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  • US starts bulldozing suburbs

    Picture from the UK TelegraphFifty cities in the US have been earmarked for radical reconstruction as part of a plan to revitalise America’s rust belt. The plan involves the bulldozing of sprawling suburbs in economically depressed cities to revitalise community, reduce transport and infrastructure requirements and ensure food security. The plan was developed for Flint, sixty miles north of Detroit, which is one of the poorest cities in the US. It is expected that the target cities will be redesigned as a cluster of small cities surrounded by countryside.

    Read related story

  • Why do we allow the US to act like a failed state on climate change?

     

    The cuts it proposes are much lower than those being pursued in the UK or in most other developed nations. Like the UK’s climate change act (pdf) the US bill calls for an 80% cut by 2050, but in this case the baseline is 2005, not 1990. Between 1990 and 2005, US carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels rose from 5.8 to 7bn tonnes.

    The cut proposed by 2020 is just 17%, which means that most of the reduction will take place towards the end of the period. What this means is much greater cumulative emissions, which is the only measure that counts. Worse still, it is riddled with so many loopholes and concessions that the bill’s measures might not offset the emissions from the paper it’s printed on. You can judge the effectiveness of a US bill by its length: the shorter it is, the more potent it will be. This one is some 1,200 pages long, which is what happens when lobbyists have been at work.

    There are mind-boggling concessions to the biofuels industry, including a promise not to investigate its wider environmental impacts. There’s a provision to allow industry to use 2bn tonnes of carbon offsets a year, which include highly unstable carbon sinks like crop residues left in the soil (another concession won by the powerful farm lobby). These offsets are so generous that if all of them are used, US industry will have to make no carbon cuts at all until 2026.

    Like the EU emissions trading scheme (ETS), Waxman-Markey would oblige companies to buy only a small proportion (15%) of their carbon permits. The rest will be given away. This means that a resource belonging to everyone (the right to pollute) is captured by industrial interests without public compensation. The more pollution companies have produced, the greater their free allocation will be – the polluter gets paid. It also means, if the ETS is anything to go by, that the big polluters will be able to make windfall profits by passing on the price of the permits they haven’t bought to their consumers.

    In one respect the bill actually waters down current legislation, by preventing the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating coal-burning power stations. If the new coal plants planned in the US are built, it’s hard to see how even the feeble targets in this bill can be met, let alone any targets proposed by the science.

    Even so, I would like to see the bill passed, as it at least provides a framework for future improvements. But why do we expect so little from the US? Why do we treat the world’s most powerful and innovative nation as if it were a failed state, rejoicing at even the faintest suggestion of common sense?

    You have only to read the comments that follow this article to find out. Thanks to the lobbying work of the coal and oil companies, and the vast army of thinktanks, PR consultants and astroturfers they have sponsored, thanks too to the domination of the airwaves by loony right shock jocks, the debate over issues like this has become so mad that any progress at all is little short of a miracle. The ranking Republican on the House energy and commerce committee is Joe Barton, the man who in 2005 launched a congressional investigation of three US scientists whose work reveals the historical pattern of climate change. Like those of many of his peers, his political career is kept on life support by the fossil fuel and electricity companies. He returns the favour by vociferously denying that manmade climate change exists.

    A combination of corporate money and an unregulated corporate media keeps America in the dark ages. This bill is the best we’re going to get for now because the corruption of public life in the United States has not been addressed. Whether he is seeking environmental reforms, health reforms or any other improvement in the life of the American people, this is Obama’s real challenge.

    monbiot.com

  • Olympian backs Water4Food group

    From the Land

    Coleambally irrigator and Riverina and Murray Regional Organisation of Councils (RAMROC) chairman, Terry Hogan, hosted the event and introduced special guest speakers, Professor Julian Cribb, Finley food producer, Jenny Wheeler, and Miss Rice.

    Mr Hogan said the group was concerned about the random nature of the Federal Government’s accelerated buyback of water, its sole focus so far on water licences in NSW, and the need to shore up certainty of water supply for food production.

    “Our message will be about working families and the economic sustainability of communities for our chldren, their children and all future generations,” he said.

    Mr Cribb had a sobering message for the audience, highlighting the need for a balance between the water needed for food and water reserved for the environment.

    “The world population, as we head towards 2050, will rise from six billion to nine billion and demand for food will more than double”, he said .

    During the next 10 years massive water shortages are eventuating in Asia, particularly in the Indian and Chinese grain bowls.

  • Irrigators are social pariahs says NFF

    From The Land

    He said the reputations of irrigators had been sullied by extreme environmentalists and sections of the media in their crusade to divert more water to the environment.

    Many irrigators without direct links to farmer organisations hadn’t been consulted during the water reform negotiations which stretched back to the early 1990s and which had produced major changes in how water was allocated, traded and managed.

    Many of these irrigators had struggled to keep up with the pace of change during the past 15 years and some had quit the industry.

    Mr Corish said irrigators had a responsibility to keep themselves informed on the reforms and the impact on their businesses but governments and farm bodies like the NFF had also failed to communicate effectively with grassroots farmers about the changes.

    These farmers had been left confused and fearful of their future by the massive shift in philosophy about water use in the past two decades, which had stripped water from irrigation in favour of extra environmental flows.

    Irrigators were critical to Australia’s food production and needed certainty in water supply to keep investing to make their farms more water efficient, he said.

    Mr Corish, a major irrigator from Goondiwindi on the NSW-Qld border and chairman of the publicly-listed farming company, PrimeAg Australia, said the reform program had produced some beneficial outcomes including addressing serious over-allocation of water and providing security for irrigation entitlements.

    Nor did he oppose the recent government buybacks of water which had been made at market prices, a much better outcome than the compulsory acquisition of licences.

    But the buybacks had occurred with seemingly little socio-economic analysis of their impact and little scientific backing of their environmental merit, he said.

    Dr Richard Davis, senior science advisor to the National Water Commission, told the congress that scientists had failed, despite 30 to 40 years of research, to nail down the exact value of increased flows to the environment.

    Australia didn’t know how much water was needed for the environment or what impact that water would have.

    Environmental water needed to be subjected to the same efficiency scrutiny and guidelines as water used in farming, he said.

  • Recent rains lead to bigger wheat crop

    From The Land

    The area sown to wheat is set to fall, according to ABARE, down to 13.5 million hectares, but yields are set to rise 3pc to 22 million tonnes.

    It is a figure borne out by other estimates.

    Despite some areas missing out on the April and June rains, NAB Agribusiness has increased its production estimates for the 2009-10 winter crop in the June Commodities Wrap, with wheat now expected to reach 22.6 million tonnes, slightly higher than the ABARE figures.

    The positive numbers are in spite of recent discouraging long term forecasts.

    The Bureau of Meteorology has reported a rapidly falling Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) linked to the return of a traditionally dry El Nino event across eastern Australia, while the Indian Ocean Dipole is in positive territory, which is also a negative driver for rainfall in Australian cropping belts.

    ABARE predicts the acreage of the other major cereal, barley, will also decrease, although production is expected to be up a healthy 13pc to 7.7 million tonnes on the back of better yields.

    The major change in plantings is expected to be a significant rise in canola plantings, perhaps as a rotational requirement after years of safety first cereal rotations.

    The ABARE predictions are for a 9pc drop in canola yields, however, due to a forecast for a decline in WA production this year.

    The forecaster is flagging a 1.7 million tonne canola crop this year, which is right in line with Australian Oilseeds Federation (AOF) numbers.

    In terms of likelihood of exceeding average yields, the torrent of rain that has fallen through north-west NSW means there is a close to 100pc chance of farmers there getting a better than average harvest, a figure that declines to 10-20pc in the parched Riverina in the south of the state.

    In Victoria and South Australia the odds are leaning towards a below average season, although there are parts of SA with good potential, while WA is wildly varied, ranging from a 10pc to 100pc chance of getting above long-term median yields.

  • US starts bulldozing suburbs

    From the UK Telegraph

    Local politicians believe the city must contract by as much as 40 per cent, concentrating the dwindling population and local services into a more viable area.

    The radical experiment is the brainchild of Dan Kildee, treasurer of Genesee County, which includes Flint.

    Having outlined his strategy to Barack Obama during the election campaign, Mr Kildee has now been approached by the US government and a group of charities who want him to apply what he has learnt to the rest of the country.

    Mr Kildee said he will concentrate on 50 cities, identified in a recent study by the Brookings Institution, an influential Washington think-tank, as potentially needing to shrink substantially to cope with their declining fortunes.

    Most are former industrial cities in the “rust belt” of America’s Mid-West and North East. They include Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Memphis.

    In Detroit, shattered by the woes of the US car industry, there are already plans to split it into a collection of small urban centres separated from each other by countryside.

    “The real question is not whether these cities shrink – we’re all shrinking – but whether we let it happen in a destructive or sustainable way,” said Mr Kildee. “Decline is a fact of life in Flint. Resisting it is like resisting gravity.”

    Karina Pallagst, director of the Shrinking Cities in a Global Perspective programme at the University of California, Berkeley, said there was “both a cultural and political taboo” about admitting decline in America.

    “Places like Flint have hit rock bottom. They’re at the point where it’s better to start knocking a lot of buildings down,” she said.

    Flint, sixty miles north of Detroit, was the original home of General Motors. The car giant once employed 79,000 local people but that figure has shrunk to around 8,000.

    Unemployment is now approaching 20 per cent and the total population has almost halved to 110,000.

    The exodus – particularly of young people – coupled with the consequent collapse in property prices, has left street after street in sections of the city almost entirely abandoned.

    In the city centre, the once grand Durant Hotel – named after William Durant, GM’s founder – is a symbol of the city’s decline, said Mr Kildee. The large building has been empty since 1973, roughly when Flint’s decline began.

    Regarded as a model city in the motor industry’s boom years, Flint may once again be emulated, though for very different reasons.

    But Mr Kildee, who has lived there nearly all his life, said he had first to overcome a deeply ingrained American cultural mindset that “big is good” and that cities should sprawl – Flint covers 34 square miles.

    He said: “The obsession with growth is sadly a very American thing. Across the US, there’s an assumption that all development is good, that if communities are growing they are successful. If they’re shrinking, they’re failing.”

    But some Flint dustcarts are collecting just one rubbish bag a week, roads are decaying, police are very understaffed and there were simply too few people to pay for services, he said.

    If the city didn’t downsize it will eventually go bankrupt, he added.

    Flint’s recovery efforts have been helped by a new state law passed a few years ago which allowed local governments to buy up empty properties very cheaply.

    They could then knock them down or sell them on to owners who will occupy them. The city wants to specialise in health and education services, both areas which cannot easily be relocated abroad.

    The local authority has restored the city’s attractive but formerly deserted centre but has pulled down 1,100 abandoned homes in outlying areas.

    Mr Kildee estimated another 3,000 needed to be demolished, although the city boundaries will remain the same.

    Already, some streets peter out into woods or meadows, no trace remaining of the homes that once stood there.

    Choosing which areas to knock down will be delicate but many of them were already obvious, he said.

    The city is buying up houses in more affluent areas to offer people in neighbourhoods it wants to demolish. Nobody will be forced to move, said Mr Kildee.

    “Much of the land will be given back to nature. People will enjoy living near a forest or meadow,” he said.

    Mr Kildee acknowledged that some fellow Americans considered his solution “defeatist” but he insisted it was “no more defeatist than pruning an overgrown tree so it can bear fruit again”.