insurance companies are refusing to insure properties in seaside towns.

     

    Among the report’s 47 recommendations are that the government could consider “forced retreats”, and prohibiting the “continued occupation of the land or future building development on the property due to sea hazard”.

     

    Some members of the conservative Liberal-National party coalition, which voted down the Rudd government’s carbon emissions trading scheme earlier this year, remain sceptical that a problem exists. Liberal MP Tony Abbott, a senior member of the coalition and leadership contender, said there was no reason for alarm. “When it comes to rising sea levels I’m alert but I can’t say that I’m particularly alarmed. The fact is that sea levels have risen along the NSW coast by more than 20cm over the last century. Has anyone noticed it? No they haven’t. Obviously an 80cm rise in sea levels would be more serious but I’m confident that we have the resources to cope,” Abbott told ABC news.

     

    How much sea level could rise this century with increasing temperatures is an open question. The much-quoted 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said it could be up to 59cm, though warned that higher increases could not be ruled out. The IPCC said not enough was known about the way ice sheets break up to put a reliable figure on their contribution. Some estimates predict a 1-2m rise by 2100.

     

    The Australian government report, Managing Our Coastal Zone in a Changing Climate, followed an 18-month enquiry. It said the country’s current coastal management policy is fragmented, and authorities need to adopt a national policy to coordinate new coastal building codes and relocation and evacuation plans. Australia must examine the legal liability and insurance cover associated with property loss and damage due to climate change, improved early warning systems for extreme seas, and work to prevent the spread of tropical diseases such as dengue fever, it added.

     

    “The key message that emerged from the inquiry is the need for national leadership in managing Australia’s coastal zone in the context of climate change,” Jennie George, a government MP and committee chair, said in launching the report on Tuesday. “This is an issue of national significance.”

     

     

    The sub-tropical state of Queensland was the most at risk, with almost 250,000 buildings vulnerable. Next was the most populous state, New South Wales (NSW), with more than 200,000. Coastal flooding and erosion already costs NSW around AUS$200m (£112m) a year.

    The report called for a national policy which could see government authorities prohibit occupation of land or future building development on property due to sea hazards. It called for building codes, including cyclone building codes, to be revised to increase resilience to climate change.

     

    Alan Stokes, the executive director of the Sydney-based National Seachange taskforce, which represents coastal community councils across Australia, says banning development in certain areas is necessary. “There’s no doubt Australia will remain and continue to be a coastal community,” he said. “But we may have to be a bit more considerate about which parts of the coast we develop further and which ones we don’t.”

  • Climate change will devestate Africa, top UK scientist warns

     

     

    There will be less drinking water, diseases such as malaria will spread and the poorest will be hit the hardest as farmland is damaged in the coming century, Conway wrote.

     

    “There is already evidence that Africa is warming faster than the global average, with more warm spells and fewer extremely cold days. Northern and southern Africa are likely to become as much as 4C hotter over the next 100 years, and [will become ] much drier,” he said.

     

    Conway predicts hunger on the continent could increase dramatically in the short term as droughts and desertification increase, and climate change affects water supplies. “Projected reductions in crop yields could be as much as 50% by 2020 and 90% by 2100,” the paper says.

     

    Conway held out some hope that east Africa and the Horn of Africa, presently experiencing its worst drought and food shortages in 20 years, will become wetter. But he said that the widely hoped-for 8-15% increase in African crop yields as a direct result of more CO2 in the atmosphere may fail to materialise.

     

    “The latest analyses of more realistic field trials suggest the benefits of carbon dioxide may be significantly less than initially thought,” he said.

     

    Instead, population growth combined with climate change would mean countries face extreme problems growing more food: “We are going to need an awful lot more crop production, 70-100% more food will be needed than we have at present. Part of [what is needed] is getting more organic matter into Africa’s soils, which are very depleted, but we also have to improve water availability and produce crops that yield more, and use nitrogen and water more efficiently.”

     

    Sir Gordon, now professor of international development at Imperial College London, oversaw a major expansion in the UK government’s support for GM research in developing countries, and said that new technologies must be part of the African response to tackling hunger and droughts. “In certain circumstances we will need GM crops because we wont be able to find the gene naturally. GM may be the speediest and most efficient way to increase yields. Drought tolerance is governed by a range of genes. It is a big problem for breeders of [both] GM and ordinary plants”, he said.

     

    He called for more research into climate change. “There is much that we do not know. The Sahel may get wetter or remain dry. The flow of the Nile may be greater or less. We do not know if the fall in agricultural production will be very large or relatively small. The best assumption is that many regions of Africa will suffer more droughts and floods with greater intensity and frequency. We have to plan for the certainty that more extreme events will occur in the future but with uncertain regularity”.

  • Clean coal power 20 years away

     

    Clean coal advocates want the Government to lend a hand to make the first commercial-sized plants affordable.

    Carbon capture and storage involves capturing carbon dioxide from emitters, such as coal power plants, then storing the CO2 far away from the atmosphere, potentially injecting the gas deep below the Earths’ surface or the ocean.

    It is a complicated process that has both engineering and environmental challenges and now financial ones too.

    Nick Otter is the chief executive of the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute, which was set up by the Federal Government to fast track projects using clean coal technology.

    “That’s what you get from doing these large scale demonstrations,” he said.

    “You get a proper understanding of the cost issues associated with it. With CO2 coming from fossil fuels, carbon capture and storage – or CCS as we call it – will be a critical element of the portfolio to meet the CO2 reductions worldwide, no doubt.”

    The institute – at the cost of $100 million a year – has found the viability of clean coal power stations will not be possible until a carbon price reaches a minimum of $60 a tonne.

    Mr Otter says there are more than 200 active or planned clean carbon projects around the world using that technology.

    But according to the institute’s new audit, only seven projects are operating around the world and all are on gas processing plants, not coal.

    He says the G8 goal of getting 20 projects operational by 2020 will not be possible unless there are some major reforms.

    “The barriers are having the right sort of financial incentives,” he said.

    “These are new technology movers, regulatory areas, making sure that they are appropriately defined, public acceptance – ensuring that the public is comfortable with the technology.”

    The Federal Government has already promised $2.4 billion to build demonstration projects over the next nine years.

    The revelation of a high price of carbon capture is not news to energy policy consultant Hugh Saddler.

    “This is absolutely not a surprise that they’ve come out and said that,” he said.

    “If they had said something different it would have been a surprise.”

    He says some further Government assistance will be required.

    “Given the importance this is seen to be for the long-term future of the coal industry, the profitability of the coal industry and that it’s a well-established industry, the industry should certainly be putting a lot of money in as well,” he said.

    Mr Saddler says there are considerable additional costs of generating electricity through carbon capture and storage, compared to an existing power station.

    “The difference is equivalent to $60 a tonne of CO2 coming from a conventional power station,” he said.

    “Just the cost of all the complex engineering for the carbon capture and the cost of compressing the CO2 and piping it and injecting it underground.”

    He says proponents of clean coal should be chipping in a similar amount to those in the renewable sector.