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  • Gas pipeline through contaminated Baltic given go-ahead

    Gas pipeline through contaminated Baltic given go-ahead

    Ecologist

    19th February, 2010

    Environmental groups in Germany, Finland and Denmark claim gas pipeline will devastate the Baltic Sea’s already fragile marine ecosystem

    Three legal challenges are being brought against the construction of a major undersea gas pipeline between Russia and Germany.

    The €7.4 billion Nord Stream project, heavily promoted in recent weeks by Russian prime minister Vladmir Putin, has now been approved by all the Baltic countries throug whose territorial waters the pipeline will pass.

    Construction is expected to start as early as April this year.

    Legal action

    However, campaign groups in three of the countries that have approved the pipeline are attempting to delay construction, claiming environmental impacts have not been properly assessed. 

    Separate cases being brought in Germany by WWF, in Finland by the Estonian Fund for Nature (ELF) and in Denmark by the Estonian Naturalists Society (ENS), all allege the permits for the project should not have been issued by the national authorities. 

    Jüri-Ott Salm, CEO of the Estonian Fund for Nature, said they were concerned about the toxic sediment that would be released by the construction of the pipe and clearing of munitions dumped in the Sea.

    He said alternative routes overland had not been properly considered and that ELF wanted a new environmental assessment made.

    Munitions dump

    Ivar Puura from the Estonian Naturalists Society, said its case was specifically about munitions dumps in Danish and Swedish waters – which it claims have not been properly assessed.

    ‘If Nord Stream AG [the consortium building the pipeline] is concerned on the environmental safety, it should take time to finish the incomplete assessments of environmental impacts.

    ‘The appeal is seeking the delay in construction and communicates the warning of scientists that there are too many open questions on known risks and uncertanties, that should be answered before the works are launched. Otherwise, the risks to human health and ecosystem services are too high,’ said Puura.

    A spokesperson from Nord Stream said €100 million of environmental surveys had been undertaken and that any complaints were directed against the national authorities rather than them.

    ‘So far we are not aware of any details that could lead to a delay.  We are looking forward to a timely start to work in April.’

    Useful links     
    Nord Stream
    Estonian Fund for Nature (ELF)
    Estonian Naturalists Society (ENS)

  • World’s top firms cause $2.2 Trillion of environmental damage, report estimates;.

     

    Later this year, another huge UN study – dubbed the “Stern for nature” after the influential report on the economics of climate change by Sir Nicholas Stern – will attempt to put a price on such global environmental damage, and suggest ways to prevent it. The report, led by economist Pavan Sukhdev, is likely to argue for abolition of billions of dollars of subsidies to harmful industries like agriculture, energy and transport, tougher regulations and more taxes on companies that cause the damage.

    Ahead of changes which would have a profound effect – not just on companies’ profits but also their customers and pension funds and other investors – the UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment initiative and the United Nations Environment Programme jointly ordered a report into the activities of the 3,000 biggest public companies in the world, which includes household names from the UK’s FTSE 100 and other major stockmarkets.

    The study, conducted by London-based consultancy Trucost and due to be published this summer, found the estimated combined damage was worth US$2.2 trillion (£1.4tn) in 2008 – a figure bigger than the national economies of all but seven countries in the world that year.

    The figure equates to 6-7% of the companies’ combined turnover, or an average of one-third of their profits, though some businesses would be much harder hit than others.

    “What we’re talking about is a completely new paradigm,” said Richard Mattison, Trucost’s chief operating officer and leader of the report team. “Externalities of this scale and nature pose a major risk to the global economy and markets are not fully aware of these risks, nor do they know how to deal with them.”

    The biggest single impact on the $2.2tn estimate, accounting for more than half of the total, was emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for climate change. Other major “costs” were local air pollution such as particulates, and the damage caused by the over-use and pollution of freshwater.

    The true figure is likely to be even higher because the $2.2tn does not include damage caused by household and government consumption of goods and services, such as energy used to power appliances or waste; the “social impacts” such as the migration of people driven out of affected areas, or the long-term effects of any damage other than that from climate change. The final report will also include a higher total estimate which includes those long-term effects of problems such as toxic waste.

    Trucost did not want to comment before the final report on which sectors incurred the highest “costs” of environmental damage, but they are likely to include power companies and heavy energy users like aluminium producers because of the greenhouse gases that result from burning fossil fuels. Heavy water users like food, drink and clothing companies are also likely to feature high up on the list.

    Sukhdev said the heads of the major companies at this year’s annual economic summit in Davos, Switzerland, were increasingly concerned about the impact on their business if they were stopped or forced to pay for the damage.

    “It can make the difference between profit and loss,” Sukhdev told the annual Earthwatch Oxford lecture last week. “That sense of foreboding is there with many, many [chief executives], and that potential is a good thing because it leads to solutions.”

    The aim of the study is to encourage and help investors lobby companies to reduce their environmental impact before concerned governments act to restrict them through taxes or regulations, said Mattison.

    “It’s going to be a significant proportion of a lot of companies’ profit margins,” Mattison told the Guardian. “Whether they actually have to pay for these costs will be determined by the appetite for policy makers to enforce the ‘polluter pays’ principle. We should be seeking ways to fix the system, rather than waiting for the economy to adapt. Continued inefficient use of natural resources will cause significant impacts on [national economies] overall, and a massive problem for governments to fix.”

    Another major concern is the risk that companies simply run out of resources they need to operate, said Andrea Moffat, of the US-based investor lobby group Ceres, whose members include more than 80 funds with assets worth more than US$8tn. An example was the estimated loss of 20,000 jobs and $1bn last year for agricultural companies because of water shortages in California, said Moffat.

  • 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.

  • Bullying tactics used in push to industrialise the kimberly

     

    The Commonwealth and WA State governments are trying to threaten and bully reluctant oil and gas companies, Traditional Owners and the local Broome community to accept the Kimberly gas hub proposal.
     
    In the latest development (9th Feb 2010) the Woodside joint venture partners BP, Shell, Chevron and
    BHP have responded to a deadline on gas lease renewals set by Mr Ferguson. These companies have been forced to agree to an initial investment in the James Price Point location, though a final investment decision is still a long way off.

    Mr Ferguson’s deadline was designed to preempt:

    • The State and Commonwealth environmental assessment process,
    • The Federal government’s own heritage listing and marine protection processes,
    • Indigenous consent processes

    As we have seen with the Tasmanian pulpmill fiasco, when government ministers intervene to pre-empt and fast-track decision making processes, every one loses – including big corporations!

    Other examples of bullying tactics include the WA State Premier Colin Barnett’s threat of compulsory land acquisition if Traditional Owners do not agree and the dismantling of the consultative site selection process set up under the former government.

    The Wilderness Society will continue to build on the large and growing movement opposing this reckless proposal and investigate all options, including legal challenges, to make sure that the Kimberley is protected from inappropriate and unsustainable development

  • It’s time for a solar revolution

     

    That is why I was joined by 10 of my colleagues (Senators Whitehouse, Cardin, Gillibrand, Merkley, Lautenberg, Leahy, Boxer, Menendez, Specter, and Harkin) in introducing the Ten Million Solar Roofs Act. The bill is all of 9 pages and is pretty straightforward. It calls for 10 million new solar rooftop systems and 200,000 new solar water heating systems over the next 10 years. When fully implemented, this legislation would lead to 30,000 megawatts of new photovoltaic energy, triple our total current U.S. solar energy capacity. It will increase by almost 20 times our current energy output from photovoltaic panels. The legislation will rapidly increase production of solar panels, driving down the price of photovoltaic systems. It also would mean the creation of over a million new jobs. The passage of this bill would dramatically reorient our energy priorities and would be a major step forward toward a clean energy future for the United States.

    What the Ten Million Solar Roofs Act does is provide consumer rebates for the purchase and installation of solar systems. Here is how it works: Take the example of a homeowner who decides to install a 5 kilowatt solar system which, depending on location, would produce enough electricity to cover most, if not all, of an average electric bill (the solar panels would produce excess power during the day which can be sold back to the utility, covering some or all of the cost of electricity when the sun is not shining). That system today costs roughly $35,000 to purchase and install. The federal tax credit of 30 percent reduces the system cost to $24,500. Many states offer additional incentives. In Vermont, for example, a homeowner could get an additional rebate of $1.75 per watt, which would further reduce the system cost to $15,750. Our bill would provide an additional rebate of as much as $1.75 per watt, covering up to 50 percent of the remaining cost. The result: the consumer now pays $7,875 for the solar system.

    This is a pretty good deal for a family that plans to stay in their home or wants to increase their home value, or a small business looking to stabilize its energy costs. It’s also a good deal for the nation because we save money by preventing the expensive construction of new power plants, we eliminate large health care and other costs associated with air and water pollution, and we take a big step to address global warming.

    We know this concept works because it is already being implemented on a smaller scale in California. This legislation extends nationally the California Million Solar Roofs initiative, started by Gov.  Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican. Now several years into the program, California is on track to meet its goal of installing 3,000 megawatts of new solar by 2016.

    Interestingly, while solar has a great deal of public support, you might not know that from listening to energy debates in Congress. As a member of both the energy and environment committees, I am constantly astounded by how many of my colleagues prefer to focus on what the government can do for the nuclear or coal industries, rather than why the government should support clean and sustainable energy. In fact, many senators and congressmen are fighting for a “nuclear renaissance” and want the federal government to offer loan guarantees covering the cost to build 100 new nuclear plants.  This could place at risk up to $1 trillion in taxpayer money.

    In my view, this is an absurd proposal. First, it is enormously expensive and financially risky. Second, if we don’t know how to safely dispose of the highly toxic nuclear waster we currently have, what are we going to do with the new waste generated by 100 additional plants?

    You may not hear much discussion of this in Congress, but the construction of new nuclear power plants is the most costly approach to producing new energy. Each new plant costs $10 to $17 billion to construct, and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has determined that the risk of default on taxpayer supported loan guarantees is more than 50 percent. The simple truth is that building new solar capacity is a lot cheaper than building new nuclear plants. The cost to produce electricity from new nuclear plants is estimated to be 25 to 30 cents per kilowatt hour. Compare this to the cost of producing electricity from solar photovoltaic panels at 13 to 19 cents per kilowatt hour. Also, importantly, the price of solar is coming down, whereas the price for new nuclear keeps going up. You do not have to be a financial wizard to figure this one out.

    The time is now to reorder our energy priorities. Between 2002 and 2008 we put $70 billion of federal tax dollars towards fossil fuels, and just $1.2 billion towards solar power. New nuclear plants get more than triple the government subsidy that new solar plants get (and this does not fully account for the huge subsidy nuclear plants get through the Price-Anderson Act, which caps their liability in the event of a catastrophic event at a nuclear plant). This is not right. 

    If we are serious about moving toward energy independence in a cost-effective way, we should invest in solar energy.  If we are serious about cutting air and water pollution and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, we should invest in solar energy. If we are serious about creating a significant number of good paying jobs and making the United States a world leader in the production of sustainable energy, we should invest in solar energy. And, as we move forward in the solar revolution, a very good step forward would be the passage of the Ten Million Solar Roofs Act.