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  • Green energy to create 20 million jobs

    Speedy creation of the jobs will depend on countries implementing and broadening policies including capping emissions of greenhouse gases, and the shifting of subsidies from the oil and natural gas sector, to new energy including wind, solar and geothermal power, it said.

    “If we do not transform to a low-carbon economy we will miss a major opportunity for the fast tracking of millions of new jobs,” Achim Steiner, UNEP director, told reporters.

    He said movement toward the jobs will occur even if the world does not come to a new agreement by the end of next year on stabilising and then cutting greenhouse gases because global population is headed toward 8 billion or 9 billion by 2050, while new resources like metals, oil and gas are becoming more expensive to find.

    But if the world waits 10 years to take serious action on greenhouse gases the costs for moving to a green economy will be much higher, he said.

    US President George W. Bush walked away from the UN’s carbon-capping Kyoto Protocol early in his first term, saying it would raise costs and unfairly exempt rapidly developing countries from emissions limits.

    Delegates from across the world will try to reach a successor agreement to the Kyoto pact in a UN meeting in Copenhagen late next year.

  • Friends of the Earth withdraws from Forest Stewardship Council

    Friends of the Earth (FoE) is the first major international NGO to confirm they no longer support Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification, which falsely suggests primary and old-growth forest logging is desirable and even sustainable, and that plantations are forests. This is a major victory for those including Ecological Internet (EI) and FSC-Watch[1] who have courageously taken on large environmental interests using FSC to greenwash ancient forest destruction.

    FoE pioneered timber certification during the 1980s and was one of FSC’s founders, but FoE International in Amsterdam has confirmed that it is now “reviewing” its membership of the organization. FoE UK announced on their website[2] they are “deeply concerned by the number of FSC certifications that are now sparking controversy and threatening the credibility of the scheme. We cannot support a scheme that fails to guarantee high environmental and social standards. As a result we can no longer recommend the FSC standard.”

    “FoE is to be commended for their courage in admitting all forest certification schemes including FSC are failing forests, climate and peoples globally. FSC plantation and ancient forest logging standards have been shown to be a fraud — business as usual forest destruction. We welcome reports that other European NGOs may follow FoE’s lead, and demand that Rainforest Action Network, Greenpeace and WWF stop their stonewalling and follow suit, or face escalating disruptive protests” warns Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet’s President. “Then together as one we can work to end ancient forest logging.”

    EI has long sought protection for all the Earth’s remaining primary and old-growth forests. These efforts were stymied by large environmental bureaucracies falsely suggesting cutting carbon and species rich, centuries old trees is an environmental good. It became obvious the world’s forests could only be protected, and global ecological sustainability achieved, if groups supporting FSC were confronted. Our protest campaign launched last year, assisted by recent overwhelming ecological science showing old-growth forests continue to store and remove carbon and are essential to fighting climate change[3]

  • Emissions rising faster than ever

    By David Fogarty – Reuters

    SINGAPORE, Sept 25 – Global carbon emissions rose rapidly in 2007, an annual study says, with developing nations such as China and India now producing more than half of mankind’s output of carbon dioxide, the main gas blamed for global warming.

    The Global Carbon Project said in its report carbon dioxide emissions from mankind are growing about four times faster since 2000 than during the 1990s, despite efforts by a number of nations to rein in emissions under the Kyoto Protocol.

    Emissions from burning fossil fuels was a major contributor to the increase, the authors said in their “Global Carbon Project (2008) Carbon budget and trends 2007” report (http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbontrends/index_new.htm).

    India would soon overtake Russia to become the world’s third largest CO2 emitter, it says.

    “What we are talking about now for the first time is that the absolute value of all emissions going into the atmosphere every year are bigger coming from less developing countries than the developed world,” said the project’s Australia-based executive director Pep Canadell.

    “The other thing we confirm is that China is indeed now the top emitter,” he told Reuters, adding that China alone accounted for 60 percent of all growth in emissions. The United States was the second largest emitter.

    The project is supported by the International Council for Science, the umbrella body for all national academies of science.

    “DISASTROUS CONSEQUENCES”

    The rapid rise in emissions meant the world could warm faster than previously predicted, said professor Barry Brook, director of the Research Institute for Climate Change and Sustainability at the University of Adelaide in Australia.

    He said CO2 concentrations could hit 450 ppm by 2030 instead of 2040 as currently predicted. They are just above 380 ppm at present.

    “But whatever the specific date, 450 ppm CO2 commits us to 2 degrees Celsius global warming and all the disastrous consequences this sets in train.”

    The Global Carbon Project started in 2001 and examines changes in the earth’s total carbon cycle involving man-made and natural emissions and how carbon is absorbed through sinks, such as oceans and forests.

    Canadell says the project analyses data from CO2 samples taken around the globe and national emissions figures sent to the United Nations.

    He called the rapid rise in emissions between 2000 and 2007 and accumulation of the gas unprecedented, and pointed out that it occurred during a decade of intense international efforts to fight climate change.

    At present, the Kyoto Protocol, the main global treaty to tackle global warming, binds only 37 rich nations to emissions curbs from 2008.

    But Kyoto’s first phase ends in 2012 and the pact doesn’t commit developing nations to emissions caps. The United Nations is leading talks to expand Kyoto from 2013 and find a magic formula that brings on board all nations to commit to curbs on emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

    “WAKE-UP CALL”

    According to the report, atmospheric CO2 concentration rose to 383 parts per million in 2007, or 37 percent above the level at the start of the industrial revolution, and is the highest level during the past 650,000 years.

    It said the annual mean growth rate of atmospheric CO2 was 2.2 ppm per year in 2007, up from 1.8 ppm in 2006.

    “This latest information on rising carbon dioxide emissions is a big wake-up call to industry, business and politicians,” said professor Matthew England, joint director of the University of New South Wales Climate Change Research Centre.

    Canadell said the credit crisis would most likely trim emissions growth.

    “There is no doubt that the economic downturn will have an influence. But unless the big players, China, India, Russia and Japan, suffer as much as the United States is suffering, we’ll see a small decline only.”

    For further details in the report, see www.globalcarbonproject.com

  • Funny money affects grain too

    GREGOR HEARD,The Land

    The party may be over for high grain futures prices – due to the wider economic crisis, which may see some managed funds lessen their exposure to all markets, including the soft commodities market.

    ProFarmer managing director Richard Koch is warning farmers to brace themselves for the possibility of index funds to exit the sector.

    If this happens, it will have a sharp, negative impact on the grains sector, in spite of the solid fundamentals surrounding the industry.

    “Should the current uncertainty in global financial markets lead to a sharp and significant redemption of investments from Index funds, commodity markets will be unable to escape being caught in the net of the financial market crisis,” he said.

    It could have a monster impact on commodities such as wheat.

    The large capital inflow through the latter half of 2007 and early 2008 is notable.

    It coincided with a large rise in CBOT wheat futures; however, since March, the Index fund position has fallen back to levels more akin to those of 2006 and 2007 and the wheat price has

    contracted.

    “The major concern is that Index funds still hold some 47pc of all open interest in wheat.

    “Should the Index funds decide to exit their positions en masse, wheat futures would take an enormous tumble,” says Mr Koch.

    However, Mr Koch said this was not a fait accompli, and that if the wider market stabilised, the impact on grain futures would be minimised.

    The extent of the exposure to the market crisis is tied up to the large scale investment in soft commodities by the index funds over the past four years.

    Mr Koch estimated US$200-250b flowed into commodities from these index funds alone, in that time.

    This investment has been responsible for inflating the furious growth in grain futures to previously unimaginable levels – but the industry will be anxiously watching to see whether a large scale exit from fund positions will see an equally dramatic drop.

    He said the panic surrounding the collapse of major US investment banks such as Lehman Brothers has seen money now flowing out of the index funds, and therefore out of grain futures, as many of the big gains of the past few years have been turned into large losses in the past few months.

    The big question for the grains industry now is what will happen on global financial markets generally, over the coming months – as the index fund makes up a large part of the liquidity of the major grain trading exchanges.

    A recent US Commodities Futures Trading Commission report pegged the notional value of Index fund trading at US$146b by the end of December 2007 and as high as US$200b by end of June 2008.

    Mr Koch said this significant inflow through the first part of 2008 was a major reason for the jump in commodity prices.

    All of this more recent investment – since the start of 2008 (estimated at some US$54b)– is facing a negative return.

    He said the big concern here is that with the rising cost of credit and more cautious lending profiles, index funds may redeem portions of their investments, both as risk management and to raise liquidity.

    ““There will be investors in index funds who may be forced to redeem their investments in order to shore-up their liquidity positions,” explained Mr Koch.

    “The costs of funds when borrowing is now extremely high in some markets and liquidating assets may be the preferred alternative,” Mr Koch said.

  • Sweepers arise – your brooms await

    Of course, one person’s party is another’s riot. The music that soothes my teenage daughters has the opposite effect on the paying guests of the Catholic retreat next door. The sound of lawn mowers on Friday afternoon may be music to someone’s ears, to mine it is the mad clatter of petrol addicts fighting nature with all the sanity of an acid-freak battling lizards in the bath.

    Given the regular expressions of outrage in these pages when graffiti appears on prominent, blank walls, a good percentage of you obviously do not consider the application of the spray can, art. Personally, I think most graffiti is silly and some is wonderful but I am equally offended by bad and boring architecture.

    Significantly, I am never as offended by visual pollution as I am by noise. You can look the other way, close your eyes or walk down a different street, but your ears are always open.

    Given my distaste for the timbre of the two stroke engine, it will not surprise you, Dear Reader, that I do not like leaf blowers.

    This is not just because of they interrupt the peace of my morning walk. They also remind me of an awful boss who once yelled at me once for using a broom rather than a petrol-powered leaf blower to clear leaves from a path.

    I have long taken to heart the Buddhist adage that there is a certain stillness at the heart of order, and the gentle creation of order through the humble act of sweeping is a meditation in itself. I pride myself on the thorough and effective manner in which I wield the yard broom and the swish of bristles is the crisp sound of efficiency as well as the mechanical equivalent of a babbling brook.

    By comparison, donning the earmuffs and eyeglasses to wave the noisy, smelly beast that blows is, for me, a pointless wrestle with the minions of Vulcan for little gain. These minor daemons are unsuited to the task of cleaning and letting them loose in the world to move leaves is like smashing through the window of the florist in your four wheel drive to buy a bunch of long stemmed roses.

    Apparently, I am not the only weirdo to feel this way. The issue has become so fraught in California that 20 cities have banned them outright. Celebrity gardeners appear on television fighting for their right to peace and quiet, or the freedom to blow leaves as they see fit.

    While I have restrained myself from crash-tackling the local video store owner at 6.30 in the morning, I do discourage our elected representatives from spending rate monies on energy intensive machines that can be replaced with a little, old-fashioned elbow grease.

    Giovanni is on Bay FM, 99.9FM this morning between 9 and 11.

  • Byron Forum nails climate fundamentals

    Local film-maker, Cathy Henkel, is polishing this work prior to its screening on ABC television in three weeks (October 14). Narrated by Hugh Jackman and well seasoned with heart breaking and heartwarming images of orangutans, the film weaves together the stories of three very different protaganists, all involved in ending the burning of Indonesia’s remaining tropical rainforest. The films weaves the stories of an Australian carbon trader, a danish Orangutan rehabilitator and an Indonesian palm oil farmer trying to earn enough money to educate his daughter into a nail biting drama that climaxes at the Bali conference last December.

    Sunday night’s panel wove together eight points of view about climate change to conclude that humans need to evolve somewhat before a real solution can be found.

    Djanbung Garden’s Robyn ‘Consume less’ Francis and Rainforest Rescue’s Robert ‘Localise’ Rosen delivered the practical message that we need to break the nexus of international capital and create resilient local communities. Macadamia Castle’s Tony ‘Orangutan’ Gilding and film-maker Felicity ‘Howard victim’ Blake addressed the practical mechanics of fighting the greed that rapes the rainforest.

    For Gareth ‘Mutineer’ Smith, “turning over this ship and sinking it as soon as possible” is the only way to minimise the disaster. Just as passionate, but more considered, Mark ‘Buddah’ Jackson built on the premise that, by definition, an unsustainable lifestyle is the genocide of the unborn, to observe that spiritual evolution is required to address the root causes of climate change, notably conflict and greed.

    A well informed audience leaped at the opportunity to discuss these core values and, topically, pinpointed the rampant greed of the world’s financial institutions as the institutional face of that problem, meanwhile echoing Jackson’s quest for spiritual evolution as the only long term solution.

    As I wrote in these pages five weeks ago, my study of global poverty led me to a similar conclusion. Yes, I’ve been infected with Northern Rivers idealism and my quest now is to build the links back to the Real Failed World.