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|  | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #255 on Feb 28, 2011, 8:51pm » | |
China to slow GDP growth in bid to curb emissions
China has set an annual growth target of 7% to ensure sustainable development during its new five-year plan
* Jonathan Watts
* guardian.co.uk, Monday 28 February 2011 16.17 GMT
China will try to slow GDP growth to ease pressure on the environment following a series of unusually stark warnings from senior ministers about the country's current mode of development.
The announcement that economic growth targets will be lowered from 8% to 7% over the next five years may mark the end of China's peak growth years as environmental constraints drive up the expense of resources and pollution control.
"In China's thousands of years of civilisation, the conflict between humanity and nature has never been as serious as it is today," the environment minister Zhou Shengxian wrote on his ministry's website.
"The depletion, deterioration and exhaustion of resources and the deterioration of the environment have become serious bottlenecks constraining economic and social development."
In an online discussion on Sunday, the premier, Wen Jiabao, said China's 2011-15 economic plan would lower the target for annual GDP growth – "to raise the quality and efficiency of economic growth".
He said: "We absolutely cannot again sacrifice the environment as the cost for high-speed growth, to have blind development, and in that way to create over-capacity and put greater pressure on the environment and resources. That economic development is unsustainable."
Any change is likely to be gradual, though immensely significant because China has become the most powerful engine for global economic growth in recent years.
This message has emerged strongly in recent days in discussions of the government's next five-year economic plan, which will use more macro-economic and market tools to curb demand leading to emissions, rather than rely solely on top-down, engineering fixes.
The change is likely to be gradual but though immensely significant. It may and could mark the end of China's peak-growth years because environmental constraints are driving up the expense of resources and pollution clear-upscontrol.
Those costs can no longer be ignored, but the unelected authorities may struggle to pay the political price.
In an online discussion on Sunday, prime minister Wen Jiabao said the 2011-2105 economic plan will lower the target for annual GDP growth to 7 percent from 8 percent "to raise the quality and efficiency of economic growth."
"We absolutely cannot again sacrifice the environment as the cost for high-speed growth, to have blind development, and in that way to create overcapacity and put greater pressure on the environment and resources," he said. "That economic development is unsustainable."
A similar line emerged from a report released last Friday by Tsinghua University's climate policy initiative. It noted that from 2000-10, China's GDP grew at an annual rate of 10.4%, which took it from sixth to second place in the world. Per capita GDP in that period rose from $996 to $4,300.
China's energy demand, meanwhile, has surged by 220%, compared to a world average of 20%. Since 2006, the country has accounted for 75% of the global increase in coal consumption and 60% of the increase in oil use.
"In the 12th five-year plan we need to consider quality and efficiency of economic growth. We need to change from a big economy to a strong economy," said He Jiankun, director of the low carbon energy lab at Tsinghua University.
Instead of a reliance on infrastructure investment and manufacturing for export, family consumption and the service sector should be expanded, he said. He estimated that for every one percentage point fall in the investment share of the economy and one percentage point rise in consumption share, the energy intensity of the economy would be cut by 0.45%.
The lead author of the report, Qi Ye, said the next five-year plan would be different to anything before: "There'll be more emphasis on controlling GDP growth."
Previous attempts to slow the economy have failed. Local officials almost always overshoot GDP goals because they see economic growth as the best way to compete with rival regions.
If China adopts the unsustainable lifestyle of most western nations, a new set of environmental problems could arise. But demographic pressures are easing. China's population increase of 6.3 million people in 2010 was the lowest for many years.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/feb/28/china-gdp-emissions
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #256 on Feb 28, 2011, 8:53pm » | |
Barack Obama may be forced to delay US climate action
Funding gap could force president to order a two-year delay in Environmental Protection Agency action, conference hears
* Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
* guardian.co.uk, Monday 28 February 2011 11.59 GMT
Barack Obama may be forced to order a two-year delay in Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) action on climate change to try to avoid a complete government shutdown, an environmental conference has been warned.
President Obama faces the prospect of a government shutdown by 4 March, with a funding gap leading to federal employees being sent home and government services temporarily closing down, unless he can reach a deal with Congress Republicans who are demanding a crippling $61bn (£38bn) in budget cuts. The house will begin debate on the spending bill on Tuesday following efforts at the weekend to avoid a government shutdown, with news reports suggesting Republicans might compromise on some of the cuts.
The Republican plan would destroy Obama's capacity to pursue his green agenda, cutting the budget of the EPA by 30%, and stripping funds for projects he has championed such as clean energy research and high-speed rail.
Obama may be forced to sacrifice the EPA's efforts to take the first steps this year towards regulating greenhouse gas emissions if it means he can continue funding the federal government for the next seven months.
"If I was predicting, I would say that he might sign a delay provision, to delay the EPA effort for two years or something like that. It probably depends on the particular circumstances," Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Centre on Global Climate Change, told a conference at the Georgetown Climate Centre.
"I would bet that if it was a delay, and it was part of a money bill that was really important, he would sign it," she said.
The Obama administration committed to cut emissions by 17% from 2005 levels at the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen in 2009. The EPA took the first steps to monitoring greenhouse gas emissions on 1 January 2011.
The White House has said repeatedly that it would veto isolated measures to strip the EPA of its legal authority and funds to act on climate change.
But officials have pointedly not offered the same assurances on whether the White House would be willing to risk a shutdown of the entire federal government to protect the agency and its green agenda.
Some have suggested that a freeze on the EPA, is among the least damaging options available to the adminstration, which is facing a wholesale assault on Obama's green-tinged "win the future" agenda.
Buried among the $61bn in Republican budget cuts are a series of measures that would strip the overall budget of the EPA by 30%.
The cuts are aimed at restricting the EPA's legal authority and financial capacity to act on climate change, but they would also stop the agency from regulating broader concerns such as mountaintop mining removal and coal ash.
Bob Perciasepe, the deputy head of the EPA, called the cuts "reckless", and suggested they were motivated by Republicans' opposition to government regulation.
"They are not concerned so much with fiscal policy but really with disabling part of the EPA's capacity to do its job," he told the Georgetown climate conference.
The Republican bill would specifically bar the Obama administration from funding programmes regulating greenhouse gas emissions, or connected to climate science and international negotiations for a deal to end global warming.
It cuts funds for the post of White House climate adviser, Carol Browner, who has announced her resignation, and the State Department climate envoy, Todd Stern. It de-funds the UN climate science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the UN body for climate talks, the UNFCCC.
The White House and Democrats in Congress have called the proposals extreme.
The EPA faces other challenges to its authority in Congress, aside from those in the spending bill. One proposal, which has Democratic as well as Republican support, would delay the EPA's efforts to begin regulating greenhouse gas emissions this year.
Maryam Brown, chief counsel to the house subcommittee on energy and power, told the conference Republicans were united in their opposition to the EPA regulating greenhouse gas emissions. "All of those members agree that the Clean Air Act because of its structure is not the right tool for executing those policies," she said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20....-climate-action
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #257 on Feb 28, 2011, 8:57pm » | |
Republicans recycle an old idea: the foam plastic coffee cup
Polystyrene makes comeback in US Congress building after Republicans reverse green initiatives brought in by Democrats
* Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
* guardian.co.uk, Monday 28 February 2011 21.34 GMT
A bit like the Republican party, they are white, seemingly indestructible and bad for the environment. But after an absence of four years, foam plastic coffee cups have made a comeback in the basement coffee shop of the United States Congress building after Republicans began reversing a series of in-house green initiatives undertaken by Democrats.
The about-turn was announced by a press aide to John Boehner, the speaker of the House of Representatives, who tweeted on Monday morning: "The new majority – plasticware is back".
When the Democrats held the house, the former speaker Nancy Pelosi put the cafeterias at the centre of a plan to hugely reduce the carbon footprint of Congress.
The ancient power plant in Washington DC a few blocks from the Capitol building, which provides heating and cooling for Congress and the supreme court, was converted from coal to natural gas. Compact fluorescent lighting and energy-efficient vending machines were introduced.
In the cafeterias, polystyrene packaging was replaced with trays and utensils made of biodegradable corn starch. Four separate stations were installed for recycling and sorting. A healthier menu was also introduced in 2008, offering cage-free eggs and antibiotic-free beef.
Items deemed compostable waste, such as coffee cups, were sent to a pulper in a lower basement, which squeezed out all the liquid before dispatching the material by truck to a commercial composting site in the suburbs of Washington DC.
There, the waste was mixed with soil, which eventually returned to Capitol Hill to be used as fertiliser on the grounds. Hundreds of tonnes of waste was saved from landfills yearly, Democrats said.
But the new green cafeteria was not universally popular – even when Democrats were in charge. Diners complained the cutlery would bend or break on the point of contact with solid food.
Once Republicans were back in charge of the house, with their suspicion of environmental protection, the days of compostable coffee cups were numbered.
Dan Lungren, chair of the house administration committee, said the $475,000 per year programme was too expensive and not even green. "After a thorough review of the house's composting operations, I have concluded that it is neither cost effective nor energy efficient to continue the programme," he said in a statement on his website.
Next on the Republican agenda of environmental retro moves? Lightbulbs. House Republicans introduced a bill last week to repeal the government's decision to phase out the old energy-inefficient bulbs, which was due to start in 2012.
Environmental organisations condemned the return to plastic. "They are willing to undo progress when they should be looking at getting their own house in order. " said Tony Iallonardo of the National Wildlife Federation.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb....ronmentally-bad
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #258 on Mar 1, 2011, 12:04am » | |
Denmark joins the fray over Europe's climate change targets
The Danish government has boosted attempts of a group of member states to toughen emissions cuts
* Fiona Harvey
* guardian.co.uk, Thursday 24 February 2011 13.51 GMT
The Danish government has stepped into the fray over Europe's climate change targets, boosting the attempts of a group of member states to opt for more ambitious emissions cuts.
Denmark on Thursday set out its own vision for energy supplies in 2050, showing how the country could meet its aim of becoming independent of coal, oil and natural gas by the middle of the century. The country is already a leader in wind energy generation, and benefits from a well-developed electricity grid allowing it to share green power with some of its Nordic neighbours.
The Danes also issued a joint statement with Chris Huhne, the UK's secretary of state for energy and climate change, who has spearheaded the push by several member states to toughen the EU's current greenhouse gas emissions targets.
At present, the EU is committed to cutting emissions by 20% by 2020, compared with 1990 levels. But critics argue this target is already close to being met, and no longer represents a stimulus to green investment. They want the EU to move to a target of 30% emissions cuts by 2020, which they say will boost the chances of dominating the rapidly growing global market in clean technology.
Lykke Friis, Danish minister for climate and energy, and Huhne said: "Decarbonising further, faster can keep Europe ahead in the global low-carbon race, but the UK and Denmark can't do that alone. That's why the EU commission's forthcoming 2050 roadmap must kickstart the debate in Europe by offering a cost-effective, credible and ambitious pathway that enables member states to take the decisions that will stimulate low-carbon investment and take Europe beyond the cul-de-sac that is the current 20% cut target."
The push for tougher targets is opposed by several large industrial lobbying groups, and by the EU energy commissioner Güenther Oettinger, who said it would lead to "faster de-industrialisation" in Europe.
Huhne has previously told the Guardian: "The short-termist view of sticking to 20% doesn't cut the mustard. Moving to 30% would give our businesses a head start in new green industries and get us off the oil hook quicker, insulating us from oil price spikes."
A report for the German federal government, published on Monday, found that raising the level of ambition in the EU's climate targets would increase European GDP by up to $842bn (£520bn), a 6% rise, and create up to 6m additional jobs across member states. It concluded that the current 20% target "has become too weak to mobilise innovations". Sticking with it, the authors said, would be "the equivalent of digging deeper while still being stuck in a hole", while the 30% target would be not only achievable but "economically beneficial".
In its own analysis of the 20% and 30% targets, a leaked copy of which was seen by the Guardian, the European commission found that moving to the higher target would be "cost-effective", because it would stimulate industry and encourage energy efficiency, and would make it easier and cheaper to achieve the EU's 2050 target of cutting emissions by 80%. The draft briefing document shows that Europe is on track to comfortably exceed its existing climate change targets of cutting emissions by 20% by 2020, and on current policies will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25% by that date.
Green campaigners said the analysis, which joins a growing body of evidence demonstrating that the targets are feasible, showed the case for moving to the tougher target was now "unanswerable".
That confidential 2050 roadmap is now under discussion in the various departments of the commission, and by member states. Ministers lobbying for the tougher target are fighting to ensure that the roadmap is not undermined by opponents in industry, or watered down.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/feb/24/denmark-europe-climate-change
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #259 on Mar 1, 2011, 8:51pm » | |
EU pledges €90m in climate funds for Pacific island states
Funding for adaptation measures requires poor states to support Europe in international climate negotiations
* Leigh Phillips
* guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 1 March 2011 16.39 GMT
Pacific island states on the frontline of climate change are to receive €90m (£76m) in EU cash for climate-related projects in return for siding with the European bloc at international climate negotiations.
The European Union's development commissioner, Andris Piebalgs, will head to Vanuatu on Wednesday to unveil funding for projects such as disaster preparedness and moving hospitals to higher ground.
The cash may appear small in EU terms, but represents as much as 19.5% of the nominal GDP of Vanuatu, and more than 12 times the GDP of the Pacific Islands Forum's poorest member, Niue.
Such an injection of cash does not come without strings attached however. Piebalgs is to make the funding announcement at a high-level climate conference on Vanuatu organised by the European commission where the he will present an EU-Pacific action plan for the island states to sign.
The document requires the states to embrace "joint positions on the international stage" as part of a "stronger Pacific-EU political dialogue on climate change".
Climate negotiations have been at a stalemate with only moderate advances made since the global UN conference in Copenhagen in 2009, as Western countries try to convince the developing world to commit to binding emissions reductions.
Cables released by WikiLeaks last year revealed a major diplomatic offensive by the US to garner support for the controversial Copenhagen accord. Since 2009, the EU has revamped its climate diplomacy strategy, with France and the UK dispatched to try to pry some African states away from what Brussels officials describe as an "awkward squad" of refusenik nations. Germany has been tasked with the Pacific.
Isaac Valero-Ladron, the EU's climate spokesman, said that the bloc has had a lot of success in the region, which contains countries with some of the lowest GDP per capita in the world. "If we put money on the table, it really creates a constructive atmosphere and good policies."
"The Pacific islands are a very helpful, positive partner on the international level. Our positions are very close."
The funds – which according to the commission are redeployments of existing development funds rather than new sources of climate financing as many development groups also demand – support projects that include mangrove replanting, watershed reforestation, rainwater harvesting, soil retention and the raising of infrastructure.
In advance of the meeting, the commissioner called on EU member states to increase their funds to the region.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20....pacific-islands
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
|
Big Bunny
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| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #260 on Apr 9, 2011, 9:50am » | |
Doctors urged to take climate leadership role
Military and medical experts call on doctors to use their position of trust in society to build support for action on climate change
* Fiona Harvey, environment correspondent
* guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 5 April 2011 23.30 BST
Doctors must take a leading role in highlighting the dangers of climate change, which will lead to conflict, disease and ill-health, and threatens global security, according to a stark warning from an unusual alliance of physicians and military leaders.
Writing in the British Medical Journal on Tuesday, a group of military and medical experts, including two rear admirals and two professors of health, sent out an urgent message to governments around the world. "Climate change poses an immediate and grave threat, driving ill-health and increasing the risk of conflict, such that each feeds upon the other," said the authors, Lionel Jarvis, surgeon rear admiral at the UK's Ministry of Defence; Hugh Montgomery, professor of human health at UCL, London; Neil Morisetti, rear admiral and climate and security envoy for the UK; and Ian Gilmore, professor at the Royal Liverpool hospital. "Like all good medicine, prevention is the key."
The threat to national security and health from global warming have been addressed separately in the past, but the BMJ editorial urges governments to treat them together. "It might be considered unusual for the medical and military professions to concur," wrote the authors. "But on this subject we do."
The authors urge doctors to use their position of trust in society to build support for action on climate change. "Although discussion is good, we can no longer delay implementing tough action that will make a difference, while quibbling over minor uncertainties in climate modelling. Unlike most recent natural disasters, this one is entirely predictable," they warned. "Doctors, often seen as authoritative, trusted, and independent by their communities, must make their voices heard in calling for such action."
Prof Montgomery told the Guardian that doctors should take up the climate challenge just as they did with the harm from tobacco. "Many doctors see suffering and death first-hand on a daily basis. They recognise that prevention is far better than waiting for disease, when cure may not in fact be possible. They are also uniquely able to translate abstract harm into a vision of real suffering- just as they were with cigarette smoking and lung cancer," he said. "Now, as then, they must play their part - impressing upon their governments the immediacy and gravity of climate change and its impacts on their citizens, and those of other countries."
Prof Gilmore added that doctors could have an influence both as a body and in their individual work: "Some of the things that are good for health are also good for the climate, like exercise and a diet that is lower in meat. That's a win-win situation."
But doctors could also influence government policy, and the NHS's policy on greenhouse gases, he said: "We have a responsibility to steer the government towards more climate-sensitive policies."
Such a call is likely to be seen as controversial by many in the medical profession, and beyond it, particularly in the light of last year's "climategate" controversy in which many scientists found themselves under attack from commentators and bloggers.
While medical journals have highlighted the problems of climate change in the past, few physicians have spoken out on the issue.
The warning from medical and military leaders came as government officials from around the world met in Bangkok in the latest round of the long-running talks under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The Bangkok conference, which is a preliminary session to the major meeting in Durban this December, is low-key and not expected to produce a breakthrough.
Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UNFCCC, told the conference that Bangkok was an opportunity to consolidate the gains made at last year's Cancún climate conference, when several important issues - including forestry - were broadly resolved.
"Here in Bangkok, governments have the early opportunity to push ahead to complete the concrete work they agreed in Cancún, and to chart a way forward that will ensure renewed success at the next UN climate change conference in Durban," she said. "If governments move forward in the continued spirit of flexibility and compromise that inspired them in Mexico, then I'm confident they can make significant new progress in 2011."
But several major issues remain to be resolved, she acknowledged, including the future of the Kyoto protocol and building the institutions necessary to deliver greenhouse gas emissions cuts and financing.
The BMJ's warning, carried in an editorial in the magazine, drew on several sources, including the Pentagon's 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review to Congress, which highlighted the national security aspects of climate change, and statements from the UK's ministry of defence and the foreign secretary, William Hague, who called global warming "perhaps the 21st century's biggest foreign policy challenge". The BMJ authors found that climate change would exacerbate "poverty, environmental degradation, and the further weakening of fragile governments".
But the scale of the challenge is such that the involvement of doctors and tough actions on emissions are necessary, according to the authors. "We must adapt our cities and their infrastructure to cope with these challenges through combining engineering design and public health initiatives – for example, developing resilience in clean water and drainage systems, using human and food waste for energy generation, and building roads to act as flood pathways. At the same time we need to ensure that the military can still operate effectively to sustain security in this changing environment. As with prevention, effective adaptation will require an approach that encompasses the whole of society and international collaboration."
The editorial was published ahead of an open meeting on climate change, medicine and security, scheduled to take place on 20 June at the British Medical Association in London.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20....ange-leadership
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #261 on Apr 9, 2011, 9:52am » | |
Bangkok climate talks stall
Hopes fade of a deal in Durban later this year as deep divisions continue over the fate of the Kyoto protocol
* Reuters
* guardian.co.uk, Friday 8 April 2011 14.29 BST
The deep divisions apparently bridged by last December's climate deal in Cancún were reopened this week at UN talks in Bangkok, undermining the chance of any agreement on the shape of a broader pact by the end of this year.
The talks, being held in the Thai capital from 3-8 April, stalled on disagreement over an agenda for negotiations through the year ahead of a late November meeting in Durban, South Africa.
Developing nations in Bangkok pushed for a sharper focus on the fate of the Kyoto protocol – rich nations' pledges to cut emissions and climate finance for the poor – issues that Cancún did not fully address. The United States and others wanted to focus only on the less contentious Cancún agreements.
Christiana Figueres, head of the UN talks, said that while constructive, the meeting had also highlighted continuing divisions between governments, with a central issue being future of Kyoto, the world's main climate change treaty.
"Echoes of previous battles have come back to haunt us but a lot of countries do want to see progress and there are some positive signals," said Tim Gore, climate change policy adviser for Oxfam.
A series of agreements reached at Cancún included a fund to channel $100bn a year to poor nations by 2020, a scheme to transfer clean energy technology and to hold a rise in global average temperatures below 2C. These steps and others were widely seen as saving the UN climate process from collapse. But in Bangkok differences emerged on how to move ahead and tackle harder issues, particularly the fate of Kyoto.
"There's a bit of buyers' regret going on here by developing nations. Except this time there's no refund," a rich nation delegate told Reuters, referring to the view that some poorer nations felt they had conceded too much in Cancún.
Kyoto legally binds about 40 industrialised nations to emissions cuts during its 2008-12 first phase. Poorer nations only have to take voluntary steps and are keen to keep this formulation in future, saying hard targets could harm their economic development. The pact was originally meant to be extended into a second period from 2013 with deeper emissions cuts from rich nations. But no successor to Kyoto or another broader pact that binds all major economies is in sight.
Agreement in the debate is critical to stepping up the fight against climate change by limiting the rise in global temperatures and reducing the risk of more extreme weather, crop failures and rising seas levels.
A tougher climate pact is also crucial in shaping global energy policies and giving investors in low-carbon infrastructure more certainty. It would additionally fuel growth in carbon markets now worth more than $120bn.
Many rich nations say Kyoto no longer reflects the reality that developing nations are now the largest, and rapidly growing source of greenhouse gas emissions. They must be brought into a broader pact.
Japan, Russia, Canada and the United States, which never ratified Kyoto, are all firmly opposed to extending Kyoto and want a new agreement. India, China and other developing nations disagree, saying Kyoto must remain and that rich nations need to do more to cut emissions.
"A second commitment period and the Kyoto protocol is a must. There is no room to make any compromise from my side," senior Chinese delegate Huang Huikang said on Thursday.
Analysts saw the fight over Kyoto as far from over. "Emerging economies do not appear close to abandoning Kyoto and any that backs away from the protocol risks a backlash from the rest of the group, reducing the likelihood that any individual country would unilaterally shift its position," said Divya Reddy of political risk consultancy Eurasia Group.
Some nations say any backsliding from Kyoto endangered the climate fight. "We haven't got an alternative and an alternative isn't going to happen quick enough. We have to accept that the Kyoto protocol, at least for the next commitment period, is a bridge towards a broader agreement," Ian Fry, the lead delegate from the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu, told Reuters.
The United States has been accused of being a roadblock in the talks because of its failure to pass a climate bill and a resurgent Republican party means it cannot boost its pledge to cut carbon by 17% from 2005 levels by 2020.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/apr/08/bangkok-climate-talks-stall
|
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
|
Big Bunny
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| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #262 on Apr 16, 2011, 1:14am » | |
13 April 2011 Last updated at 09:03 GMT
Biofuels targets are 'unethical', says Nuffield report
By Roger Harrabin Environment analyst
EU biofuels targets are unethical, according to a report by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics.
Its authors recommend the targets should be lifted temporarily until new safeguards are put in place for biofuels grown in Europe or imported.
But they stop short of calling for a complete halt to biofuels, which some environmentalists want.
And they hold out the hope that new technologies may be able to develop biofuels from cellulose.
Crucially, they hope this could be done in a way that does not damage the environment or compete with food crops.
However, they acknowledge that progress towards these new biofuels is too slow, and that the next-generation fuels available are too expensive.
They want governments to do more to encourage biofuels that use less land, fertiliser and pesticide.
The Council is an independent body that was set up 20 years ago to ponder ethical issues raised by developments in biology and medicine.
It has been studying biofuels for 18 months - specifically relating to the EU Renewable Energy Directive target that biofuels should account for 10% of transport fuel by 2020, a much-criticised mandate originally designed as part of Europe's strategy to combat climate change.
Based on what it says is a set of ethical values which will be widely shared, the report says biofuels should:
* not be at the expense of human rights;
* be environmentally sustainable;
* contribute to a reduction of greenhouse gases (some currently increase greenhouse gases);
* adhere to fair trade principles;
* have costs and benefits that can be distributed in an equitable way.
These principles would be backed by a mandatory - and strictly enforced - EU certification scheme, a little like the Fairtrade scheme.
The authors rehearse a familiar list of complaints about current biofuel production: it strips biodiversity when forests or peatlands are cleared to grow fuel crops; current biofuels produce too little energy; biofuels are imported from countries which often have low environmental standards; biofuels compete with food crops and contribute to pushing up food prices.
Currently 3% of UK road fuel is biofuel. The report notes that only a third of that met an environmental standard in 2009/2010.
The report's chair is Joyce Tait, scientific advisor to the Economic and Social Research Council's Innogen Centre at Edinburgh University.
Professor Tait told BBC News: "It is clear that current EU policies as currently produced and incentivised are unsuitable and unethical. We clearly need a new overarching ethical standard backed up by certification to improve the way the world produces biofuels."
Responding to the challenge from some campaigners that cropland should not be used to fuel the cars of the rich, she said: "There are numerous conflicts with food crops.
"There are ways of dealing with that through food prices. It's not controllable in the direct sense but it's controllable with the certification we envisage so that biofuels do not compete with food crops."
'Optimist at heart'
She admitted: "Multiple requirements for land use are not able to be met with current technology, current disturbances caused by climate change and current population growth requirements - we are going to have to improve."
Her co-author Ottoline Leyser, professor of plant development at the University of Cambridge's Sainsbury Laboratory, said: "We have to have a sustainable supply of food and fuel.
"We need fuel to grow food. We have to consider it as a piece, and factor in ecosystems and biodiversity, too."
Professor Leyser said the report had not attempted to calculate whether the world had enough land to supply the needs of food, fuel and wildlife, but that she was optimistic that there would be enough.
"I'm an optimist at heart. We will have to reduce our use of fuel and reduce our consumption of meat - but we will have to do this to adapt to the future anyway."
Critics say the authors are naïve in thinking that certification schemes will work, and too wedded to technology solutions.
Kenneth Richter, Friends of the Earth's biofuels campaigner, told BBC News: "The Government must simply scrap biofuel targets and instead focus on greener cars and improved public transport, fast and affordable rail services, and incentives to get people cycling and walking."
Robert Palgrave from the Biofuelwatch campaign was scathing about the Council's conviction that certification would guarantee that agricultural land would not be swallowed by biofuels.
He told BBC News: "We have serious concerns that an Indirect Land-Use Factor, far from being a step towards stopping agrofuel use in the EU could potentially make things even worse.
"There is no scientific credible way of calculating the full climate impacts of agrofuels. Indirect impacts are not just about 'hectare for hectare' displacement; they are also about the interaction between land prices and speculation, about the impacts of roads, ports and other infrastructure on forests, about policy changes which affect land rights, about scarcely-understood interactions between biodiversity, ecosystems and the climate."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13056862
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #263 on Apr 26, 2011, 3:16am » | |
Carbon cuts by developed countries cancelled out by imported goods
Kyoto protocol means carbon footprints are calculated for the countries producing goods, not those consuming them
* Duncan Clark
* guardian.co.uk, Monday 25 April 2011 20.00 BST
Cuts in carbon emissions by developed countries since 1990 have been cancelled out three times over by increases in imported goods from developing countries such as China, according to the most comprehensive global figures ever compiled.
Previous studies have shown the significance of "outsourced" emissions for specific countries, but the latest research, published on Monday, provides the first global view of how international trade altered national carbon footprints during the period of the Kyoto protocol.
Under the protocol, emissions released during production of goods are assigned to the country where production takes place, rather than where goods are consumed.
Campaigners say this allows rich countries unfairly to claim they are reducing or stabilising their emissions when they may be simply sending them offshore – relying increasingly on goods imported from emerging economies that do not have binding emissions targets under Kyoto.
According to standard data, developed countries can claim to have reduced their collective emissions by almost 2% between 1990 and 2008. But once the carbon cost of imports have been added to each country, and exports subtracted – the true change has been an increase of 7%. If Russia and Ukraine – which cut their CO2 emissions rapidly in the 1990s due to economic collapse – are excluded, the rise is 12%.
Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said: "The 7% increase in emissions of developed countries since 1990 is a deviation from what the IPCC fourth assessment report had assessed as the most cost-effective trajectory for limiting emissions … if [that rate] is to continue then not only would we encounter more serious impacts of climate change over time, but mitigation actions undertaken later to reduce emissions would prove far more costly."
Much of the increase in emissions in the developed world is due to the US, which promised a 7% cut under Kyoto but then did not to ratify the protocol. Emissions within its borders increased by 17% between 1990 and 2008 – and by 25% when imports and exports are factored in.
In the same period, UK emissions fell by 28 million tonnes, but when imports and exports are taken into account, the domestic footprint has risen by more than 100 million tonnes. Europe achieved a 6% cut in CO2 emissions, but when outsourcing is considered that is reduced to 1%.
Glen Peters, of the Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo, who was lead researcher on the paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said: "Our study shows for the first time that emissions from increased production of internationally traded products have more than offset the emissions reductions achieved under the Kyoto Protocol … this suggests that the current focus on territorial emissions in a subset of countries may be ineffective at reducing global emissions without some mechanisms to monitor and report emissions from the production of imported goods and services."
The study shows a very different picture for countries that export more carbon-intensive goods than they import. China, whose growth has been driven by export-based industries, is usually described as the world's largest emitter of CO2, but its footprint drops by almost a fifth when its imports and exports are taken into account, putting it firmly behind the US. China alone accounts for a massive 75% of the developed world's offshored emissions, according to the paper.
Bob Ward, policy and communications director at LSE's Grantham Institute, said: "It's important to recognise that the countries which have ratified the Kyoto Protocol are roughly on track to hit their targets by the standards it sets out. But, as these figures show, there is a flaw in the accounting, because the rich countries are not held accountable for effectively exporting emissions to the developing world."
Environmental campaigners have long argued that global carbon accounting should be based on consumption rather than production of goods and services. One barrier to implementing such a system is the huge challenge of accurately monitoring the flow of emissions embodied in traded goods. Another barrier is that some policy-makers argue that consumer nations cannot or should not take full responsibility for their imports, both because they have no jurisdiction in foreign territories and because, even if they did, both producer and consumer nations benefit from trade, and therefore responsibility should be shared.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20....tries-cancelled
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #264 on Apr 26, 2011, 5:51pm » | |
London Olympics pollution on course to land Britain hefty fine from IOC
Air pollution is such in London that drastic measures would be required before 'greenest ever Games' to avoid £175m fine
* John Vidal and Owen Gibson
* guardian.co.uk, Sunday 24 April 2011 18.03 BST
Britain could be fined up to £175m by the International Olympic Committee if it continues to break air pollution laws by the time the Games begin next August.
The prospect of the air pollution penalty is becoming a major source of embarrassment to the government and Olympic organisers who set a goal of making the Games "the greenest ever" but have already watered down green measures planned for the event.
To meet the legally binding agreement, London may have to reduce traffic levels by more than 30% over a period of nearly a month, raising the possibility of draconian measures such as banning cars with number plates ending in odd and even numbers on alternate days.
Under the non-negotiable host city contract with the IOC – signed by the government and the mayor of London in 2005 – the IOC can withhold 25% of the expected £700m broadcasting income generated from the Games should air quality levels exceed EU limits during the games.
The contract has been given a temporary extension until later this year by the EU for the reduction of levels of small particulate matter (PM10), but has so far failed to find a way to do so and London risks a £300m fine from the European commission later this year.
London is one of the most polluted cities in Europe, with official studies showing that air pollution – mainly from traffic – causes more premature deaths than passive smoking and traffic accidents combined, at a cost of about £2bn a year.
According to the Olympic Delivery Authority's Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA), published this week, the expected increases in traffic along the Olympic route network of 600km of London roads during the Games will lead to further breaches of European legal limits in areas that already suffer from poor air quality.
Even a 30% reduction in normal traffic during the period of the Olympics may not be enough to bring emissions below the legal limit, it said.
Lawyers said London now has few options left beyond actions such as imposing an odd and even number plate ban throughout the city to enable endurance events, such as the marathon, to take place.
At the last Olympic Games, in 2008, Beijing had to ban more than 1m cars and close factories.
"The SEA shows that there is a real risk that the Games will result in air quality laws being broken in London in 2012," Alan Andrews, a lawyer with the legal group Client Earth, said.
"By failing to take this risk seriously, the government and the mayor are painting themselves into a corner. If air quality limits look like being broken, it's difficult to see what they will be able to do other than impose draconian bans like those used during Beijing 2008.
"Plans need to be put in place now that will ban only the most polluting vehicles from inner London in time for the Games."
"The mayor should be banning all the oldest diesel vehicles from inner London," Simon Birkett, the director of the Campaign for Clean Air in London, said.
The commitments on air quality contained in the contract with the IOC apply in particular to those days when endurance events such as the marathon, the triathlon and the cycling road race take place.
Officials had hoped that reduced traffic during the August holiday season, plus pleas to the public and businesses to change their habits for the duration of the Games, would help reduce pollution.
"It is clearly a problem. It's not London 2012's responsibility, or in its gift to solve it, but it is clearly a problem," Shaun McCarthy, the chair of the Commission for a Sustainable London 2012, an independent body advising the Mayor of London and the Olympics minister, said.
The green impact the Olympics would have here and abroad was a central component of London's winning bid over other cities such as Paris.
It was intended that the infrastructure and built environment of the Games "will be designed to take account of the potential impacts of climate change and will set new standards for sustainable production, consumption and recycling of natural resources. There will also be significant long-term benefits in terms of projects, applications of green technologies".
But some promises have already apparently been broken and compromises made. A pledge to generate 20% of energy on site, mainly from a wind turbine in the Olympic park, has been abandoned and, at most, 9% of energy on site will be from renewables.
Plans to create a zero-waste Games, with all on-site waste recycled, have been reduced, and the athletes' village will be smaller and less green than hoped.
"This is a terrible admission of defeat on air pollution and contradicts all the mayor's promises about the 'greenest games ever'," Darren Johnson, a London assembly Green party member, said.
"Failing to deliver modest energy and waste targets on a seven-year project with billions from the public purse just shows what a mess our mayors of London and the government have made of environmental policy.
"The organisers have failed on many of the promises. They are a long way short of the inspirational revolution in environmental policy we were promised." said Darren Johnson, London assembly Green party member.
The ODA head of sustainability, Richard Jackson, said: "The Olympic park has set new standards. With the exception of the 20% renewables target, we are on track to meet all sustainability targets."
A spokesperson for Transport for London said: "We have a comprehensive package of long-term measures to tackle the biggest sources of pollution and improve air quality."
The panel's pledges ... and the reality
Air quality
Pledge: London signed up to the Olympic host contract which specifies that the city must meet international pollution laws.
Reality: Olympic route will impact heavily on air quality making London more likely to breach laws unless it bans 30% of all cars.
Construction
Pledge: 90% of demolition materials to be reused or recycled, half of all materials to be brought in by rail and local waterways and at least 20% of recycled material to be used to build permanent venues and the Olympic village.
Reality: 95% of the buildings and infrastructure on the Olympic site was crushed and melted, but only around 1% reused. £20m was spent restoring a canal to ship 12,000 tonnes of waste and building materials a week, but only 3,000 tonnes were shipped on them in the first two years.
Athletes' village
Pledge: To make the village of 8,000+ homes energy self-sufficient.
Reality: Numbers reduced to 4,700 and homes built to Level 4 – good for UK but not the best possible.
Waste
Pledge: To achieve a 'zero-waste' games by reducing waste, recycling and sending nothing to landfill.
Reality: Plans watered down. Some food waste to be sent to landfill in Bedfordshire, 30% to be incinerated. No catalysation of nearby authorities to improve waste policies.
Energy use
Pledge: To generate 20% of energy on site from renewables.
Reality: The Olympic park to only produce 9% of its post-games energy from renewables. About 1,000 homes in surrounding areas to be insulated. Plans for wind turbines in Hackney and at Eton manor abandoned.
Olympic flame
Pledge: A low-carbon Olympic flame and torch.
Reality: EDF energy announcement expected soon.
Decontamination
Pledge: The site was heavily contaminated and 2.5sq km of contaminated land and 1.4m tonnes of soil had to be cleaned or remediated.
Reality: Independent assessors argue that more than 7,000 tonnes of radioactively contaminated material dumped in a former landfill site has been buried.
Wildlife/Park
Pledge: To create Europe's largest urban park.
Reality: 300,000 wetland plants grown in Norfolk and Wales. Almost 2,000 newts and hundreds of toads plucked from the site's wetlands and waterways. But anger in Greenwich where hundreds of trees will be affected, and the park closed for several months. Future problems could include erosion of park to make way for more housing.
Food
Pledge: To serve "the best of British" food.
Reality: Cadbury, McDonald's and Coca-Cola are the main sponsors, but millions of meals will be prepared by caterers. Hopes that all food would be organic, British and Fairtrade have been watered down. Dutch brewer Heineken have "pouring rights", which means no branded British ale will be sold on the 40 sites.
Carbon footprint
Pledge: To encourage visitors to come by train.
Reality: Event tickets to include London Underground travelcard.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20....lution-fine-ioc
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #265 on Apr 27, 2011, 9:53pm » | |
A Surprise: China’s Energy Consumption Will Stabilize
ScienceDaily (Apr. 27, 2011) — As China's economy continues to soar, its energy use and greenhouse gas emissions will keep on soaring as well -- or so goes the conventional wisdom. A new analysis by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) now is challenging that notion, one widely held in both the United States and China.
Well before mid-century, according to a new study by Berkeley Lab's China Energy Group, that nation's energy use will level off, even as its population edges past 1.4 billion. "I think this is very good news,'' says Mark Levine, co-author of the report, "China's Energy and Carbon Emissions Outlook to 2050," and director of the group. "There's been a perception that China's rising prosperity means runaway growth in energy consumption. Our study shows this won't be the case."
Along with China's rise as a world economic power have come a rapid climb in energy use and a related boost in human-made carbon dioxide emissions. In fact, China overtook the United States in 2007 as the world's leading emitter of greenhouse gases.
Yet according to this new forecast, the steeply rising curve of energy demand in China will begin to moderate between 2030 and 2035 and flatten thereafter. There will come a time -- within the next two decades -- when the number of people in China acquiring cars, larger homes, and other accouterments of industrialized societies will peak. It's a phenomenon known as saturation. "Once nearly every household owns a refrigerator, a washing machine, air conditioners and other appliances, and once housing area per capita has stabilized, per household electricity growth will slow,'' Levine explains.
Similarly, China will reach saturation in road and rail construction before the 2030-2035 time frame, resulting in very large decreases in iron and steel demand. Additionally, other energy-intensive industries will see demand for their products flatten.
The Berkeley Lab report also anticipates the widespread use of electric cars, a significant drop in reliance on coal for electricity generation, and a big expansion in the use of nuclear power -- all helping to drive down China's CO2 emissions. Although China has temporarily suspended approvals of new nuclear power plant construction in the wake of the disaster at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, the long-range forecast remains unchanged.
Key to the new findings is a deeper look at patterns of energy demand in China: a "bottom-up" modeling system that develops projections of energy use in far greater detail than standard methods and which is much more time- and labor-intensive to undertake. Work on the project has been ongoing for the last four years. "Other studies don't have this kind of detail,'' says Levine. "There's no model outside of China that even comes close to having this kind of information, such as our data on housing stock and appliances."
Not only does the report examine demand for appliances such as refrigerators and fans, it also makes predictions about adoption of improvements in the energy efficiency of such equipment -- just as Americans are now buying more efficient washing machines, cars with better gas-mileage, and less power-hungry light bulbs.
Berkeley Lab researchers Nan Zhou, David Fridley, Michael McNeil, Nina Zheng, and Jing Ke co-authored the report with Levine. Their study is a "scenario analysis" that forecasts two possible energy futures for China, one an "accelerated improvement scenario" that assumes success for a very aggressive effort to improve energy efficiency, the other a more conservative "continued improvement scenario" that meets less ambitious targets. Yet both of these scenarios, at a different pace, show similar moderation effects and a flattening of energy consumption well before 2050.
Under the more aggressive scenario, energy consumption begins to flatten in 2025, just 14 years from now. The more conservative scenario sees energy consumption rates beginning to taper in 2030. By the mid-century mark, energy consumption under the "accelerated improvement scenario" will be 20 percent below that of the other.
Scenario analysis is also used in more conventional forecasts, but these are typically based on macroeconomic variables such as gross domestic product and population growth. Such scenarios are developed "without reference to saturation, efficiency, or usage of energy-using devices, e.g., air conditioners,'' says the Berkeley Lab report. "For energy analysts and policymakers, this is a serious omission, in some cases calling into question the very meaning of the scenarios.''
The new Berkeley Lab forecast also uses the two scenarios to examine CO2 emissions anticipated through 2050. Under the more aggressive scenario, China's emissions of the greenhouse gas are predicted to peak in 2027 at 9.7 billion metric tons. From then on, they will fall significantly, to about 7 billion metric tons by 2050. Under the more conservative scenario, CO2 emissions will reach a plateau of 12 billion metric tons by 2033, and then trail down to 11 billion metric tons at mid-century.
Several assumptions about China's efforts to "decarbonize" its energy production and consumption are built into the optimistic forecasts for reductions in the growth of greenhouse gas emissions. They include:
* A dramatic reduction in coal's share of energy production, to as low as 30 percent by 2050, compared to 74 percent in 2005
* An expansion of nuclear power from 8 gigwatts in 2005 to 86 gigawatts by 2020, followed by a rise to as much as 550 gigawatts in 2050
* A switch to electric cars. The assumption is that urban private car ownership will reach 356 million vehicles by 2050. Under the "continued improvement scenario," 30 percent of these will be electric; under the "accelerated improvement scenario," 70 percent will be electric.
The 72-page report by Levine and colleagues at Berkeley Lab's Environmental Energy Technologies Division was summarized in a briefing to U.S. Congressional staffers. The study was carried out under contract with the U.S. Department of Energy, using funding from the China Sustainable Energy Program, a partnership of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the Energy Foundation.
Report: http://china.lbl.gov/publications/2050-outlook
Story Source:
The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110427131937.htm
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #266 on Apr 28, 2011, 10:19am » | |
The article below is a fine example of the propaganda that is used to justify the continuation of environmentally unsound practices. For example, if Australia ceased the energy intensive industries such as mining so as to reduce its carbon footprint, then certain developing countries would be less than pleased. Of course it is these very countries that rely upon these statistics to hide their environmentally unsound practices.
Possibly the better measures are:
* the percentage of energy output from renewable sources, or
* the carbon footprint of particular industries within economies.
Of course, the simplest alternative is to just stop the BS and get on with converting the World economy to sustainable, renewable sources of energy. Then we can concentrate on mitigating the effects of climate change:
Which nations are most responsible for climate change?
* Environment editor
* guardian.co.uk, Thursday 21 April 2011 15.40 BST
![[image]](http://img850.imageshack.us/img850/6207/duncanqaco2worstemi0070.jpg "[image]")
A scientist standing in front of a globe during the UN climate conference in Copenhagen. Photograph: Axel Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images
There are many different ways to compare the carbon footprints of the world's nations. These include total emissions, per capita emissions, historical emissions and emissions as measured by consumption as opposed to production. Each gives a different insight – and none tells the whole story on its own. Following is quick guide to the data.
Current CO2 emissions
The simplest and most widely cited way to compare the emissions of countries is to add up all the fossil fuels burned in each nation and convert that into CO2. According to 2009 data from the US Energy Information Administration, the top 10 emitters by this measure are:
1. China: 7,711 million tonnes (MT) or 25.4%
2. US: 5,425 MT or 17.8%
3. India: 1,602 MT or 5.3%
4. Russia: 1,572 MT or 5.2%
5. Japan: 1,098 MT or 3.6%
6. Germany: 766 MT 2.5%
7. Canada: 541 MT or 1.8%
8. South Korea: 528 MT or 1.7%
9. Iran: 527 MT or 1.7%
10. UK: 520 MT or 1.7%
All greenhouse gas emissions
The problem with focusing purely on CO2 from burning fossil fuels is that it ignores other greenhouse gases and non-fossil-fuel sources of CO2. When these are included, the figures change considerably, with countries such as Brazil and Indonesia shooting up the list due to emissions caused by deforestation. Recent data isn't available, but as of 2005, the top 10 emitters as measured in total greenhouse gases looked like this:
1. China: 7,216 MT or 16.4%
2. US: 6,931 MT or 15.7%
3. Brazil: 2,856 MT or 6.5%
4. Indonesia: 2,046 MT or 4.6%
5. Russia: 2,028 MT or 4.6%
6. India: 1,870 MT or 4.2%
7. Japan: 1,387 MT or 3.1%
8. Germany: 1,005 MT or 2.3%
9. Canada: 808 MT or 1.8%
10. Mexico: 696 MT or 1.6%
Emissions per capita
Comparing nations can be misleading, given their vastly varied sizes and populations. To get a more meaningful picture, it's essential also to consider emissions on a per-person basis. From this perspective, the list is topped by small countries with energy-intensive industries such as Qatar and Bahrain, and the large developing nations such as India and China look significantly less polluting. Here's a selection of countries and their per-person CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels:
Australia: 19.6 tonnes
United States: 17.7 tonnes
Russia: 11.2 tonnes
Germany: 9.3 tonnes
UK: 8.4 tonnes
China: 5.8 tonnes
World average: 4.5 tonnes
India: 1.4 tonnes
Africa average: 1.1 tonnes
Chad: 0.03 tonnes
As with national emissions, this list would look different if all greenhouse gases were included.
Historical emissions
Since carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere can stay there for centuries, historical emissions are just as important – or even more important – than current emissions. The tricky question of historical responsibility is one of the key tensions in the process of negotiating a global climate deal. The following figures from the World Resources Institute show the top 10 nations as measured by their cumulative emissions between 1850 and 2007. The US tops the list by a wide margin.
1. US: 339,174 MT or 28.8%
2. China: 105,915 MT or 9.0%
3. Russia: 94,679 MT or 8.0%
4. Germany: 81,194.5 MT or 6.9%
5. UK: 68,763 MT or 5.8%
6. Japan: 45,629 MT or 3.87%
7. France: 32,667 MT or 2.77%
8. India: 28,824 MT or 2.44%
9. Canada: 25,716 MT or 2.2%
10. Ukraine: 25,431 MT or 2.2%
Of course, it's also possible to look at historical emissions per person, which turns things around yet again. In this view, the UK shoots close to the top of the rankings, while China drops towards the bottom.
1. Luxembourg: 1,429 tonnes
2. UK: 1,127 tonnes
3. US: 1,126 tonnes
4. Belgium: 1,026 tonnes
5. Czech Republic: 1,006 tonnes
6. Germany: 987 tonnes
7. Estonia: 877 tonnes
8. Canada: 780 tonnes
9. Kazakhstan: 682 tonnes
10. Russia: 666 tonnes
Consumption emissions
Imported and exported goods add another layer of complexity to the equation. Many commentators argue that focusing on where emissions are produced is unfair, because much of the carbon output of countries such as China are generated as a result of producing goods that are ultimately consumed in richer nations. If emissions are measured in terms of consumption rather than production (that is, each country's exports are excluded from its footprint, and its imports added) the tables turn yet again. The most widely cited international dataset for consumption emissions, from 2001, is rather out of date, but it still provides interesting insights. Here's the top 10 for consumption emissions per capita, including all greenhouse gases:
1. US: 29 tonnes
2. Australia: 21 tonnes
3. Canada: 20 tonnes
4. Switzerland: 18 tonnes
5. Finland: 18 tonnes
6. Netherlands: 17 tonnes
7. Belgium: 17 tonnes
8. Ireland: 16 tonnes
9. Cyprus: 16 tonnes
10. UK: 15 tonnes
By contrast, China comes in at just 3.1 tonnes, and India at 1.8 tonnes. However, as the economies of these two countries become stronger and consumption of consumer goods becomes more widespread amongst the respective populations, you can expect the consumption emissions per capita to rise significantly.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20....-climate-change
|
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #267 on Apr 28, 2011, 11:08am » | |
Durban climate deal impossible, say US and EU envoys
BusinessGreen: Todd Stern and Connie Hedegaard write off any chance of countries agreeing legally binding emissions targets in December
* BusinessGreen
* guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 April 2011 12.28 BST
The chances of agreeing a legally binding deal to tackle climate change in South Africa has been dismissed by climate envoys from the EU and the US, two of the world's largest emitters.
EU climate action commissioner Connie Hedegaard admitted after a meeting of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate (MEF) in Brussels that hopes of a breakthrough pact in Durban were all but over.
"The good news is that there is a general recognition of the necessity of a legally binding agreement," she said. "The bad news is that no legally binding agreement deal will be done in Durban."
Delegates at the MEF, a gathering of the world's 17 largest economies, are meant to be discussing how to advance efforts to cut greenhouse emissions, increase the supply of clean energy and mitigate global warming.
High on the agenda is how to move on from the limited progress made at the Copenhagen, Cancun and Bangkok summits over the past two years.
The Cancun summit did establish a $100bn climate fund, along with deals to protect forests and a scheme to transfer clean technology to poorer nations.
However, poorer nations remain unhappy at the prospect of voluntary carbon cutting targets replacing the mandatory goals agreed under the Kyoto Protocol once the treaty expires in 2012.
The US never ratified the Kyoto deal, and Todd Stern, the country's chief climate negotiator, cast doubt on whether the US would support any successor to the Protocol.
"I think that there are different views about the sort of degree of necessity or not of a legally binding agreement. Our view in the US is that it is not a necessary thing to happen right away," he said.
"In a nutshell, our view is that it would have to include all the major players - China, India, Brazil, Russia, South Africa,"
Stern added that these powerful states were "not ready to have international, legally binding obligations".
However, despite the bleak outlook, Hedegaard said that the talks in Durban could focus on tackling shipping and aviation emissions. Airlines will come under the EU's emissions trading scheme (EU ETS) from next year, but little progress has been made on tackling shipping emissions.
The EU has threatened to bring shipping into EU ETS if a deal cannot be agreed this year, and Hedegaard admitted that she is not prepared to wait for the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to deal with the problem.
"Since 1997, IMO has had this task, without delivering, and that's why we are very clearly signalling that we are losing patience," she said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/apr/28/durban-climate-deal-impossible
|
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #268 on May 3, 2011, 9:47pm » | |
Let's face it: none of our environmental fixes break the planet-wrecking project
All of us in the green movement are lost before the planet's real nightmare: not too little fossil fuel – but too much
o George Monbiot
o guardian.co.uk, Monday 2 May 2011 19.30 BST
You think you're discussing technologies, and you quickly discover that you're discussing belief systems. The battle among environmentalists over how or whether our future energy is supplied is a cipher for something much bigger: who we are, who we want to be, how we want society to evolve. Beside these concerns, technical matters – parts per million, costs per megawatt hour, cancers per sievert – carry little weight. We choose our technology – or absence of technology – according to a set of deep beliefs: beliefs that in some cases remain unexamined.
The case against abandoning nuclear power, for example, is a simple one: it will be replaced either by fossil fuels or by renewables that would otherwise have replaced fossil fuels. In either circumstance, greenhouse gases, other forms of destruction and human deaths and injuries all rise.
The case against reducing electricity supplies is just as clear. For example, the Zero Carbon Britain report published by the Centre for Alternative Technology urges a 55% cut in overall energy demand by 2030 – a goal I strongly support. It also envisages a near-doubling of electricity production. The reason is that the most viable means of decarbonising both transport and heating is to replace the fuels they use with low-carbon electricity. Cut the electricity supply and we're stuck with oil and gas. If we close down nuclear plants, we must accept an even greater expansion of renewables than currently proposed. Given the tremendous public resistance to even a modest increase in windfarms and new power lines, that's going to be tough.
What the nuclear question does is to concentrate the mind about the electricity question. Decarbonising the economy involves an increase in infrastructure. Infrastructure is ugly, destructive and controlled by remote governments and corporations. These questions are so divisive because the same world-view tells us that we must reduce emissions, defend our landscapes and resist both the state and big business. The four objectives are at odds.
But even if we can accept an expansion of infrastructure, the technocentric, carbon-counting vision I've favoured runs into trouble. The problem is that it seeks to accommodate a system that cannot be accommodated: a system that demands perpetual economic growth. We could, as Zero Carbon Britain envisages, become carbon-free by 2030. Growth then ensures that we have to address the problem all over again by 2050, 2070 and thereon after.
Accommodation makes sense only if the economy is reaching a steady state. But the clearer the vision becomes, the further away it seems. A steady state economy will be politically possible only if we can be persuaded to stop grabbing. This in turn will be feasible only if we feel more secure. But the global race to the bottom and its destruction of pensions, welfare, public services and stable employment make people less secure, encouraging us to grasp as much for ourselves as we can.
If this vision looks implausible, consider the alternatives. In the latest edition of his excellent magazine The Land, Simon Fairlie responds furiously to my suggestion that we should take industry into account when choosing our energy sources. His article exposes a remarkable but seldom noticed problem: that most of those who advocate an off-grid, land-based economy have made no provision for manufactures. I'm not talking about the pointless rubbish in the FT's How To Spend It supplement. I'm talking about the energy required to make bricks, glass, metal tools and utensils, textiles (except the hand-loomed tweed Fairlie suggests we wear), ceramics and soap: commodities that almost everyone sees as the barest possible requirements.
Are people like Fairlie really proposing that we do without them altogether? If not, what energy sources do they suggest we use? Charcoal would once again throw industry into direct competition with agriculture, spreading starvation and ensuring that manufactured products became the preserve of the very rich. (Remember, as EA Wrigley points out, that half the land surface of Britain could produce enough charcoal to make 1.25m tonnes of bar iron – a fraction of current demand – and nothing else.) An honest environmentalism needs to explain which products should continue to be manufactured and which should not, and what the energy sources for these manufactures should be.
There's a still bigger problem here: even if we make provision for some manufacturing but, like Fairlie, envisage a massive downsizing and a return to a land-based economy, how do we take people with us? Where is the public appetite for this transition?
A third group tries to avoid such conflicts by predicting that the problem will be solved by collapse: doom is our salvation. Economic collapse, these people argue, is imminent and expiatory. I believe this is wrong on both counts.
Last week something astonishing happened: Fatih Birol, the chief economist of the International Energy Agency, revealed that peak oil has already happened. "We think that the crude oil production has already peaked, in 2006." If this is true, we should be extremely angry with the IEA. In 2005 its executive director mocked those who predicted peak oil as "doomsayers". Until 2008 (two years after the IEA now says it happened) the agency continued to dismiss the possibility that peak oil would occur.
But this also raises an awkward question for us greens: why hasn't the global economy collapsed as we predicted? Yes, it wobbled, though largely for other reasons. Now global growth is back with a vengeance: it reached 4.6% last year, and the IMF predicts roughly the same for 2011 and 2012. The reason, as Birol went on to explain, is that natural gas liquids and tar sands are already filling the gap. Not only does the economy appear to be more resistant to resource shocks than we assumed, but the result of those shocks is an increase, not a decline, in environmental destruction.
The problem we face is not that we have too little fossil fuel, but too much. As oil declines, economies will switch to tar sands, shale gas and coal; as accessible coal declines, they'll switch to ultra-deep reserves (using underground gasification to exploit them) and methane clathrates. The same probably applies to almost all minerals: we will find them, but exploiting them will mean trashing an ever greater proportion of the world's surface. We have enough non-renewable resources of all kinds to complete our wreckage of renewable resources: forests, soil, fish, freshwater, benign weather. Collapse will come one day, but not before we have pulled everything down with us.
And even if there were an immediate economic cataclysm, it's not clear that the result would be a decline in our capacity for destruction. In east Africa, for example, I've seen how, when supplies of paraffin or kerosene are disrupted, people don't give up cooking; they cut down more trees. History shows us that wherever large-scale collapse has occurred, psychopaths take over. This is hardly conducive to the rational use of natural assets.
All of us in the environment movement, in other words – whether we propose accommodation, radical downsizing or collapse – are lost. None of us yet has a convincing account of how humanity can get out of this mess. None of our chosen solutions break the atomising, planet-wrecking project. I hope that by laying out the problem I can encourage us to address it more logically, to abandon magical thinking and to recognise the contradictions we confront. But even that could be a tall order.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/....all-greens-lost
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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Location: Sydney, Australia
| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #269 on May 17, 2011, 1:40am » | |
Australia more vulnerable but prepared, says UN climate chief
Tom Arup
May 17, 2011
SCIENTIFIC evidence linking climate change to the intensity and frequency of natural disasters such as bushfires, floods and drought is mounting, the head of the world's peak climate science body says.
Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said a new report on extreme weather events to be released later this year will support previous findings natural disasters are increasing in frequency and intensity around the world.
Dr Pachauri said Australia was one of the countries more vulnerable to an increase in natural disasters, but its wealth and knowledge means it was better prepared to adapt than other countries which would be significantly impacted, such as Bangladesh and Burma.
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The extreme weather events report was commissioned by IPCC member counties and will also outline findings on the potential regional impacts of a climate change driven increase in natural disasters.
Dr Pachauri was on the Gold Coast yesterday for a meeting of scientists working on the report.
''I can say that what we found in the [IPCC] fourth assessment report [on climate change] is certainly going to be supported by what this report is uncovering: that extreme events are increasing in frequencies and intensity all around the world,'' Dr Pachauri said.
''There are some communities that are far more vulnerable than others, and I hope we can identify some of those and some of the locations with a little more specificity.''
But after a summer of natural disasters in Australia, including the floods and the cyclone in Queensland, Dr Pachauri warned against drawing links between climate change and an individual weather event, instead pointing to an overall trend.
''I really wouldn't link any single set of events to human-induced climate change.
''I think scientifically that's really not possible … the scientific basis is clearly not strong enough,'' he said.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climat....l#ixzz1Mab4cHgx
|
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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