Eco-tourism: Carbon 'offsets', a good idea that's not working

Brigitte Hagemann, Yahoo News 1 Jul 08;

Top airlines and tour operators keen to shore up their green credentials nowadays offer customers carbon "offsets" to compensate holiday pollution.

The problem is that few tourists seem eager to write off their green guilt.

The idea is simple enough: "offsets" are schemes by which a tourist when paying his ticket can also buy into a project elsewhere that will compensate for the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) resulting from his trip.

But calculating the size of that carbon footprint apparently is not so simple.

A Paris-New York return flight, for example, might emit between one and three tonnes of CO2, depending on the different calculators used by companies and environmental groups.

That means the price of an "offset" can vary by a factor of five, from 15 to 75 euros (25 to 125 dollars).

One of the first to introduce offsets in France, in January last year, was high-end tour operator Voyageurs du Monde. "Voluntary compensations have been a total failure," said company chairman Jean-Francois Rial.

"Only one percent of our clients really paid the cost of the CO2 emitted by his trip," he said.

Now his company simply taxes travellers without first asking their opinion, adding 10 euros to a ticket for a long-haul flight, tantamount to the price for a half-tonne of CO2.

Rial attributed the failure of the system in part to the complications of putting it into place. "Clients have to pay twice," he said, first paying the tour operator for the holiday, then having to agree to pay for the "offset" on an environmental site on the Internet.

Low-cost air companies Easyjet and Atlas Blue believe they have the solution. "Customers just tick a box when they're buying the ticket, the same way they would opt for travel insurance or not, it's must simpler," said Matthieu Tiberghien, who is in charge of a programme called "Action Carbone".

According to a survey for French rail, 65 percent of travellers on the country's trains claimed to be ready to fork out five percent of the price of the trip to compensate for their carbon emissions.

But the percentage who actually put their hands in their pockets was far less.

A year after the national SNCF railways introduced "offsets", a mere 3,000 people have bought into the system out of a total 5.5 million travellers.

"It may be a modest result, but it does highlight a growing consciousness among the public," said Christophe Leon, marketing manager for the SNCF Internet site Voyages-sncf.com.

The site therefore has doubled the stakes by pledging to make its own matching donation to a good cause -- through partner association Goodplanet -- each time a traveller buys an "offset."

Air France, which initially blasted the none too air-friendly SNCF carbon emission calculator, has since last October also been urging its customers to "compensate" by sending donations to the same green group.

While Air France remains mum on the results of its green-friendly campaign, Goodplanet said that up until now, barely 1,000 Air France customers had sent in donations.

British Airways, the first airline to introduce carbon "offsets" in March 2006, is equally discreet about the outcome, as is German flag carrier Lufthansa, who launched its offsets in September 2007.

But TUIfly, a subsidiary of Europe's top tourism firm TUI, said seven percent of its clients had bought carbon "offsets" since last November, to the tune of 250,000 euros.

Though rail travel is less harmful to the environment than air travel, since last November Eurostar too has joined the green bandwagon.

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Canary in a tux? Penguin woes signal sea problems

Seth Borenstein, Associated Press Yahoo News 1 Jul 08;

The dwindling march of the penguins is signaling that the world's oceans are in trouble, scientists now say. Penguins may be the tuxedo-clad version of a canary in the coal mine, with generally ailing populations from a combination of global warming, ocean oil pollution, depleted fisheries, and tourism and development, according to a new scientific review paper.

A University of Washington biologist detailed specific problems around the world with remote penguin populations, linking their decline to the overall health of southern oceans.

"Now we're seeing effects (of human caused warming and pollution) in the most faraway places in the world," said conservation biologist P. Dee Boersma, author of the paper published in the July edition of the journal Bioscience. "Many penguins we thought would be safe because they are not that close to people. And that's not true."

Scientists figure there are between 16 to 19 species of penguins. About a dozen are in some form of trouble, Boersma wrote. A few, such as the king penguin found in islands north of Antarctica, are improving in numbers, she said.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature lists three penguin species as endangered, seven as vulnerable, which means they are "facing a high risk of extinction in the wild," and two more as "near threatened." About 15 years ago only five to seven penguin species were considered vulnerable, experts said.

And the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which has already listed one penguin species on its endangered list, is studying whether it needs to add 10 more.

The largest Patagonian penguin colony in the world is at Punta Tumbo, Argentina, but the number of breeding pairs there dropped in half from about 400,000 in the late 1960s to about 200,000 in October 2006, Boersma reported. Over a century, African penguins have decreased from 1.5 million breeding pairs to 63,000.

The decline overall isn't caused by one factor, but several.

For the ice-loving Adelie penguins, global warming in the western Antarctica peninsula is a problem, making it harder for them to find food, said Phil Trathan, head of conservation biology at the British Antarctic Survey, a top penguin scientist who had no role in the new report.

For penguins that live on the Galapagos island, El Nino weather patterns are a problem because the warmer water makes penguins travel farther for food, at times abandoning their chicks, Boersma said. At the end of the 1998 record El Nino, female penguins were only 80 percent of their normal body weight. Scientists have tied climate change to stronger El Ninos.

Oil spills regularly taint the water where penguins live off Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil and have contributed to the Punta Tumbo declines, Boersma said.

The problems may be different from place to place, but looking at the numbers for the species overall, "they do give you a clear message," Trathan said.

And this isn't just about the fate of penguins.

"What happens to penguins, a few years down the road can happen to a lot of other species and possibly humans," said longtime penguin expert Susie Ellis, now executive director of the International Rhino Foundation.

Penguin Population Plunge Points to Climate Havoc
Will Dunham, PlanetArk 3 Jul 08;

WASHINGTON - Penguin populations have plummeted at a key breeding colony in Argentina, mirroring declines in many species of the marine flightless birds due to climate change, pollution and other factors, a study shows.

Dee Boersma, a University of Washington professor who led the research, said the plight of the penguins is an indicator of big changes in the world's oceans due to human activities.

"Penguins are in trouble," Boersma, whose study appears in the journal BioScience, said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. "They certainly are canaries in the coal mine."

For the past 25 years, Boersma has tracked the world's largest breeding colony of Magellanic penguins located at Punta Tombo on Argentina's Atlantic coast. She said that since 1987 she has observed a 22 percent decrease in the population of these penguins at the site.

Boersma said the decline appears to have begun in the early 1980s after the population at the site peaked probably at about 400,000 breeding pairs of Magellanic penguins between the late 1960s and mid-1970s. Today's total is half of that.

The world's warming climate is only one of the causes of the penguins' problems, she said. They also are threatened by oil pollution, depletion of fisheries, becoming entangled in fishing nets, and coastal development that eliminates breeding habitats, according to Boersma.

"Penguins are sentinels of the marine environment, and by observing and studying them, researchers can learn about the rate and nature of changes occurring in the southern oceans. As ocean samplers, penguins provide insights into patterns of regional ocean productivity and long-term climate variation," Boersma wrote in the study.

Most scientists recognize 17 species of penguins, and they live in Earth's southern hemisphere. Penguins are beautifully adapted to life in the ocean, residing in places as different as the warm Galapagos islands and icy Antarctica.

While a bit ungainly on land, they gracefully knife through the water, feeding on fish and other sea delicacies.

But many species have been experiencing population declines in Antarctica, Africa, South America, Australia, New Zealand and the Falkland Islands, Boersma said.

The number of Galapagos penguins, the only species with a range that inches into the northern hemisphere, has slipped to around 2,500 birds, about a quarter of its total in the 1970s.

Anton Seimon of the Wildlife Conservation Society, which backed Boersma's work, said the findings illustrate the disruption that people have caused to penguins' ecosystems.

"These disruptions introduce instability into what had been somewhat stable populations. That instability means we don't really know what's going to be happening in the future. In many instances it does signify declines that may result, in the most drastic case, in extinctions," Seimon said. (Editing by Julie Steenhuysen and Eric Walsh)

Read more!

Appetite for Arctic oil rises in line with crude prices

Daniel Silva, Yahoo News 1 Jul 08;

The appetite for Arctic oil has surged in line with rocketing crude prices but environmental concerns and a diplomatic stalemate stand in the way of exploration, experts say.

At a time when supplies are struggling to keep pace with surging demand from developing countries, the industry is increasingly looking to new frontiers in its search for new reserves, with the Arctic clearly in the sights.

"There is lots of oil under the North Pole," said geologist Donald Gautier of the US Geological Survey at the World Petroleum Congress this week. He estimated that the Arctic holds 100 billion barrels of oil.

But while extracting the oil from the harsh Arctic environment poses unprecedented technical challenges, the biggest barrier to exploration is the disputed ownership of the region which makes it difficult to get permission to drill, he added.

"Technology is critical on the one hand but the real issue in access to those continental shelves," said Gautier.

Five countries that border the Arctic Ocean -- Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States -- dispute the sovereignty of the region's waters and they have become more vocal in their claims as interest in the region's resources rises.

Last year Canada announced it would build eight Arctic patrol vessels to reassert the country's northern sovereignty.

"Canada has a choice when it comes to defending our sovereignty in the Arctic; either we use it or we lose it. And make no mistake this government intends to use it," Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said at the time.

Shortly after, Russian explorers placed a rust-proof titanium Russian flag on the seabed below the North Pole in what was seen as a bid to further Moscow's claims to the Arctic.

The North Pole is not currently regarded as part of any single country's territory and is therefore administered by the International Seabed Authority.

Environmental concerns also put the brakes on oil exploration in regions like the Arctic that are opening up to oil development thanks to technological developments, said David Boone, the president of Canada's Escavar Energy, an oil and gas producer.

"Even as space age technology opens up new areas, environmental concerns can shut them down just as quickly," he said.

The danger of oil spills in such a sensitive environment, where the cold means crude breaks down at especially slow speed, and the risk of disruption to local ecosystems figure as the two biggest concerns.

Industry leaders and analysts agree though that with oil prices at record highs, oil firms are not short on the cash that would be needed to open up new areas to oil exploration.

"Anyone who suggests that the oil industry does not have the money to invest with oil at 140 dollars a barrel is being facetious," said StatoilHydro vice president for business development Robert Skinner.

Earlier this month BP, ConocoPhillips and MGM Energy Corp were awarded exploration rights by the Canadian government for three offshore blocks in the petroleum-rich Arctic region in a lease sale.

The World Petroleum Congress, a gathering of executives from major oil companies and ministers from top oil producing nations held every three years, wraps up on Thursday. It is one of the industry's biggest events.

Read more!

Best of our wild blogs: 1 Jul 08

Chek Jawa - what visitors say
on the adventures with the naked hermit crabs blog

Reflection on the Pearl Izumi Zero-Carbon Family Aquathon @ South West by Taooftri on the Champions of the Environment blog

NParks webpage revamped
on the Habitatnews blog

Attitudes towards biological conservation
paper published on Singaporean Attitudes to Biological Conservation blog

Brown-capped Woodpecker nesting
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog

Scientific names for sale
on the wildfilms blog

Read more!

Summits to Save the Planet: Organisers should walk the talk

Arti Mulchand, Straits Times 1 Jul 08;

SOME 8,500 policymakers, industry leaders, experts and trade visitors gathered in Singapore last week to discuss the world's water woes, the state of cities as well as sustainable ways of using the Earth's limited resources.

But even as attendees of the Singapore International Water Week, World Cities Summit and East Asia Summit Conference on Liveable Cities shared ideas and mooted solutions, they added to the problem itself.

Over the week, conference delegates emitted tonnes of carbon dioxide just getting here to attend the conferences and returning home. Little appeared to be in place to offset or minimise their carbon footprint.

To be fair, one of the organisers - managing director of Singapore Airshow and Events Jimmy Lau - pointed to 'little green plans': Badges for the water expo were recycled and drivers of cars for hosted delegates were told not to leave engines running while waiting.

Contractors were asked to try and reuse their materials. And there were token recycling bins around the Suntec City Convention Centre, where the summits were held.

But the devil, really, was in the details, and in the little gestures that could have been made, but were not.

The event used 39 conference rooms, a ballroom and five exhibition halls in Suntec City. Air-conditioning thermostats were set at an average of 23.5 deg C, according to organisers, lower than the National Environment Agency's recommended 25 deg C.

A physical check of some rooms showed that some thermostats clocked in at even lower temperatures.

Reams of paper were used to print documents, which could have been made available electronically instead. Many of those print- outs were not on recycled paper, and some were printed on just one side.

While canisters of water and glasses were made available in most rooms, plastic bottles of Newater were also given out at most of the events.

And while it would have been just as easy - and probably cheaper - to place milk jugs and sugar bowls beside coffee and tea dispensers, individual sachets were used.

Those were just the small things.

There was also no formal offsetting plan in place for things like energy use or travel for the more than 4,000 delegates who flew here, though a few said they had offset their flights on their own initiative.

When asked about it, Mr Chan Heng Kee, dean and chief executive of the Civil Service College - which co- organised the event - said there were some efforts to 'try and conserve'. But he did not think a formal plan was needed.

'Being sustainable does not mean you swing to the other end of the spectrum,' he said.

But this is not about being extreme. Numerous - particularly environmental - events have gone much further in ensuring that conference delegates do not further destroy the planet they seek to protect.

The inaugural Global Business Summit for the Environment, held here last year, followed some simple recommendations in the US-based Convention Industry Council's 2004 Green Meetings Report.

VIPs were picked up in taxis running on compressed natural gas, and bottled water, disposable straws, paper coasters and cup covers were not used.

All food and drinks served were organically, sustainably or locally farmed. Surplus pastries and dry food were donated to a local charity.

And in a grander gesture, $10,000 was donated towards reforestation and renewable energy projects.

Similarly, when leaders met in Bali for the United Nations climate change talks last December, Indonesia pledged to protect some 4,300ha of forests to offset the emissions of delegates travelling to and attending the 12 days of meetings.

Another tree-planting exercise is ongoing at the Sustainability Weeks in Hokkaido, Japan, where more than 30 symposiums and events are being held until July 11, with expected emissions of 330 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

Perhaps, as one participant at the Singapore events put it, zooming in on 'symbolic gestures' may not be the right approach.

After all, much was accomplished over the week. Ideas that might go some way towards solving pressing water and urban development problems were shared.

Still, minimising waste does not take a Herculean effort. Offsetting, if nothing else, is an acknowledgement that everyday things have an impact on the planet's well-being. It is also a good short term means of channelling investment to green technology.

Singapore aspires to play a leadership role in the region's green cause. It is at such events that sustainable strategies can be first put into practice.

Through them the country can show that it really does walk the talk.

Read more!

Are you a mozzie magnet?

These blood-sucking insects can be picky about ‘food’, say experts
Eveline Gan, Today Online 1 Jul 08;

BLOOD-SUCKING mosquitoes can’t seem to get enough of18-year-old Aza Wee.

A self-professed mosquito magnet, the Serangoon Junior College student said that she tends to be bitten by mosquitoes more frequently than others.

“Wherever I go, I always get bitten,” said Aza.

“If I open the windows, I’ll get bitten almost immediately.My younger sister sleeps in the same room, but she doesn’t have this problem.”

Is Aza’s problem a figment of her imagination? Apparently not.

Like fussy eaters, mosquitoes do display dining preferences,according to experts. This explains why some unfortunate people, such as Aza, may get bitten more frequently than others.

Your natural body odour could be responsible for that barrage of mosquito bites.

“Some people may attract more mosquitoes than others based on how they ‘smell’ to a mosquito,” said Associate Professor Annelies Wilder-Smith, an associate consultant at the National University Hospital’s department of medicine, division of infectious diseases.

“Body odours such as 1-octen-3-ol seem to attract mosquitoes ... but nobody knows how to influence or reduce the amount of this chemical in our body,” she said.

A National Environment Agency (NEA) spokesman told Today that human body odours are “distinctive and specific, and varies from person to person”.

He added: “These differences are believed to be responsible for the uneven biting rates.”

Sweaty people may also get targeted more often by mosquitoes. “Human sweat contains volatiles such as lactic acid and ammonia, which attract mosquitoes. The number of sweat glands present in a person’s body varies, which is why some people tend to perspire more and thus, are more attractive to mosquitoes,” said the spokesman.

He said a higher body mass and higher body temperature may also make a person more attractive to mosquitoes. Being in a place with high humidity also increases the chance of being bitten.

And it’s not all about body chemistry. What you wear may also cause you to look more delicious to some mosquitoes which bite in the day (Aedes mosquitoes are day-feeders with a peak biting period at dusk and dawn).

“People who wear dark-coloured clothes tend to attract more diurnal mosquitoes than those wearing light-coloured ones because these species have been found to respond to visual cues as well,” he said. Diurnal mosquitoes refer to those that feed in the day.

According to Assoc Prof Wilder-Smith, mosquitoes can track potential prey from “tens of metres” away.

“Mosquitoes hunt by detecting carbon dioxide being breathed out from a distance. When they get closer, they can also pick up on the infrared heat being emitted, which identifies the host as a warm-blooded animal,” she explained.

For some people, the problem may stem from their reactions to the bites rather than their attractiveness to mosquitoes, said Assoc Prof Wilder-Smith.

People who are hyper-sensitive to mosquito bites may notice them more and think they get bitten more often, she explained.

“People have a variety of reactions to mosquito bites, and the symptoms change over time, depending on the amount of bites a person has received. These reactions tend to decrease in frequency after one has been bitten by mosquitoes over many years,” said Assoc Prof Wilder-Smith.

“Some adults can become desensitised to mosquitoes and have little or no reaction to their bites, while others can become hyper-sensitive with bites causing blistering, bruising and large inflammatory reactions.”

If you’re one of those unfortunate mosquito magnets, you can minimise bites with a few measures.

Chemical-based repellents have been shown to be superior over natural repellents, said Assoc Prof Wilder-Smith.

Other less commonly used natural mosquito repellents include catnip oil extract, citronella, and eucalyptus oil extract.

The NEA spokesman recommended wearing long-sleeved clothing and pants, and sleeping under a mosquito net.

“In places within your control, such as your home, mosquito breeding should be avoided by removing any potential breeding habitat,” he added.

the Aedes are day-hunters

The mosquitoes responsible for dengue, the Aedes aegypti and the Aedes albopictus, are typically early-morning and early-evening feeders.

“During the heat of the day, the mosquitoes rest in a cool place and wait for evening. They may still bite if they’re disturbed though. On cloudy days, they can feed through the day,” said Assoc Prof Wilder-Smith.

According to the NEA, these two mosquito breeds can also transmit the chikungunya virus, which surfaced here earlier this year. Similar to dengue, its symptoms include fever, headache, fatigue, nausea, vomiting, muscle ache, rash and joint pain.

Over 2,700 dengue cases have been recorded this year.

Read more!

$367m in deals at Water Week

PUB, local companies get their share of the pie, securing projects at inaugural event
Arti Mulchand & Liaw Wy-Cin, Straits Times 1 Jul 08;

GOVERNMENTS, utility providers and water companies inked over $367 million in deals during the recent Singapore International Water Week (SIWW).

Announcing this and giving his report card on the SIWW yesterday, Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Yaacob Ibrahim said it was 'encouraging', especially for an inaugural event.

National water agency PUB's chief executive Khoo Teng Chye would not be drawn into comparing the figure with those from similar conferences, but said that with Asia growing so rapidly, the figure was only 'the tip of the iceberg'.

Among the deals struck for water-related projects, the three-year one between Singapore-based water and wastewater treatment company Ayser-Technische Corporation and Acuatico was the biggest, worth $272 million.

The two signed a Memorandum of Understanding to set up a joint venture, which will, among other things, design, build and run private water infrastructure projects in Indonesia.

Local companies had their share of the pie. Home-grown tech start-up AridTec found distributors in more than 10 countries for its patent-pending technology, which extracts water from thin air. It expects to earn $16 million in the first year from this.

A Singapore consortium comprising PUB Consultants, CPG Consultants and Pico Art International also secured a deal to design the King Abdullah Water Centre in Saudi Arabia.

The PUB's Mr Khoo said that the key to the event's success lay in its providing a forum for policymakers and providers of technical solutions to come together.

More than 8,500 people attended SIWW and two other conferences held concurrently - the World Cities Summit and the East Asia Summit Conference on Liveable Cities.

SIWW, to be run on the theme 'Sustainable Water Solutions for Cities' till 2011, will be held here every year.

Beyond money changing hands, the event promises other tangible gains for the host country and the participants, said Dr Yaacob.

Singapore could reap new technology solutions going forward, including how to lower the cost of desalination. It could also look into bringing together private- and public-sector money and young people with ideas, he said.

There was also 'no harm' in looking at how the private sector can be more involved in managing the water supply here, he added, pointing to countries where the private sector played a much larger role in the provision of utilities.

Singapore's model of water management was a key take-away for foreign participants, Dr Yaacob said. Newater, now a source of potable water for industry, showed how reliability in water supply could be achieved, he added.

Proceedings from the Water Leaders Summit will be presented at the World Water Week in Stockholm next month and at the World Water Forum in Turkey in March next year.

Dr Yaacob admitted that an overpacked programme was among the teething problems faced in this maiden conference, but added that these would be ironed out by the next SIWW.

Echoing Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew's words during a summit dialogue, he said: 'Forty years ago, we climbed on other people's backs. We have achieved something that we can be proud of.

'Perhaps now it's time for others to climb on our backs, to learn from us.'

Water Week nets $367m in deals, shows S’pore’s expertise in water management
Loh Chee Kong, Today Online 1 Jul 08;

THE recently-concluded Singapore International Water Week (SIWW) might have been flushwith $367 million worth of deals — including a $272-million joint venture between two Singapore companies to develop infrastructure in Indonesia — but the opportunity to showcase the Republic’s water management expertise was priceless.

Noting that the inaugural event was “obviously in line with our overall vision to grow Singapore into a global hydro hub”, Environment and Water Resources Minister Yaacob Ibrahim told the media yesterday that the SIWW was conceived as a platform “for top leaders and practitioners to gather and discuss a whole series of issues across the entire value chain”.

Alluding to Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew’s point last week on how Singapore has managed to meet its own water needs,Dr Yaacob added: “Forty years ago, we climbed on other people’s back ... perhaps now it’s time for others to climb on our back, to learn from us.”

And the delegates were impressed — not least by the event itself, which was described by a “top business leader” as the “best event ever” for its extensive networking opportunities across all levels of the industry, including policymakers and technology experts, according to Dr Yaacob.

He added: “For some of the people who have never been to Singapore, they were surprised that we’ve been able to close the loop between used water and potable water.”

But the flow of ideas and knowledge was not all a one-way street. “Certainly, on the technological front, we’ve learned a lot ... we are now looking very closely at some of the papers and ideas,” saidDr Yaacob, citing how Singapore could tap private sector funding to incubate water technologies.

On a personal note, the Minister was particularly intrigued by the robust discussion on the roles of the public and private sectors in the management of water, ahighly politicised resource that some argue would be better distributed by private companies.

In Singapore’s case, PUB, the national water agency, has been delivering water “efficiently and reliably” while outsourcing some of its projects to “build up the private sector capability”.

“We have managed the right balance, but there’s no harm in thinking it through again,” said Dr Yaacob.

Apart from thought-provoking discussions, the SIWW saw the conclusion of several notable deals, including a $24-million contract for United States-based Mormon Water to build a manufacturing plant here.

Following its successful maiden outing, SIWW will focus on infrastructure and technology next year, Dr Yaacob revealed.

While it will no longer beheld concurrently with the high-profile World Cities Summit, next year’s event will be organised alongside the Asia-Pacific Infrastructure Ministerial Forum and the International Water Association’s Leading Edge Technologies Conference.

US$270m worth of deals sealed in International Water Week
Channel NewsAsia 30 Jun 08;

SINGAPORE: More than US$270 million worth of deals were signed during the first Singapore International Water Week, which ended on June 27.

There were 27 agreements in all, between governments, utilities providers and water companies.

Describing the figures as encouraging, Environment and Water Resources Minister Yaacob Ibrahim said the aim is to grow the meeting into a platform for global water solutions.

The meeting last week saw several firsts, among them the launch of a water fund to attract US$320 million in investments for Asian water projects.

This is expected to be boosted by the Asian Development Bank, which has pledged to help regional states boost investments in water security to US$20 billion.

Singapore water companies also won significant contracts. A consortium comprising PUB and CPG Consultants as well as Pico Art International secured a contract to design the King Abdullah Water Centre in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Dr Yaacob said interest in the inaugural meeting had been better than expected.

"We're holding this for the first time. Hopefully, more will realise that there's value in coming to Singapore. We were pleasantly surprised that more companies wanted to come on board for the exhibition... they see there is a scope for making business deals," he said.

For Singapore, the lessons gleaned from the conference were immeasurable.

Dr Yaacob said: "Going forward, we are looking for new technological solutions... how can we lower some of the energy costs in terms of desalination? We will mine the papers that have been presented and see whether there are new ideas of achieving some of these water solutions."

As it turned out, Singapore's NeWater technology was a talking point among overseas delegates.

The minister said: "I spoke to some of the ministers from the Middle East. Recycling is now on the top of their mind. For them, water is the new oil... They all ask about recycling.

"'How do you do it?' they asked. We told them briefly that you need an ecosystem, you need a demand, you need a technical system to help you recycle water. They are keen.

"So, for the average Singaporean, I think you have to feel proud that Singapore has been able to achieve something that we can share with the rest of the world."

All in, the five-day meeting attracted some 8,500 delegates and trade visitors.

The Singapore International Water Week will be an annual event. Work is underway to prepare for next year's meeting which will focus on the importance of infrastructure in water management and supply as well as environmental sustainability. - CNA/ir

International Water Week sees $367m of deals signed
Chew Xiang, Business Times 30 Jun 08;

ABOUT $367 million of deals were signed at the close of the first Singapore International Water Week last Friday, Environment and Water Resources Minister Yaacob Ibrahim said yesterday.

Dr Yaacob called the event a success, saying that it had done its job of bringing companies and water authorities from around the world together in Singapore where they could share the country's water expertise.

About 27 deals were signed during the event. Dr Yaacob said that the important thing was to organise an event that people were willing to attend.

Michael Toh, general manager of Singapore International Water Week, said that the event was 'self-sustaining' - receipts from sponsorship and sale of exhibition space covered organising costs, though the numbers have not yet been tabulated.

Dr Yaacob said that the organisers received multiple requests for sponsorship and had to open extra exhibition space to meet high demand, which proved to be a 'happy problem'.

Some of the sessions conflicted, so scheduling is something that the organisers would look into, he said.

His ministry has learnt a lot from the cutting-edge technology exhibited during the week, he said. At the same time, Singapore's response to water scarcity went down well with foreign visitors keen to learn more about NEWater and Singapore's ability to reduce leakage.

Officials will now examine the information and papers produced for the event, Dr Yaacob said. 'If there is a good idea out there, we must learn from it definitely.'

Next year's event will focus on infrastructure and technology, he revealed, in conjunction with a leading edge conference on water and wastewater technology.

Read more!

Australian Environment Minister urged to suspend shark fin exports

ABC 30 Jun 08;

The Nature Conservation Council of NSW is calling on the Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett to suspend the export of shark fins from Australia.

The council has obtained data from the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service, which shows Australia has exported nearly 133,000 kilograms of frozen shark fin in the past 13 months.

The council's marine conservation officer, Giselle Firme, says that means about 10,000 sharks have been killed for their fins.

"Today is the deadline for Peter Garrett to reissue an export license," she said.

"Peter Garrett is able to not reissue that export license and actually put in certain conditions that would restrict the fisheries until they have enough information to control the fishery and not do so much damage to the shark population in Australia."

Ms Firme it is an increase of about 500 per cent on previous years.

"There are states such as NSW that don't have a history of shark fishing, so there is no information about the biology of the different shark species and what size the population is," she said.

"Therefore, you're going out and killing a lot of sharks and you don't know how that's going to affect the population. That's very dangerous."

Read more!

Eco-tourism's green brings in the greenbacks

Richard Ingham, Yahoo News 30 Jun 08;

Flip through a travel brochure, and you're likely to see pictures of sun and sand in Southeast Asia, of luxury lodges in the Serengeti, of scuba diving in the bejewelled coral reefs of the Caribbean, but what the brochure won't reveal is the environmental cost of your trip.

That beach in Thailand may once have housed precious mangroves, which were ripped up to make way for your hotel.

To provide you with a piping-hot shower and tempting meal after a safari, your Serengeti lodge may be tapping into precious water supplies, dumping waste in exchange and paying your waiter just a dollar a day.

And to get you to the Caribbean, your plane will spew out tonnes of carbon pollution, thus stoking the global warming which is killing the very corals you want to enjoy.

This is where eco-tourism comes in.

One of the fastest-expanding and well-heeled sectors of the travel industry, eco-tourism aims at serving the growing numbers of people who want to see exotic sights, rare wildlife and remote cultures, but feel guilty about the footprint they will leave.

"About 70 million people each year travel to places with fragile eco-systems and cultures under what you might call eco-tourism," Tensie Whelan, executive director of the green group Rainforest Alliance, told AFP.

According to the Washington-based group The International Ecotourism Society (TIES), global eco-tourism has been expanding at rates of between 20 and 34 percent a year since 1990 -- and in 2004, the business grew three times faster than the tourism sector as a whole.

The typical eco-tourist is likely to be an experienced traveller aged 40-plus with higher education and in the top earning brackets, says TIES.

The Worldwatch Institute, a US green group, defines eco-tourism as "responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the welfare of local people."

Under this broad umbrella comes a wide range of activities. They can operate on a scale that ranges from the personal to the mass market, and their green benefit is highly variable.

Projects include tiny groups of people who accompany conservationists into the Amazon to document wildlife or who are given a close-up look at chimpanzees in ancient forests in Africa.

At the other end of the numbers scale, South Africa's well-run National Parks plough fees from visitors into sustaining and policing the reserve.

Energy efficiency, water conservation, transport and renewable resources are big features in eco-tourism. Asking environmentally-sensitive guests to re-use their towels is not enough.

To win credibility with this upscale, demanding slice of the market, hotels and lodges have to offer such things low-flush toilets, bicycle hire, solar-powered water heating and solar-powered electricity, intelligent lighting or air conditioning panels.

Many pledge donations to preserve the local nature reserve or promise to help the local community with good jobs or locally-sourced materials.

Another inducement in eco-tourism is carbon "offsets" to compensate for the pollution of the client's holiday. "Offsets" are schemes by which a polluter buys into a project elsewhere that will compensate for the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) resulting from his trip.

For instance, a 10,000-kilometre (6,000-mile) flight would emit around 1.5 tonnes of CO2. An "offset" to counterbalance this, such as planting trees or investing in cleaner energy in the Third World, would cost around 27 dollars at present prices.

The rise of eco-tourism has in turn spurred fears that it can be exploited cynically as greenwash, masking projects that are environmentally destructive and culturally erosive.

Tricia Barnett of the British campaign group Tourism Concern complains there are more than 400 certification schemes for eco-tourism around the world, a good many of which are simply "good marketing."

"You can go to a tented encampment in Zambia or somewhere and find that you have porcelaine toilets fitted in. Those are the people who say their projects are eco-tourism, when it's really about making a niche product."

Neel Inamdar, an expert with the US group Conservation International, agrees that the issue of classification "is a major problem," as there is no universally accepted definition of sustainable tourism.

From next year, though, a panel comprising non-profit groups, UN agencies and conservationists will take the first steps towards establishing a global label.

Whelan, whose group, the Rainforest Alliance, has joined with Conservation International and others in the certification scheme, says travel cannot be ignored and the only option is to coax it into greenness.

"There's always going to be mass tourism," she said. "The question is: do you allow cheap mass tourism that's going to be very destructive, or do you try to change that mass tourism?"

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Lebanon's eco-tourism dream survives crisis

Jocelyne Zablit, Yahoo News 30 Jun 08;

A decade ago, it was a glittering vision -- a scheme to lure nature lovers to the Lebanese highlands, providing income to local people, nurturing the country's damaged environment and cementing national unity in one stroke.

Today, after a war, a political crisis and flareups of sectarian violence, Lebanon's brave experiment in eco-tourism is battered and bloodied but defiantly soldiers on.

In the eastern Bekaa region near the Syrian border, financial help from the United States and Europe helped establish a project for encouraging families to come and enjoy the wildlife, staying in local hostels and employing local guides.

Ravaged by hunters, the countryside around the village of Kfar Zabad, which straddles the main migration route for African-Eurasian water fowl, was declared a protected area and now teems with birds, along with wildcats and a few river otters.

"Before, this place was filled with hunters in the afternoon and all you heard was the sound of gunfire," Mayor Qassem Choker says proudly, pointing to fields near the entrance to the village.

"But since the village was designated a protected area in 2004, we can hear the birds chirping again and enjoy our surroundings."

The wildlife has emphatically returned. But since the 2005 assassination of ex-premier Rafiq Hariri that marked Lebanon's new plunge into turmoil, the tourists have become an endangered species.

Foreign tourists and even expatriate Lebanese have been discouraged by fears about safety. The main visitors to the Bekaa are hardy people from Beirut and other regions, who in periods of relative calm grab the chance of a countryside break.

"We keep trying to tell people it's safe but the simple mention of the name Bekaa scares them away," said Dalia Al-Jawhary, of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Lebanon, which is heavily involved in the Kfar Zabad project.

Faisal Abu-Izzedin, director of the Lebanon Mountain Trail project, a 440-kilometre (275-mile) path that cuts through 75 villages, many of them in remote areas stretching from the north to the south, says Lebanon offers unique treasures.

"Nowhere else can you see this diversity," he said.

"Our aim was to revive an ancient heritage which was a trail that connected villages. We hope that the trail and people who walk the trail will shine a light on the importance of keeping Lebanon beautiful."

From the beaches along the Mediterranean, to mountains, forests, wildlife, Roman ruins and gorges -- all within a few hours' drive or walk -- the country of 10,425 square kilometers (4,170 square miles) indeed has much to offer.

"Lebanon has been classified among the 25 top countries in terms of biodiversity," said Pascal Abdallah, who heads Responsible Mobilities, an eco-conscious tour company. "We have 40 kinds of wild orchids, two or three of which are endemic to Lebanon.

"We still have wolves in this tiny country, we have a type of hyena that only exists in the eastern part of the Mediterranean -- and of course we have the cedars."

Eco-tourism is strongly supported by the tourism and environment ministries, despite their meagre means.

And, despite the country's problems, local communities in rural areas, some of which have suffered heavily from the civil war and the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel, are taking an ever-greater interest in eco-tourism as a generator of jobs and income.

Villages near the Al-Shouf Cedar Nature Reserve for example are opening up bed-and-breakfast accommodation, offering homegrown products and traditional arts and crafts to attract tourists.

Everyone agrees, though, that for eco-tourism to take off, the country's political situation must stabilize. Visitor numbers to Al-Shouf numbered 28,000 in 2004. Last year, they were just 14,000.

"The latest events in the country basically broke us," said Abdallah. "But in the light of the recent breakthrough deal to end the political crisis, we're now banking on foreign tourists returning next Spring."

"We have the infrastructure. We have the trails. We just need peace," said Nizar Hani, the reserve's scientific coordinator.

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Midwest Floodwaters Falling, Costs Rising

Carey Gillam, PlanetArk 1 Jul 08;

ST. LOUIS, Mo. - Levees on the cresting Mississippi River held Sunday as the worst US Midwest flooding in 15 years began to ebb, but multibillion-dollar crop losses may boost world food prices for years.

Water levels on the river receded for the second straight day as mostly clear weather gave saturated areas a chance to start draining. Forecasts for similar dry weather in coming days gave further encouragement.

The swollen river was expected to crest Monday in St. Louis at 38.9 feet, 11 feet below the record set in 1993 and a level considered "manageable," said US Army Corps of Engineers St. Louis District spokesman Alan Dooley.

"The crest in the areas up the Mississippi River in the district has passed," Dooley said. "The water is still up very high and it is up against levees."

There were no fresh levee breaks reported Sunday. At least three dozen levees, berms and other flood barriers have been overtopped along the Mississippi in the last two weeks as the runoff from torrential rains this month pushed south along the main US inland waterway.

Several flood warnings remained in effect for communities in Missouri and Illinois, but officials said they expected the worst was over, with the focus now shifting to clean-up.

"We're just mentally and physically exhausted," said Winfield, Missouri, resident Carol Broseman, who fled her home for a shelter Saturday after flood waters engulfed her neighborhood. "I've cried all I can cry."

The National Weather Service on Sunday forecast windy but mostly dry weather in the western and central Midwest states for the next several days, which will help waters recede further. Many Iowa rivers, which saw record flooding two weeks ago, were back near or below flood stage Sunday.

The Corps of Engineers at Rock Island, Illinois, reopened two locks on the Mississippi River but said four in the district remained closed with water still 3-5 feet above lock walls.

At one point 388 miles of the Mississippi River were closed to commercial traffic, from Clinton, Iowa, to the Jefferson Barracks Bridge, just south of St. Louis. The blockages have cost barge companies and other shippers millions of dollars.


COSTS, RELIEF REQUESTS RISING

The Midwest storms and torrential rains have killed at least 24 people since late May. More than 38,000 people have been driven from their homes, mostly in Iowa where 83 of 99 counties have been declared disaster areas.

Fears that as many as 5 million acres of corn and soybeans have been lost to flooding in the world's largest grain and food exporter pushed corn and livestock prices to record highs in the last week.

The ripple inflation effect on global food prices as US prices soar has alarmed everyone from central bankers to food aid groups. Fears that livestock herds will be culled because of soaring corn feed prices may push meat prices up for years.

Flood aid and relief issues also poured into the political arena.

Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack Obama said Saturday that Midwest levee breaks and flood damage were reasons to back his US$60 billion spending proposal to modernize US roads, bridges and waterways. Much of that would be financed by downsizing US commitments in Iraq, he said.

Iowa Gov. Chet Culver has estimated 45,000 square miles of his state had been hit by tornadoes or flooding, including 340 towns, with extensive damage to road and rail lines at a cost of "tens of billions of dollars."

Chemicals from farm fields and other toxic substances left behind as waters recede have created a potential health threat. Damaged municipal sewage systems in places like Cedar Rapids, Iowa, were releasing raw sewage into rivers. But drinking water supplies remain unpolluted in most areas, officials said.

In Cedar Rapids, where officials have said 4,000 homes were damaged by this month's flooding, government buyout plans estimated at US$80 million or more were under discussion.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has 43 disaster recovery centers open across the flooded areas of Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Indiana, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

In Iowa, Indiana and Wisconsin, 56,096 registrations for assistance have been received from disaster victims and more than US$115 million approved for housing assistance and other disaster-related needs. More than 5,600 households have filed flood insurance claims. (Writing by Peter Bohan; editing by Vicki Allen)

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The bulb hoarders

Steve Tomkins, BBC News 30 Jun 08;

The government wants your old-fashioned energy-hungry incandescent tungsten light bulb gone, and gone soon. But some people are willing to go to great lengths to hang onto the lights they love.

Incandescent bulbs - that's the traditional kind to you or me - waste 95% of the energy they use, according to Greenpeace. They calculate that phasing them out in the UK will save more than five million tonnes in CO2 emissions a year.

And yet some households are so attached to them that they not only keep buying them - they're stockpiling them ahead of the day when they're no longer available.

In September last year, the UK government made a deal with major shops for the supply of traditional bulbs to be turned off. Some higher energy bulbs will be gone by January 2009, and all incandescent lights will be off by 2011.

The agreement is voluntary, but other countries have announced legal bans, including Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and the US.

The brighter bulbs are already fading from view, according to Glen Gotten of the light merchant Ryness. "100w and 150w are difficult to get hold of," he says. "The larger manufacturers have stopped making them. We still manage to get enough to supply our customers for now, but they will start drying up."

The 150w, in particular, is seriously rare. They're gone from Tesco. Morrisons have already chosen to ditch them, with 100w to follow in the autumn and 60w next year.

Buzzing noise

Hence the stockpilers. "I'm stocking up now, before they're banned or get ridiculously expensive," says Bradley, an insurance broker from West Sussex. "The green ones might save you money and everything, but I just can't stand them."

"They don't look right," he explains. "They're not bright enough and they take an age to come on. That's not what you want from a light bulb. You want it to light up the whole room, just like that." He clicks his fingers.

Jo, who works in the same office, agrees. "I did try the energy saving ones," she says, "but they're not the same. One of them made a buzzing noise, one of them kept going on and off. We gave up on them."

Are they not concerned about the environmental impact of incandescent bulbs? "I do my bit," says Bradley. "Recycling and all that. But at the end of the day, if they want us to use those bulbs they'll have to make them better."

"And anyway," he adds, "they've got mercury in, haven't they, these so-called green bulbs? What's that going to do to the environment?"

Government advice says that because of the mercury in low energy bulbs, if you break one you should leave the room for 15 minutes, clear up the pieces with rubber gloves, not with a vacuum cleaner, and take them in a sealed bag to your local council. The bulbs should not be thrown in normal waste.

Aesthetic issue

The Migraine Action Association has raised another health concern. The group reports that members have found that low energy bulbs seem to increase migraine attacks.

For most stockpilers though, the concerns seem to be more aesthetic than safety-conscious.

In a nutshell, many people prefer the warmer glow of an incandescent tungsten bulb to an eco-friendly compact fluorescent (CFL).

Jill Entwistle, editor of Light Magazine, says much work has been done to improve CFLs but that many people still prefer tungsten.

"There have been issues with compact fluorescents. They have improved a lot, a lot of investment has gone into reducing their size and improving the colour by experimentation with the phosphors that affects the colour temperature. They have managed to warm it up."

She is against the ban and believes incandescent bulbs have been chosen as an easy target. "It is a shame. This is simplistic thinking."

But there are those who assert that the work done on CFLs mean that most people cannot tell the difference.

The Energy Saving Trust did a spot the difference test in a shopping centre. Of 761 shoppers, 53% could not tell the difference between a traditional bulb and a CFL.

"They produce the same level of light. The latest CFLs radiate a very similar light spectrum," says Lyndsey Hubbard, editor of Total Lighting magazine. The dislike of CFLs may be a result of encounters with more primitive examples of them sticking in the mind.

Campaigners see the hoarding of bulbs in a dim light. "It's a bad idea," says Ben Stewart of Greenpeace. "They're not only bad for the climate but mean a bigger electricity bill. Incandescent light bulbs were invented in the 1880s and use 80% more electricity than energy saving ones. The time has come to move into the 21st Century."

There are certain people who will stick to their incandescent lights, whether it be film companies, or art galleries using the yet-to-be-restricted halogen type, and get their supplies through specialist sources.

But for the ordinary punter, the pursuit of the warm glow of the traditional tungsten incandescent will soon get a lot harder.

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Germany to start storing carbon dioxide underground

Yahoo News 30 Jun 08;

Germany is due to inaugurate Europe's first underground carbon dioxide storage site on Monday, the country's national geoscience institute said.

The site at Ketzin, outside Berlin, is part of a European project dubbed CO2SINK which aims to test whether capturing and storing carbon dioxide in subterranean rock is a viable way of fighting global warming, the GFZ centre in Potsdam said.

It will pump up 60,000 tonnes of the greenhouse gas into porous, salt water-filled rock at depths of more than 600 metres (656 yards) over the next two years, the centre said.

The first injection of gas below the surface was due to take place later on Monday.

Reinhard Huettl, the science director of the institute, said storing carbon dioxide underground could slow down global warming and thereby buy scientists extra time to develop alternative energy sources.

"The storage of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide is an option to win time in the development and introduction of carbon dioxide-reduced energy technology," he said.

Huettl said the site will become a "unique worldwide laboratory" to study the success of the world's main global warming gas.

Some environmental groups have expressed reservations about capturing carbon emissions produced by industry to store it below ground, with Greenpeace saying it posed the risk of highly toxic leaks.

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Britain Seeks to Set Pace in Carbon Capture Quest

Jeremy Lovell, PlanetArk 1 Jul 08;

LONDON - Britain was on Monday announcing a shortlist of firms in a tender to build the world's first commercial-scale power plant to burn coal and gas without adding to global warming.

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) promises a technological solution to soaring emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning power plants -- but with strings attached.

"It is the great panacea. It would mean not having to do the hard things like changing the way we live," said Michael Grubb, chief economist at Britain's Carbon Trust.

"The trouble is that while everybody says it can be done, no one has yet done it. There are very big companies out there with very deep pockets but even they are not doing it."

The reason is cost.

"Estimates tend to group around an extra 30 to 50 percent in capital costs and around 15 percent more in running costs of a power station," said Tom Burke of environment lobby group E3G.

At the same time, power output is cut by anywhere between 10 and 30 percent, depending on the technology used.

The resulting extra cost of building and running a CCS power station means no company is prepared to invest in trying out the technology, and perhaps finding ways to improve and streamline it, without enormous subsidies.

The winner of the British competition will get help from the government likely to run into hundreds of millions of pounds.


VAST MARKET

The incentive for power firms is that, if CCS can be made commercially viable, demand for the technology could be huge.

The International Energy Agency says the quantity of coal -- the dirtiest fuel -- being burned worldwide will double to the equivalent of 5 billion tonnes of oil by 2030.

"Potentially the market for this technology is going to be worth trillions -- of whatever currency you name," said Jeff Chapman of Britain's Carbon Capture and Storage Association.

The carbon is captured either before or after burning a fossil fuel at a power station, then put deep underground in a geological formation such as a saline aquifer or old oil or gas field where it cannot pollute the atmosphere.

Chapman says regulation is needed as well as incentives: "In Australia, Canada, the United States, Germany, the Netherlands and Norway as well as Britain companies are ready and waiting."

The European Union wants 12 full-sized pilot projects to be running by 2015, and the technology commercially viable by 2020.

Utilities such as Germany's E.ON and RWE and oil majors such as Royal Dutch Shell, Total and BP have voiced an interest, but only in Britain has progress been made with a CCS competition.


MORE AND MORE URGENT

But the problem is increasingly urgent.

Atmospheric carbon is already at 385 parts per million (ppm) and rising at around two ppm a year. Scientists say 450 ppm is equivalent to a rise of two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels in global average temperatures, and is about the limit the planet can stand without wholesale extinction of species.

Lars Josefsson, head of the Swedish power firm Vattenfall, told a climate change seminar last week that CCS could account for 3 billion tonnes of CO2 abatement globally by 2030.

This would make a sizeable dent in the world's current output of over 6 billion tonnes of CO2 a year, even though this figure will rise steeply as countries such as China and India fuel much of their economic expansion with coal.

But no one has yet managed to make CCS work at commercial scale and therefore no one knows the true cost -- or if it really can be a planet saver.

Norway has been storing oil under the Sleipner oil field for a decade with no trouble, but only in a tiny trial.

Middle Eastern oil states are also interested because carbon dioxide has successfully been used to push more oil out of depleting wells and exhausted wells are in effect vast unused parking lots for unwanted CO2, the main climate culprit.

Masdar, the United Arab Emirates' clean technology fund, is keen to build a national CCS network and Saudi Arabia is also investing heavily in carbon storage research.

China, which is building a coal-fired power station a week, is also interested, and boasts the capacity to store over a trillion of tonnes of CO2 underground.

But the scale of the challenge is also vast.

Josefsson said new calculations showed average carbon output had to be cut to just one tonne per person by the end of the century to avert dramatic climate change. In the United States it is currently 20 tonnes, while in Europe it is around 12. (Additional reporting by Simon Webb in Dubai, editing by Kate Kelland and Kevin Liffey)

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Experts urge states to invest in CO2 carbon capture and storage

Yahoo News 30 Jun 08;

Capturing and storing carbon emissions from power generation holds the key to managing climate change amid rising use of polluting oil, gas and coal, an international CO2 conference heard in The Hague on Monday.

But the technology and infrastructure required to maximise carbon capture and storage (CCS) is being neglected due to high costs, an absence of business incentives and insufficient political will, experts also said.

"Without CCS, we could not draft any (plan) that reaches the greenhouse gas reduction target," the International Energy Agency's (IEA) policy analysis director Pieter Boot told the gathering jointly organised by the Netherlands and Saudi Arabia.

"One can argue that without CCS, climate policy will not succeed."

The conference was held as Germany was due to inaugurate Europe's first underground carbon dioxide storage site.

The site at Ketzin, outside Berlin, is part of a European project dubbed CO2SINK which aims to test whether capturing and storing carbon dioxide in subterranean rock is a viable way of fighting global warming.

It will pump up 60,000 tonnes of the greenhouse gas into porous, salt water-filled rock at depths of more than 600 metres (2,000 feet) over the next two years, the national geoscience institute said.

The first injection of gas below the surface was due to take place later on Monday.

Boot said world energy consumption was expected to rise 55 percent by 2030, of which fossil fuels made up 84 percent. CCS should account for 21 percent of the global aim to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

This would entail the erection of 35 coal-fired and 20 gas-fired power stations with CCS facilities every year from 2010, said Boot.

To this end, the IEA believed that governments must subsidise the initial steps, including building the pipelines to transport CO2.

"You cannot expect that private companies will do this alone. This ... is a litmus test whether governments are serious on climate policy or not. They can talk a lot, but this is the litmus test, because this costs money," said Boot.

Canada's Kevin Stringer said incentives for the business sector were lacking.

"The industry is waiting ... saying: 'Let's wait for someone else to develop the technology, the costs will be lower'.

But Tone Skogan, deputy director general in the Norwegian ministry of petroleum and energy, said the incentive for business was one of survival in a world where global warming was a key concern.

"If they want to be in business in the longer term they had better be in a position to deal with this."

Weiyang Fei, a member of the Chinese Academy of Science, said that with today's technology, CCS would add about 30 percent to electricity costs.

"The cost of CCS is much too high at the moment," he told delegates.

Despite CCS investment requiring an estimated hundredfold increase, Boot said effective carbon capture and storage was viable.

"But of course it has to do with the political decisions. In principle, it is possible. We must just start."

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Study: World Gets Happier

LiveScience.com, Yahoo News 30 Jun 08;

Despite the anxieties of these times, happiness has been on the rise around the world in recent years, a new survey finds.

The upbeat outlook is attributed to economic growth in previously poor countries, democratization of others, and rising social tolerance for women and minority groups.

"It's a surprising finding," said University of Michigan political scientist Ronald Inglehart, who headed up the survey. "It's widely believed that it's almost impossible to raise an entire country's happiness level."

Denmark is the happiest nation and Zimbabwe the the most glum, he found. (Zimbabwe's longtime ruler Robert Mugabe was sworn in as president for a sixth term Sunday after a widely discredited runoff in which he was the only candidate. Observers said the runoff was marred by violence and intimidation.)

The United States ranks 16th.

The results of the survey, going back an average of 17 years in 52 countries and involving 350,000 people, will be published in the July 2008 issue of the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science. Researchers have asked the same two questions over the years: "Taking all things together, would you say you are very happy, rather happy, not very happy, not at all happy?" And, "All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days?"

A Happiness Index created from the answers rose in 40 countries between 1981 and 2007, and it fell in the other 12.

Scientists had thought happiness is stable over time when looking at entire societies. "Most previous research suggests that people and nations are stuck on a 'hedonic treadmill,'" Inglehart said. "The belief has been that no matter what happens or what we do, basic happiness levels are stable and don't really change."

So Inglehart's team was surprised that happiness "rose substantially." They speculate reasons for the sunny outlooks include societal shifts in recent decades: Low-income countries such as India and China have experienced unprecedented rates of economic growth; dozens of medium-income countries have democratized; and there has been a sharp rise of gender equality and tolerance of ethnic minorities and gays and lesbians in developed societies.

Previous research has found that happiness is partly inherited and that money doesn't buy much of it.

Yet the new survey finds people of rich countries tend to be happier than those of poor countries. And controlling for economic factors, certain types of societies are much happier than others.

"The results clearly show that the happiest societies are those that allow people the freedom to choose how to live their lives," Inglehart said.

A survey released last week found one reason America doesn't top the list: Baby Boomers are generally miserable compared to other generations. Further, a public opinion poll released by the Pew Research Center in April found that 81 percent of Americans say they believe the country is on the "wrong track." The response is the most negative in the 25 years pollsters have asked the question.

The World Values Surveys, led by Inglehart, was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Swedish and Netherlands Foreign Ministries, and other institutions.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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