WWF 27 Jan 09;
Comprehensive certification for sustainable aquaculture came closer to fruition today with an announcement by WWF that it would co-found the Aquaculture Stewardship Council to take eventual possession of the global standards for responsible seafood farming currently being developed by the WWF-supported Aquaculture Dialogue roundtables.
The new body, modelled on the highly successful and world leading Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) for wild-caught seafood, will be responsible for hiring independent, third-party auditors to certify farms that are in compliance with the standards.
WWF is funding the development of a business plan for this new venture, which is expected to be in operation within two years, and will contribute funding to implement the plan.
More than 2,000 farmers, conservationists, government officials and others participate in the open Aquaculture Dialogue meetings – making this the world’s most inclusive and transparent process for creating measurable, performance-based standards for aquaculture. WWF, which coordinates the Dialogues, is one of the stakeholder groups engaged in the process.
“This is an unprecedented effort to ensure that future aquaculture is environmentally sustainable, and also well positioned to meet the growing demand for seafood worldwide,” said WWF-International Director General James Leape.
“These new standards will raise the bar in the industry, giving consumers assurance that their food purchases are helping to protect the environment.”
Over the next year, draft standards for minimizing the key environmental and social impacts associated with aquaculture will be completed for nine aquaculture species that have the greatest impact on the environment, highest market value and/or the heaviest trading in the global market. They are salmon, shrimp, trout, pangasius, abalone, mussels, clams, oysters and scallops. Draft standards for tilapia were posted for public comment in September 2008 and are expected to be completed this spring.
“This investment aligns perfectly with WWF’s goal of protecting the world’s oceans and coastal habitats while providing innovative paths for feeding the world more efficiently and sustainably,” said WWF-US President Carter Roberts,
“With a credible entity in place for certifying farmed seafood, the seafood industry can continue to grow but in a way that is environmentally responsible.”
A key component of the business plan will be following the International Social and Environmental Accreditation and Labelling (ISEAL) Alliance’s guidelines for certification programs – the world’s most reputable guidelines for addressing social and environmental issues. None of the existing aquaculture certification schemes have governance structures that are in compliance with ISEAL. The MSC and Forestry Stewardship Council, also co-founded by WWF, are ISEAL compliant.
Best of our wild blogs: 27 Jan 09
Northern mangroves of Pulau Ubin
on the wild shores of singapore blog
Butterflies of Telok Blangah Hill Park
on the Beauty of Fauna and Flora in Nature blog
Seagrass monitoring at Labrador
on the labrador blog
Oriental Pied Hornbill eating MacArthur palm fruit
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog
Turtles, tortoises and terrapins on Pulau Ubin
on the ubin.sgkopi blog
Seen on STOMP: Animal cruelty at temple?
on the Lazy Lizard's Tales blog
Long journey home from Pulau Ubin
on the wild shores of singapore blog
Government to help Riau investigate source of massive wildfires
Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post 27 Jan 09;
The government is looking into whether the massive forest fires in Riau province, which have mostly struck easily burned peatland areas since last week, are man-made incidents.
The team — headed by the Office of the State Minister for the Environment’s investigation division head, Sahaifuddin Akbar — is expected to submit its findings to minister Rachmat Witoelar on Tuesday.
“Our team is still in the field, investigating whether the fires were intentionally set by companies or people,” Illyas Asaad, deputy minister for environmental compliance, told The Jakarta Post on Monday.
“If the findings show the forest fires were intentionally set by companies, we promise to take stern action against the violators.”
A source close to the issue told the Post the forest fires were sparked because of massive business expansions by several companies operating in the province.
“According to our spatial data, there is a strong indication the ongoing forest fires are related to the expansions of two or three companies. We find the hot spots are located at the same coordinates as the companies’,” the source said.
The source also added the environment ministry could directly withdraw the firms’ business permits temporarily while the investigation was ongoing.
Thick smog from forest fires has blanketed Riau since Thursday, Antara news agency reported.
Data recorded by Singapore’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite show there were 142 hot spots as of Thursday.
A hot spot is defined as a fire covering at least a hectare.
Riau has asked for help from the government to stop forest fires, after flames encroached on Bengkalis, Palelawan, Indragiri Hilir and Dumai.
“We need help from the government, including helicopter and other equipment,” Deputy Governor Raja Mambang Mit said Monday.
“Our team is facing difficulties stopping the fires, because of the lack of equipment.”
Indonesia is the world’s third largest forest nation, with 120 million hectares of rainforest.
Frequent forest fires and rampant illegal logging, including in Riau, are two major causes of forest degradation across the country, making Indonesia among the biggest polluters in the world and a major climate-change culprit.
Neighboring Singapore and Malaysia have long complained about polluted smog ”exported” by Indonesia due to forest fires.
In 2006, 145,000 hot spots were detected, making it the second worst season since 1997. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was forced to apologize to neighboring countries for the 2006 fires.
The government is looking into whether the massive forest fires in Riau province, which have mostly struck easily burned peatland areas since last week, are man-made incidents.
The team — headed by the Office of the State Minister for the Environment’s investigation division head, Sahaifuddin Akbar — is expected to submit its findings to minister Rachmat Witoelar on Tuesday.
“Our team is still in the field, investigating whether the fires were intentionally set by companies or people,” Illyas Asaad, deputy minister for environmental compliance, told The Jakarta Post on Monday.
“If the findings show the forest fires were intentionally set by companies, we promise to take stern action against the violators.”
A source close to the issue told the Post the forest fires were sparked because of massive business expansions by several companies operating in the province.
“According to our spatial data, there is a strong indication the ongoing forest fires are related to the expansions of two or three companies. We find the hot spots are located at the same coordinates as the companies’,” the source said.
The source also added the environment ministry could directly withdraw the firms’ business permits temporarily while the investigation was ongoing.
Thick smog from forest fires has blanketed Riau since Thursday, Antara news agency reported.
Data recorded by Singapore’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite show there were 142 hot spots as of Thursday.
A hot spot is defined as a fire covering at least a hectare.
Riau has asked for help from the government to stop forest fires, after flames encroached on Bengkalis, Palelawan, Indragiri Hilir and Dumai.
“We need help from the government, including helicopter and other equipment,” Deputy Governor Raja Mambang Mit said Monday.
“Our team is facing difficulties stopping the fires, because of the lack of equipment.”
Indonesia is the world’s third largest forest nation, with 120 million hectares of rainforest.
Frequent forest fires and rampant illegal logging, including in Riau, are two major causes of forest degradation across the country, making Indonesia among the biggest polluters in the world and a major climate-change culprit.
Neighboring Singapore and Malaysia have long complained about polluted smog ”exported” by Indonesia due to forest fires.
In 2006, 145,000 hot spots were detected, making it the second worst season since 1997. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was forced to apologize to neighboring countries for the 2006 fires.
Singapore government to spend S$1b on sustainable development projects
Pearl Forss, Channel NewsAsia 26 Jan 09;
SINGAPORE : S$1 billion has been earmarked for greening Singapore's infrastructure over the next five years.
Experts said the real challenge lies not in new developments, but in retrofitting existing buildings.
Lee Siew Eang, head, Energy Sustainability Unit, School of Design and Environment, National University of Singapore, said: "That forms approximately about 80 per cent of our existing building stocks and these lots of buildings will be operating for a long time to come, perhaps for the next 20, 30 years... we really should look into making sure that they are more energy efficient, more sustainable."
One area to target is air conditioning systems, which consume about 60 per cent of energy in most buildings.
For buildings that are inefficient, this number can go up to 80 per cent.
A government subsidy for landlords to become more energy efficient will certainly help to reduce the nation's carbon footprint.
Other initiatives to consider include more solar-powered public lighting, or motion sensor lights that remain off when no one is around.
But one problem that Singapore faces in the implementation of clean or renewable energy projects is the lack of local expertise.
Many of these projects currently rely on foreign consultants. But the government hopes to change that by subsidising professional conversion courses, so that a mechanical engineer retrenched in the manufacturing sector, for example, can undergo training, and then play a part in greening Singapore.
The Building and Construction Authority plans to train at least 8,000 specialists in areas like sustainable building design and energy management, over the next five years. - CNA/ms
SINGAPORE : S$1 billion has been earmarked for greening Singapore's infrastructure over the next five years.
Experts said the real challenge lies not in new developments, but in retrofitting existing buildings.
Lee Siew Eang, head, Energy Sustainability Unit, School of Design and Environment, National University of Singapore, said: "That forms approximately about 80 per cent of our existing building stocks and these lots of buildings will be operating for a long time to come, perhaps for the next 20, 30 years... we really should look into making sure that they are more energy efficient, more sustainable."
One area to target is air conditioning systems, which consume about 60 per cent of energy in most buildings.
For buildings that are inefficient, this number can go up to 80 per cent.
A government subsidy for landlords to become more energy efficient will certainly help to reduce the nation's carbon footprint.
Other initiatives to consider include more solar-powered public lighting, or motion sensor lights that remain off when no one is around.
But one problem that Singapore faces in the implementation of clean or renewable energy projects is the lack of local expertise.
Many of these projects currently rely on foreign consultants. But the government hopes to change that by subsidising professional conversion courses, so that a mechanical engineer retrenched in the manufacturing sector, for example, can undergo training, and then play a part in greening Singapore.
The Building and Construction Authority plans to train at least 8,000 specialists in areas like sustainable building design and energy management, over the next five years. - CNA/ms
Singaporeans gather at Science Centre, mosque to watch solar eclipse
Hetty Musfirah Abdul Khamid, Channel NewsAsia 26 Jan 09
SINGAPORE : It was the first solar eclipse of the year, and many said it was the clearest seen in 10 years.
More than 6,400 people were at the Singapore Science Centre's Observatory Centre on Monday to watch the rare phenomenon unfold at about 4.30pm.
However, before the maximum eclipse could be seen, visibility started to dip at about 5.40pm.
Another group of Singaporeans was at the Al-Firdaus Mosque to witness the same natural phenomenon.
They also took part in activities which included calculating and predicting the next solar eclipse.
Experts said the next solar eclipse that can be seen in Singapore will likely be on July 22 this year.
However, it will be not be as vivid as the one on Monday, where observers could see the moon's shadow covering almost 80 per cent of the sun's surface. - CNA/ms
Indonesians among the few to witness solar eclipse
Zakki Hakim, Associated Press Yahoo News 26 May 09;
ANYER, Indonesia – Indonesians were among the few worldwide to witness an eclipse of the sun Monday, some cheering and banging on drums as the moon slowly crossed its path, blocking out everything but a thin, blazing rim of fire.
Dozens gathered in the western coastal town of Anyer to see the spectacle, which peaked at 4:40 p.m. and lasted for about four minutes.
"I'm old, but I still think this is magical," said Roanna Makmur, 66, who drove several hours with eight friends to witness the sight, known as an annular eclipse, because it does not completely black out the sun.
"I can't help but feel the greatness of God," she said, as fellow onlookers applauded and then fell silent. "Anyone who passed up this opportunity, really missed out."
Annular eclipses, which are considered far less important to astronomers than total eclipses of the sun, occur about 66 times a century and can only be viewed by people in the narrow band along its path.
Aside from several regions in Indonesia — from Sumatra island in the west to Kalimantan in the east — only villagers on a tiny South Pacific island group known as the Cocos could see Monday's eclipse, said Jay Pasachoff, professor of astronomy at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. He is also a chair of the International Astronomical Union's Working Group on Eclipses.
But a partial eclipse — with coverage ranging from 1 percent to 84 percent of the sun's diameter — was to visible in the southern third of Africa, in southeastern India, and Southeast Asia, as well as the western part of Australia.
Hundreds turned out in Indonesia's Samarinda, the capital of East Kalimantan province, where more than 90 percent of the sun's diameter was covered. Some ignored danger warnings and looked directly at the sun. Others wore sunglasses to protect their eyes or looked at its reflection in buckets of water.
"We are so happy we were able to see this," said Fauziah Sulaiman, a mother of two, who was standing outside her house. "It's great for the children, especially after learning about it in school."
The last total eclipse of the sun was Aug. 1, 2008, and was visible in Canada, across northern Greenland, the Arctic, central Russia, Mongolia and China.
The next total eclipse will be July 22, 2009, and will be visible in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar, China and some Japanese islands.
Clouds mar Saros 131 annular solar eclipse sighting
The Jakarta Post 26 Jan 09;
The Meteorology and Geophysics Agency (BMG) in Serang, Banten, predicted Monday clouds would block sightings of a solar eclipse taking place over Banten and the Sunda Straits between 13:00 and 15:00 today.
"Clouds will be spread evenly across the Banten sky," Serang BMG official Muhammad Tatang Hermawan told tempointeraktif.com.
He added rain would most likely be falling around Banten while the eclipse was happening.
"It's possible the eclipse will not be visible or, if it is, it probably won't offer a perfect sighting," Hermawan said, adding the eclipse would not affect the tide levels or wave height along the Sunda Straits.
During its 3-hour 46' trajectory across the earth's surface, the moon's antumbra will pass over about 14,500 kilometers and covers 0.9 percent of the planet’s surface area.
An antumbra refers to the moon’s negative shadow that appears when the moon is on the far side of its orbit and its umbral shadow is not long enough to reach the earth.
This is the 50th eclipse of Saros 131. The Saros cycle refers to the cycle of 18 years, 11 days and eight hours in which this particular kind of eclipse recurs.
The first annular eclipse of Saros 131 recorded occurred on August 4, 1720.
The eclipse’s partial phases will be visible primarily from southern Africa, Australia and Southeast Asia, including Indonesia. (amr)
SINGAPORE : It was the first solar eclipse of the year, and many said it was the clearest seen in 10 years.
More than 6,400 people were at the Singapore Science Centre's Observatory Centre on Monday to watch the rare phenomenon unfold at about 4.30pm.
However, before the maximum eclipse could be seen, visibility started to dip at about 5.40pm.Another group of Singaporeans was at the Al-Firdaus Mosque to witness the same natural phenomenon.
They also took part in activities which included calculating and predicting the next solar eclipse.
Experts said the next solar eclipse that can be seen in Singapore will likely be on July 22 this year.
However, it will be not be as vivid as the one on Monday, where observers could see the moon's shadow covering almost 80 per cent of the sun's surface. - CNA/ms
Indonesians among the few to witness solar eclipse
Zakki Hakim, Associated Press Yahoo News 26 May 09;
ANYER, Indonesia – Indonesians were among the few worldwide to witness an eclipse of the sun Monday, some cheering and banging on drums as the moon slowly crossed its path, blocking out everything but a thin, blazing rim of fire.
Dozens gathered in the western coastal town of Anyer to see the spectacle, which peaked at 4:40 p.m. and lasted for about four minutes."I'm old, but I still think this is magical," said Roanna Makmur, 66, who drove several hours with eight friends to witness the sight, known as an annular eclipse, because it does not completely black out the sun.
"I can't help but feel the greatness of God," she said, as fellow onlookers applauded and then fell silent. "Anyone who passed up this opportunity, really missed out."
Annular eclipses, which are considered far less important to astronomers than total eclipses of the sun, occur about 66 times a century and can only be viewed by people in the narrow band along its path.
Aside from several regions in Indonesia — from Sumatra island in the west to Kalimantan in the east — only villagers on a tiny South Pacific island group known as the Cocos could see Monday's eclipse, said Jay Pasachoff, professor of astronomy at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. He is also a chair of the International Astronomical Union's Working Group on Eclipses.
But a partial eclipse — with coverage ranging from 1 percent to 84 percent of the sun's diameter — was to visible in the southern third of Africa, in southeastern India, and Southeast Asia, as well as the western part of Australia.
Hundreds turned out in Indonesia's Samarinda, the capital of East Kalimantan province, where more than 90 percent of the sun's diameter was covered. Some ignored danger warnings and looked directly at the sun. Others wore sunglasses to protect their eyes or looked at its reflection in buckets of water.
"We are so happy we were able to see this," said Fauziah Sulaiman, a mother of two, who was standing outside her house. "It's great for the children, especially after learning about it in school."
The last total eclipse of the sun was Aug. 1, 2008, and was visible in Canada, across northern Greenland, the Arctic, central Russia, Mongolia and China.
The next total eclipse will be July 22, 2009, and will be visible in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar, China and some Japanese islands.
Clouds mar Saros 131 annular solar eclipse sighting
The Jakarta Post 26 Jan 09;
The Meteorology and Geophysics Agency (BMG) in Serang, Banten, predicted Monday clouds would block sightings of a solar eclipse taking place over Banten and the Sunda Straits between 13:00 and 15:00 today.
"Clouds will be spread evenly across the Banten sky," Serang BMG official Muhammad Tatang Hermawan told tempointeraktif.com.
He added rain would most likely be falling around Banten while the eclipse was happening.
"It's possible the eclipse will not be visible or, if it is, it probably won't offer a perfect sighting," Hermawan said, adding the eclipse would not affect the tide levels or wave height along the Sunda Straits.
During its 3-hour 46' trajectory across the earth's surface, the moon's antumbra will pass over about 14,500 kilometers and covers 0.9 percent of the planet’s surface area.
An antumbra refers to the moon’s negative shadow that appears when the moon is on the far side of its orbit and its umbral shadow is not long enough to reach the earth.
This is the 50th eclipse of Saros 131. The Saros cycle refers to the cycle of 18 years, 11 days and eight hours in which this particular kind of eclipse recurs.
The first annular eclipse of Saros 131 recorded occurred on August 4, 1720.
The eclipse’s partial phases will be visible primarily from southern Africa, Australia and Southeast Asia, including Indonesia. (amr)
Report: Some climate damage already irreversible
Randolph E. Schmid, Associated Press 27 Jan 09;
WASHINGTON – Many damaging effects of climate change are already basically irreversible, researchers declared Monday, warning that even if carbon emissions can somehow be halted temperatures around the globe will remain high until at least the year 3000.
"People have imagined that if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide the climate would go back to normal in 100 years, 200 years; that's not true," climate researcher Susan Solomon said in a teleconference.
Solomon, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo., is lead author of an international team's paper reporting irreversible damage from climate change, being published in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
She defines "irreversible" as change that would remain for 1,000 years even if humans stopped adding carbon to the atmosphere immediately.
The findings were announced as President Barack Obama ordered reviews that could lead to greater fuel efficiency and cleaner air, saying the Earth's future depends on cutting air pollution.
Said Solomon, "Climate change is slow, but it is unstoppable" — all the more reason to act quickly, so the long-term situation doesn't get even worse.
Alan Robock, of the Center for Environmental Prediction at Rutgers University, agreed with the report's assessment.
"It's not like air pollution where if we turn off a smokestack, in a few days the air is clear," said Robock, who was not part of Solomon's research team. "It means we have to try even harder to reduce emissions," he said in a telephone interview.
Solomon's report "is quite important, not alarmist, and very important for the current debates on climate policy," added Jonathan Overpeck, a climate researcher at the University of Arizona.
In her paper Solomon, a leader of the International Panel on Climate Change and one of the world's best known researchers on the subject, noted that temperatures around the globe have risen and changes in rainfall patterns have been observed in areas around the Mediterranean, southern Africa and southwestern North America.
Warmer climate also is causing expansion of the ocean, and that is expected to increase with the melting of ice on Greenland and Antarctica, the researchers said.
"I don't think that the very long time scale of the persistence of these effects has been understood," Solomon said.
Global warming has been slowed by the ocean, Solomon said, because water absorbs a lot of energy to warm up. But that good effect will not only wane over time, the ocean will help keep the planet warmer by giving off its accumulated heat to the air.
Climate change has been driven by gases in the atmosphere that trap heat from solar radiation and raise the planet's temperature — the "greenhouse effect." Carbon dioxide has been the most important of those gases because it remains in the air for hundreds of years. While other gases are responsible for nearly half of the warming, they degrade more rapidly, Solomon said.
Before the industrial revolution the air contained about 280 parts per million of carbon dioxide. That has risen to 385 ppm today, and politicians and scientists have debated at what level it could be stabilized.
Solomon's paper concludes that if CO2 is allowed to peak at 450-600 parts per million, the results would include persistent decreases in dry-season rainfall that are comparable to the 1930s North American Dust Bowl in zones including southern Europe, northern Africa, southwestern North America, southern Africa and western Australia.
Gerald Meehl, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said, "The real concern is that the longer we wait to do something, the higher the level of irreversible climate change to which we'll have to adapt." Meehl was not part of Solomon's research team.
While scientists have been aware of the long-term aspects of climate change, the new report highlights and provides more specifics on them, said Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the center.
"This aspect is one that is poorly appreciated by policymakers and the general public and it is real," said Trenberth, who was not part of the research group.
"The temperature changes and the sea level changes are, if anything underestimated and quite conservative, especially for sea level," he said.
While he agreed that the rainfall changes mentioned in the paper are under way, Trenberth disagreed with some details of that part of the report.
"Even so, there would be changes in snow (to rain), snow pack and water resources, and irreversible consequences even if not quite the way the authors describe," he said. "The policy relevance is clear: We need to act sooner ... because by the time the public and policymakers really realize the changes are here it is far too late to do anything about it. In fact, as the authors point out, it is already too late for some effects."
Co-authors of the paper were Gian-Kaspar Plattner and Reto Knutti of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and Pierre Friedlingstein of the National Institute for Scientific Research, Gif sur Yvette, France.
The research was supported by the Office of Science at the Department of Energy.
Fast Action Needed To Avoid Climate Chaos: Study
Pete Harrison, PlanetArk 27 Jan 09;
BRUSSELS - Global temperature rises due to climate change could be kept below the critical 2 degree mark by fast international action to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 70 percent by 2030, a report said on Monday.
Scientists say that if temperatures increase beyond 2 degrees, humanity faces severe environmental fallout, such as melting polar ice caps and rising sealevels.
Increasing numbers of scientists and politicians question whether the 2 degrees goal is achievable, given the slow progress of international negotiations so far.
But it is not too late to avert dangerous climate change, said the report by consultancy McKinsey and backed by ten organizations including energy companies, Enel, Vattenfall and Royal Dutch Shell.
"Achieving the deep emissions cuts required to keep global warming below the 2 degrees limit is possible but difficult," said McKinsey director Tomas Naucler.
Global investment of 530 billion euros ($686 billion) would be needed by 2020, and 810 billion by 2030, the report added.
Countries would offset much of the cost by simultaneously cutting their bills for oil, gas and coal, resulting in a net cost of less than 1 percent of gross domestic product.
The report comes one month after the European Union agreed ambitious measures to cut carbon dioxide and amid renewed optimism U.S. President Barack Obama will lend fresh momentum to global talks after having pledged to curb emissions at home.
Obama will start reversing former President George W. Bush's climate policies on Monday with steps to raise fuel efficiency standards and to grant states authority to limit emissions from cars, officials say.
Keeping climate change manageable would require fast global action, said the report.
A 70 percent cut in emissions by 2030 would see greenhouse gas emissions peaking at 480 parts per million (ppm), roughly the level scientists say would cause a 2 degree rise.
But a 10-year delay would make it difficult to keep greenhouse gas emissions below 550 parts per million (ppm).
"Every year of delay adds to the challenge, not only because emissions will continue to grow during that year, but also because it will lock the economy into high-carbon infrastructure," said the report.
Long Droughts, Rising Seas Predicted Despite Future CO2 Curbs
Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post 27 Jan 09;
Greenhouse gas levels currently expected by mid-century will produce devastating long-term droughts and a sea-level rise that will persist for 1,000 years regardless of how well the world curbs future emissions of carbon dioxide, an international team of scientists reported yesterday.
Top climate researchers from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Switzerland and France said their analysis shows that carbon dioxide will remain near peak levels in the atmosphere far longer than other greenhouse gases, which dissipate relatively quickly.
"I think you have to think about this stuff as more like nuclear waste than acid rain: The more we add, the worse off we'll be," NOAA senior scientist Susan Solomon told reporters in a conference call. "The more time that we take to make decisions about carbon dioxide, the more irreversible climate change we'll be locked into."
At the moment, carbon concentrations in the atmosphere stand at 385 parts per million. Many climate scientists and the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have set a goal of stabilizing atmospheric carbon at 450 ppm, but current projections put the world on track to hit 550 ppm by 2035, rising after that point by 4.5 percent a year.
The new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, projects that if carbon dioxide concentrations peak at 600 ppm, several regions of the world -- including southwestern North America, the Mediterranean and southern Africa -- will face major droughts as bad or worse than the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Global sea levels will rise by roughly three feet by the year 3000, a projection that does not factor in melting glaciers and polar ice sheets that would probably result in significant additional sea level rises.
Even if the world managed to halt the carbon dioxide buildup at 450 ppm, the researchers concluded, the subtropics would experience a 10 percent decrease in precipitation, compared with the 15 percent decrease they would see at 600 ppm. That level is still akin to mega-droughts such as the Dust Bowl. The already parched U.S. Southwest would probably see a 5 percent drop in precipitation during its dry season.
Mary-Elena Carr, associate director of the Columbia Climate Center, called the new projections "very sobering." She noted that while societies can try to adapt to reduced precipitation with better farming techniques and other measures, there is a limit to the ability to cope with severe drought.
"When it's drought, that is hard, because we have a finite amount of water and a growing population we need to feed," Carr said, adding the severe storm surges associated with higher sea levels also pose a dangerous challenge to large populations.
The rising sea levels anticipated under a conservative projection, the authors wrote, would cause "irreversible commitments to future changes in the geography of the Earth, since many coastal and island features would ultimately become submerged."
The scientists noted that the world's oceans are already absorbing an enormous amount of carbon, but over time this will reach a limit and they will no longer absorb as much. As this happens, the atmospheric temperature will remain nearly constant.
Most previous scientific analyses, including the U.N. panel's summary report for policymakers, have assessed climate change impacts on a 100-year time scale. A few researchers, such as Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology, have argued that it makes more sense to look at a time scale of at least 500 years.
In an e-mail yesterday, Caldeira wrote that he had debated this point with other contributors to the U.N. reports in 2001, adding, "If you took our long term climate commitment seriously, you would not use 100-year [global warming projections] to compare effects of different gases."
Carbon dioxide emissions account only for roughly half of human-induced global warming, but the several other gases that play a role, including methane, dissipate more quickly. Solomon said policymakers could take this into account when deciding how best to reduce greenhouse gases overall.
"We ought to be extra careful about how much carbon dioxide we put out in the future," she said, adding that politicians often focus on the less certain but potentially disastrous impacts of climate change but would do well to focus on the more predictable consequences. "The parts that we don't know, that are possible but very uncertain, shouldn't get in the way of what we do know."
A separate study in the same journal yesterday suggests that the iconic emperor penguins of the Antarctic could be headed to extinction by 2100 if the sea ice shrinks by the predicted amounts. That paper -- authored by scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, National Center for Atmospheric Research, the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder and France's Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique -- projects that the number of breeding pairs in a colony in Terre Adelie, Antarctica, will decline from roughly 6,000 to 400 by the end of the century because the animals depend on sea ice for breeding, foraging and molting habitat.
Emperor penguins would have to migrate or change the timing of their growth stages to avoid extinction, the authors write, but "evolution or migration seem unlikely for such long-lived species at the remote southern end of the Earth."
WASHINGTON – Many damaging effects of climate change are already basically irreversible, researchers declared Monday, warning that even if carbon emissions can somehow be halted temperatures around the globe will remain high until at least the year 3000.
"People have imagined that if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide the climate would go back to normal in 100 years, 200 years; that's not true," climate researcher Susan Solomon said in a teleconference.
Solomon, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo., is lead author of an international team's paper reporting irreversible damage from climate change, being published in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
She defines "irreversible" as change that would remain for 1,000 years even if humans stopped adding carbon to the atmosphere immediately.
The findings were announced as President Barack Obama ordered reviews that could lead to greater fuel efficiency and cleaner air, saying the Earth's future depends on cutting air pollution.
Said Solomon, "Climate change is slow, but it is unstoppable" — all the more reason to act quickly, so the long-term situation doesn't get even worse.
Alan Robock, of the Center for Environmental Prediction at Rutgers University, agreed with the report's assessment.
"It's not like air pollution where if we turn off a smokestack, in a few days the air is clear," said Robock, who was not part of Solomon's research team. "It means we have to try even harder to reduce emissions," he said in a telephone interview.
Solomon's report "is quite important, not alarmist, and very important for the current debates on climate policy," added Jonathan Overpeck, a climate researcher at the University of Arizona.
In her paper Solomon, a leader of the International Panel on Climate Change and one of the world's best known researchers on the subject, noted that temperatures around the globe have risen and changes in rainfall patterns have been observed in areas around the Mediterranean, southern Africa and southwestern North America.
Warmer climate also is causing expansion of the ocean, and that is expected to increase with the melting of ice on Greenland and Antarctica, the researchers said.
"I don't think that the very long time scale of the persistence of these effects has been understood," Solomon said.
Global warming has been slowed by the ocean, Solomon said, because water absorbs a lot of energy to warm up. But that good effect will not only wane over time, the ocean will help keep the planet warmer by giving off its accumulated heat to the air.
Climate change has been driven by gases in the atmosphere that trap heat from solar radiation and raise the planet's temperature — the "greenhouse effect." Carbon dioxide has been the most important of those gases because it remains in the air for hundreds of years. While other gases are responsible for nearly half of the warming, they degrade more rapidly, Solomon said.
Before the industrial revolution the air contained about 280 parts per million of carbon dioxide. That has risen to 385 ppm today, and politicians and scientists have debated at what level it could be stabilized.
Solomon's paper concludes that if CO2 is allowed to peak at 450-600 parts per million, the results would include persistent decreases in dry-season rainfall that are comparable to the 1930s North American Dust Bowl in zones including southern Europe, northern Africa, southwestern North America, southern Africa and western Australia.
Gerald Meehl, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said, "The real concern is that the longer we wait to do something, the higher the level of irreversible climate change to which we'll have to adapt." Meehl was not part of Solomon's research team.
While scientists have been aware of the long-term aspects of climate change, the new report highlights and provides more specifics on them, said Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the center.
"This aspect is one that is poorly appreciated by policymakers and the general public and it is real," said Trenberth, who was not part of the research group.
"The temperature changes and the sea level changes are, if anything underestimated and quite conservative, especially for sea level," he said.
While he agreed that the rainfall changes mentioned in the paper are under way, Trenberth disagreed with some details of that part of the report.
"Even so, there would be changes in snow (to rain), snow pack and water resources, and irreversible consequences even if not quite the way the authors describe," he said. "The policy relevance is clear: We need to act sooner ... because by the time the public and policymakers really realize the changes are here it is far too late to do anything about it. In fact, as the authors point out, it is already too late for some effects."
Co-authors of the paper were Gian-Kaspar Plattner and Reto Knutti of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and Pierre Friedlingstein of the National Institute for Scientific Research, Gif sur Yvette, France.
The research was supported by the Office of Science at the Department of Energy.
Fast Action Needed To Avoid Climate Chaos: Study
Pete Harrison, PlanetArk 27 Jan 09;
BRUSSELS - Global temperature rises due to climate change could be kept below the critical 2 degree mark by fast international action to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 70 percent by 2030, a report said on Monday.
Scientists say that if temperatures increase beyond 2 degrees, humanity faces severe environmental fallout, such as melting polar ice caps and rising sealevels.
Increasing numbers of scientists and politicians question whether the 2 degrees goal is achievable, given the slow progress of international negotiations so far.
But it is not too late to avert dangerous climate change, said the report by consultancy McKinsey and backed by ten organizations including energy companies, Enel, Vattenfall and Royal Dutch Shell.
"Achieving the deep emissions cuts required to keep global warming below the 2 degrees limit is possible but difficult," said McKinsey director Tomas Naucler.
Global investment of 530 billion euros ($686 billion) would be needed by 2020, and 810 billion by 2030, the report added.
Countries would offset much of the cost by simultaneously cutting their bills for oil, gas and coal, resulting in a net cost of less than 1 percent of gross domestic product.
The report comes one month after the European Union agreed ambitious measures to cut carbon dioxide and amid renewed optimism U.S. President Barack Obama will lend fresh momentum to global talks after having pledged to curb emissions at home.
Obama will start reversing former President George W. Bush's climate policies on Monday with steps to raise fuel efficiency standards and to grant states authority to limit emissions from cars, officials say.
Keeping climate change manageable would require fast global action, said the report.
A 70 percent cut in emissions by 2030 would see greenhouse gas emissions peaking at 480 parts per million (ppm), roughly the level scientists say would cause a 2 degree rise.
But a 10-year delay would make it difficult to keep greenhouse gas emissions below 550 parts per million (ppm).
"Every year of delay adds to the challenge, not only because emissions will continue to grow during that year, but also because it will lock the economy into high-carbon infrastructure," said the report.
Long Droughts, Rising Seas Predicted Despite Future CO2 Curbs
Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post 27 Jan 09;
Greenhouse gas levels currently expected by mid-century will produce devastating long-term droughts and a sea-level rise that will persist for 1,000 years regardless of how well the world curbs future emissions of carbon dioxide, an international team of scientists reported yesterday.
Top climate researchers from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Switzerland and France said their analysis shows that carbon dioxide will remain near peak levels in the atmosphere far longer than other greenhouse gases, which dissipate relatively quickly.
"I think you have to think about this stuff as more like nuclear waste than acid rain: The more we add, the worse off we'll be," NOAA senior scientist Susan Solomon told reporters in a conference call. "The more time that we take to make decisions about carbon dioxide, the more irreversible climate change we'll be locked into."
At the moment, carbon concentrations in the atmosphere stand at 385 parts per million. Many climate scientists and the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have set a goal of stabilizing atmospheric carbon at 450 ppm, but current projections put the world on track to hit 550 ppm by 2035, rising after that point by 4.5 percent a year.
The new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, projects that if carbon dioxide concentrations peak at 600 ppm, several regions of the world -- including southwestern North America, the Mediterranean and southern Africa -- will face major droughts as bad or worse than the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Global sea levels will rise by roughly three feet by the year 3000, a projection that does not factor in melting glaciers and polar ice sheets that would probably result in significant additional sea level rises.
Even if the world managed to halt the carbon dioxide buildup at 450 ppm, the researchers concluded, the subtropics would experience a 10 percent decrease in precipitation, compared with the 15 percent decrease they would see at 600 ppm. That level is still akin to mega-droughts such as the Dust Bowl. The already parched U.S. Southwest would probably see a 5 percent drop in precipitation during its dry season.
Mary-Elena Carr, associate director of the Columbia Climate Center, called the new projections "very sobering." She noted that while societies can try to adapt to reduced precipitation with better farming techniques and other measures, there is a limit to the ability to cope with severe drought.
"When it's drought, that is hard, because we have a finite amount of water and a growing population we need to feed," Carr said, adding the severe storm surges associated with higher sea levels also pose a dangerous challenge to large populations.
The rising sea levels anticipated under a conservative projection, the authors wrote, would cause "irreversible commitments to future changes in the geography of the Earth, since many coastal and island features would ultimately become submerged."
The scientists noted that the world's oceans are already absorbing an enormous amount of carbon, but over time this will reach a limit and they will no longer absorb as much. As this happens, the atmospheric temperature will remain nearly constant.
Most previous scientific analyses, including the U.N. panel's summary report for policymakers, have assessed climate change impacts on a 100-year time scale. A few researchers, such as Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology, have argued that it makes more sense to look at a time scale of at least 500 years.
In an e-mail yesterday, Caldeira wrote that he had debated this point with other contributors to the U.N. reports in 2001, adding, "If you took our long term climate commitment seriously, you would not use 100-year [global warming projections] to compare effects of different gases."
Carbon dioxide emissions account only for roughly half of human-induced global warming, but the several other gases that play a role, including methane, dissipate more quickly. Solomon said policymakers could take this into account when deciding how best to reduce greenhouse gases overall.
"We ought to be extra careful about how much carbon dioxide we put out in the future," she said, adding that politicians often focus on the less certain but potentially disastrous impacts of climate change but would do well to focus on the more predictable consequences. "The parts that we don't know, that are possible but very uncertain, shouldn't get in the way of what we do know."
A separate study in the same journal yesterday suggests that the iconic emperor penguins of the Antarctic could be headed to extinction by 2100 if the sea ice shrinks by the predicted amounts. That paper -- authored by scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, National Center for Atmospheric Research, the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder and France's Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique -- projects that the number of breeding pairs in a colony in Terre Adelie, Antarctica, will decline from roughly 6,000 to 400 by the end of the century because the animals depend on sea ice for breeding, foraging and molting habitat.
Emperor penguins would have to migrate or change the timing of their growth stages to avoid extinction, the authors write, but "evolution or migration seem unlikely for such long-lived species at the remote southern end of the Earth."
Taking the turtles, back to the wild
Panca Nugraha, The Jakarta Post 27 Jan 09;
With a happy smile, Isabel released the small turtles back into the sea.
Goodbye, small turtles,” the 28-year-old Australian said, waving to the turtles that had started swimming further and further away toward the open sea.
She was among hundreds of local and foreign tourists taking part in the program to release turtles back into the sea at Gili Trawangan beach in North Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara.
Releasing turtles back into their natural habitat is an annual program conducted by the community in Gili Trawangan. The activity has helped increase the number of tourists coming to the beach.
The activity was possible thanks to Zaenuddin MZ, 45, who has been working to protect the turtles since 1995.
“At first I collected turtle eggs to try hatching them and raising the hatchlings. At the time, many people thought that I must have been mad to try. But it was worth all the effort because it worked and it attracted tourists, who can now see groups of turtles in the waters of Gili while diving or snorkelling,” he said.
Zaenuddin, who is better known as Dino, began to think about developing a turtle nursery at the end of 1994.
At that time he saw that that many communities still consumed turtle eggs and some people caught turtles to sell. At the same time, the turtle population continued to decline.
“I thought then what a pity if this beautiful animal became extinct because their eggs kept being taken before they were able to hatch,” he said.
He started to meet all the turtle egg collectors; there were seven people working as collectors then and he bought all the turtle eggs that they had, without saying that he wanted to hatch them.
One morning, a turtle egg seller came to him bringing 132 turtle eggs, which cost Rp 125 each. After paying for all those eggs Dino started to experiment.
He learned the techniques from the turtle egg collector by asking him about the behaviour of the turtles’ mother; when she digs the hole in the beach, lays the eggs and covers the hole to protect the eggs.
“The name of that egg collector was Amaq Kamaluddin, he had passed away now. Maybe he was confused as to why I asked him so many questions and buried the eggs that I bought, because he thought that I would eat them,” he recalled.
Around 50 days later, out of the 132 turtle eggs, 131 hatched. Dino started to nurture them using a simple tool which looked like a black bucket.
At the time Dino, who had now become a tourist guide, was only helped by his wife Saidah, 32, who managed the turtles when Dino went to work.
Saidah often complained because she had to change her dress so many times a day because she got wet when she collected and changed the water used for the turtles.
Dino said that he received protests from the community – mainly when he released the young turtles back into the sea after eight or nine months – for taking care of creatures that damaged the coral ridges exposed at low tide.
“The first time I released the turtles I became the subject of a protest by the community. They considered that turtles damaged the coral ridge and ate the coral,” he said.
But apparently, he added, the coral ridge which had been eaten was part of the damaged coral ridge and the turtles were in fact helping to treat it. Despite the protests, Dino continued his activities simply believing that God created the world and everything on it for a reason and in a balanced way.
Early in 2000, his efforts appeared fruitful. At least the tourists, who visited Gili Trawangan, were happy to see turtles being looked after by Dino. Some among them gave donations to help Dino cover the costs of maintaining and treating the turtles.
The costs to take care and feed the turtles are expensive. For the hundreds of turtles aged above three months, the food can cost up to Rp 100,000 ($US8.88) per day. All of these turtles are given small fishes to eat three times a day.
As far as he could recall, up to late 2008, he had successfully released at least 1,800 turtles back into their natural habitat.
Now the father of three children, he owns a bungalow called Turtle Bungalow and a restaurant, Dino’s Café, at the edge of Gili Trawangan beach. Out at the front, the tourists can watch the young turtles that are housed in two glass aquariums.
“It makes me happy to see the tourists happy when they see the turtles while diving or snorkelling,” he said, adding that apart from sharks, napoleon and other aquarium fish, tourists can still spot rare creatures like green and hawksbill turtles in the waters off Gili.
For his work, Dino does not hope for any award but he does expect the government to pay attention, at least to reduce the exploitation of this endangered species.
“In some areas there are still many people who consume turtles’ eggs and meat. There are even many restaurants serving them. If possible, the government should control them,” he said. “Isn’t it better to have this rare animal roaming in our seas?”
With a happy smile, Isabel released the small turtles back into the sea.
Goodbye, small turtles,” the 28-year-old Australian said, waving to the turtles that had started swimming further and further away toward the open sea.
She was among hundreds of local and foreign tourists taking part in the program to release turtles back into the sea at Gili Trawangan beach in North Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara.
Releasing turtles back into their natural habitat is an annual program conducted by the community in Gili Trawangan. The activity has helped increase the number of tourists coming to the beach.
The activity was possible thanks to Zaenuddin MZ, 45, who has been working to protect the turtles since 1995.
“At first I collected turtle eggs to try hatching them and raising the hatchlings. At the time, many people thought that I must have been mad to try. But it was worth all the effort because it worked and it attracted tourists, who can now see groups of turtles in the waters of Gili while diving or snorkelling,” he said.
Zaenuddin, who is better known as Dino, began to think about developing a turtle nursery at the end of 1994.
At that time he saw that that many communities still consumed turtle eggs and some people caught turtles to sell. At the same time, the turtle population continued to decline.
“I thought then what a pity if this beautiful animal became extinct because their eggs kept being taken before they were able to hatch,” he said.
He started to meet all the turtle egg collectors; there were seven people working as collectors then and he bought all the turtle eggs that they had, without saying that he wanted to hatch them.
One morning, a turtle egg seller came to him bringing 132 turtle eggs, which cost Rp 125 each. After paying for all those eggs Dino started to experiment.
He learned the techniques from the turtle egg collector by asking him about the behaviour of the turtles’ mother; when she digs the hole in the beach, lays the eggs and covers the hole to protect the eggs.
“The name of that egg collector was Amaq Kamaluddin, he had passed away now. Maybe he was confused as to why I asked him so many questions and buried the eggs that I bought, because he thought that I would eat them,” he recalled.
Around 50 days later, out of the 132 turtle eggs, 131 hatched. Dino started to nurture them using a simple tool which looked like a black bucket.
At the time Dino, who had now become a tourist guide, was only helped by his wife Saidah, 32, who managed the turtles when Dino went to work.
Saidah often complained because she had to change her dress so many times a day because she got wet when she collected and changed the water used for the turtles.
Dino said that he received protests from the community – mainly when he released the young turtles back into the sea after eight or nine months – for taking care of creatures that damaged the coral ridges exposed at low tide.
“The first time I released the turtles I became the subject of a protest by the community. They considered that turtles damaged the coral ridge and ate the coral,” he said.
But apparently, he added, the coral ridge which had been eaten was part of the damaged coral ridge and the turtles were in fact helping to treat it. Despite the protests, Dino continued his activities simply believing that God created the world and everything on it for a reason and in a balanced way.
Early in 2000, his efforts appeared fruitful. At least the tourists, who visited Gili Trawangan, were happy to see turtles being looked after by Dino. Some among them gave donations to help Dino cover the costs of maintaining and treating the turtles.
The costs to take care and feed the turtles are expensive. For the hundreds of turtles aged above three months, the food can cost up to Rp 100,000 ($US8.88) per day. All of these turtles are given small fishes to eat three times a day.
As far as he could recall, up to late 2008, he had successfully released at least 1,800 turtles back into their natural habitat.
Now the father of three children, he owns a bungalow called Turtle Bungalow and a restaurant, Dino’s Café, at the edge of Gili Trawangan beach. Out at the front, the tourists can watch the young turtles that are housed in two glass aquariums.
“It makes me happy to see the tourists happy when they see the turtles while diving or snorkelling,” he said, adding that apart from sharks, napoleon and other aquarium fish, tourists can still spot rare creatures like green and hawksbill turtles in the waters off Gili.
For his work, Dino does not hope for any award but he does expect the government to pay attention, at least to reduce the exploitation of this endangered species.
“In some areas there are still many people who consume turtles’ eggs and meat. There are even many restaurants serving them. If possible, the government should control them,” he said. “Isn’t it better to have this rare animal roaming in our seas?”
Wolf sighting shows animal's return to central France
Yahoo News 26 Jan 09;
MENDE, France (AFP) – The slow return of the wolf to areas of France where it was previously considered extinct is continuing, forest rangers said Monday, after one was spotted in the Lozere region.
Wolf tracks have been found in the snow near Bondons, in the hills and forests of the Cevennes National Park 500 kilometres (312 miles) south of Paris, where one park official believes he saw one of the predators.
A dead calf was found on farmland nearby, but it had been torn at by so many different animals it was difficult to say what killed it. Authorities are to conduct DNA tests on spoor samples found in the forest.
Last year, park officials confirmed an aged female and a young male were roaming nearby Saint-Laurent-de-Muret. Wolves must be seen in a region for two consecutive winters before the species is considered to have returned.
If confirmed the Lozere wolves would be among the deepest inside France since Italian wolves began crossing into the French Alps from Italy in 1990s, to the delight of conservationists but the dismay of farmers.
France's indigenous grey wolves were eradicated in 1920s by hunting and the depletion of their habitat, but further afield in east and central Europe populations have begun to recover and spread.
The return of wolves to the Alps, along with the tentative return of bears to the French and Spanish Pyrenees, has proved controversial, with farmers demanding the right to shoot them to defend their sheep and cattle.
This week's sighting appears to confirm that wolves are returning to the Massif Central, a region of highlands in central France, far from the Alps.
In April, last year a farmer was cleared after being charged over the 2004 shooting of France's last native female bear. A court ruled he had not broken the law, but conservatives have accelerated plans to reintroduce the animal.
MENDE, France (AFP) – The slow return of the wolf to areas of France where it was previously considered extinct is continuing, forest rangers said Monday, after one was spotted in the Lozere region.
Wolf tracks have been found in the snow near Bondons, in the hills and forests of the Cevennes National Park 500 kilometres (312 miles) south of Paris, where one park official believes he saw one of the predators.
A dead calf was found on farmland nearby, but it had been torn at by so many different animals it was difficult to say what killed it. Authorities are to conduct DNA tests on spoor samples found in the forest.
Last year, park officials confirmed an aged female and a young male were roaming nearby Saint-Laurent-de-Muret. Wolves must be seen in a region for two consecutive winters before the species is considered to have returned.
If confirmed the Lozere wolves would be among the deepest inside France since Italian wolves began crossing into the French Alps from Italy in 1990s, to the delight of conservationists but the dismay of farmers.
France's indigenous grey wolves were eradicated in 1920s by hunting and the depletion of their habitat, but further afield in east and central Europe populations have begun to recover and spread.
The return of wolves to the Alps, along with the tentative return of bears to the French and Spanish Pyrenees, has proved controversial, with farmers demanding the right to shoot them to defend their sheep and cattle.
This week's sighting appears to confirm that wolves are returning to the Massif Central, a region of highlands in central France, far from the Alps.
In April, last year a farmer was cleared after being charged over the 2004 shooting of France's last native female bear. A court ruled he had not broken the law, but conservatives have accelerated plans to reintroduce the animal.
DR Congo gorilla numbers growing
Marcus George, BBC News 26 Jan 09;
The population of threatened mountain gorillas in eastern DR Congo is now growing, local wildlife officials say.
According to a census carried out by rangers in the Virunga National Park, 10 baby gorillas have been born in the last 18 months.
The park population now stands at 81, and there are only 700 of mountain gorillas left in the world.
In 2007, 10 gorillas were killed when fighting between rebels and government soldiers spilled into the park.
The violence has made protecting gorillas a dangerous job.
The park's director, Emmanuel de Merode, says 120 rangers have been killed since the conflict began, the last only two weeks ago.
Part of the reason why the rangers are so exposed to the dangers is because they continue their work whatever the situation.
Over much of that time, they have not received their salaries and they have received very little support, so it makes it a very difficult job.
Amazingly, the census reported no gorilla deaths. But the number of snares laid by poachers has increased significantly.
And groups who enter the park to cut down trees for the production of charcoal are another major threat. So despite the good news, the rangers' work remains critical.
The population of threatened mountain gorillas in eastern DR Congo is now growing, local wildlife officials say.
According to a census carried out by rangers in the Virunga National Park, 10 baby gorillas have been born in the last 18 months.
The park population now stands at 81, and there are only 700 of mountain gorillas left in the world.
In 2007, 10 gorillas were killed when fighting between rebels and government soldiers spilled into the park.
The violence has made protecting gorillas a dangerous job.
The park's director, Emmanuel de Merode, says 120 rangers have been killed since the conflict began, the last only two weeks ago.
Part of the reason why the rangers are so exposed to the dangers is because they continue their work whatever the situation.
Over much of that time, they have not received their salaries and they have received very little support, so it makes it a very difficult job.
Amazingly, the census reported no gorilla deaths. But the number of snares laid by poachers has increased significantly.
And groups who enter the park to cut down trees for the production of charcoal are another major threat. So despite the good news, the rangers' work remains critical.
Sierra Leone launches first chimp census
Yahoo News 26 Jan 09;
FREETOWN (AFP) – Sierra Leone has begun its first comprehensive census of wild chimpanzees, the head of the country's largest sanctuary for the primates said on Monday.
"It will cost 220,000 dollars (167,000 euros) and run for approximately 10 months," Balla Amarasekaran, head of the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary, said.
Amarasekaran explained that the chimp count would help answer key questions about the population and the habitat of the great apes in Sierra Leone and could even set the stage for reintroductions.
"It is estimated that no more than 2,000 chimpanzees currently reside in Sierra Leone's forests but that number was culled from an informal survey carried out in 1981," he told AFP.
Amarasekaran, whose sanctuary on the outskirts of Freetown is the largest in Sierra Leone, said the impact of the country's ruinous civil war and the rapid destruction of forest cover had led some experts to fear that chimpanzees could cease to exist in the wild within 50 years.
Sierra Leone is struggling to get back on its feet after a decade-long civil war from 1991-2001 in which some 120,000 people were killed and thousands were mutilated.
The West African country is home to one of the most endangered chimpanzee species, the Western Chimpanzees who live in the hills above the capital Freetown, according to Amarasekaran.
"We want to protect the existing wild populations and increase knowledge and understanding of these amazing animals," he told AFP.
The chimp census is a joint project of the agriculture ministry's forestry division, the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance (PASA) and national and international non-governmental organisations.
FREETOWN (AFP) – Sierra Leone has begun its first comprehensive census of wild chimpanzees, the head of the country's largest sanctuary for the primates said on Monday.
"It will cost 220,000 dollars (167,000 euros) and run for approximately 10 months," Balla Amarasekaran, head of the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary, said.
Amarasekaran explained that the chimp count would help answer key questions about the population and the habitat of the great apes in Sierra Leone and could even set the stage for reintroductions.
"It is estimated that no more than 2,000 chimpanzees currently reside in Sierra Leone's forests but that number was culled from an informal survey carried out in 1981," he told AFP.
Amarasekaran, whose sanctuary on the outskirts of Freetown is the largest in Sierra Leone, said the impact of the country's ruinous civil war and the rapid destruction of forest cover had led some experts to fear that chimpanzees could cease to exist in the wild within 50 years.
Sierra Leone is struggling to get back on its feet after a decade-long civil war from 1991-2001 in which some 120,000 people were killed and thousands were mutilated.
The West African country is home to one of the most endangered chimpanzee species, the Western Chimpanzees who live in the hills above the capital Freetown, according to Amarasekaran.
"We want to protect the existing wild populations and increase knowledge and understanding of these amazing animals," he told AFP.
The chimp census is a joint project of the agriculture ministry's forestry division, the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance (PASA) and national and international non-governmental organisations.
Emperor penguin 'marching to extinction by end of the century'
Steve Connor, The Independent 27 Jan 09;
The emperor penguin is marching towards extinction because the Antarctic sea ice on which it depends for survival is shrinking at a faster rate than the bird is able to evolve if it is to avoid disaster, a study has found.
By the end of the century there could be just 400 breeding pairs of emperor penguins left, a dramatic decline from the population of about about 6,000 breeding pairs in the 1960s, scientists estimated.
The latest assessment is based on the projected increase in global temperatures and subsequent loss of sea ice due to the changes in the Antarctic climate that are expected in the 21st century, the study found.
Scientists based their pessimistic outlook on the long-term changes to the number of emperor penguins in a colony living in a part of the Antarctic Peninsula called Terre Adelie, which has been surveyed regularly since 1962 and has experienced regional warming over the past 50 years. The study, by Stephanie Jenouvrier and Hal Caswell of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, concluded that there was at least a 36 per cent probability of "quasi extinction" of the emperor penguin – when the population declines by at least 95 per cent – by the year 2100.
"To avoid extinction, emperor penguins will have to adapt, migrate or change the timing of their growth stages," the scientists report in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "However, given the future projected increases in greenhouse gases and their effect on Antarctic climate, evolution or migration seem unlikely for such long-lived species at the remote southern end of the Earth."
Fluctuations in sea ice during the 1970s, and the effect that it had on the penguin population, were used as a model of what could happen on a larger scale during the next 100 years. Dr Jenouvrier said that if future climate change happened as predicted, the penguin population on Terre Adelie would probably decline dramatically in the coming decades. "Unlike some other Antarctic bird species that have altered their life cycles, penguins don't catch on so quickly," Dr Jenouvrier said.
"They are long-lived organisms, so they adapt slowly. This is a problem because the climate is changing very fast," she added.
Slimming odds for emperor penguin
BBC News 26 Jan 09;
Emperor penguins, whose long treks across Antarctic ice to mate have been immortalised by Hollywood, are heading towards extinction, scientists say.
Based on predictions of sea ice extent from climate change models, the penguins are likely to see their numbers plummet by 95% by 2100.
That corresponds to a decline to just 600 breeding pairs in the world.
The research is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Emperor penguins, the largest species, are unique in that they are the only penguins that breed during the harsh Antarctic winters.
Colonies gather far inland after long treks across sea ice, where the females lay just one egg that is tended by the male. That means that the ice plays a major role in their overall breeding success.
What is more, the extent of sea ice cover influences the abundance of krill and the fish species that eat them - both food sources for the penguins.
Hal Caswell of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and his colleagues used projections of sea ice coverage from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) last report.
In addition, they used a "population dynamics" model describing the mating patterns and breeding success of emperor penguins.
The model has been honed using 43 years' worth of observations of an emperor colony in Antarctica's Terre Adelie.
Slow learners
While there are a number of models and scenarios in the IPCC report, the team used only 10 of them - those that fit with existing satellite data on sea ice.
They then ran 1,000 simulations of penguin population growth or decline under each of those 10 climate scenarios.
The results suggest that by the year 2100, emperor penguins in the region are likely to experience a reduction in their numbers by 95% or more.
The likelihood of this occurring, according to the researchers, is at least a one-in-three chance and possibly more than eight out of 10.
Though the penguins could avert disaster by shifting their breeding patterns with the climate, the study's lead author Stephanie Jenouvrier said that was unlikely.
"Unlike some other Antarctic bird species that have altered their life cycles, penguins don't catch on so quickly," she said.
"They are long-lived organisms, so they adapt slowly. This is a problem because the climate is changing very fast."
'Conservative approach'
Several prior studies have shown that climate change can affect the reproduction and geographic distribution of species, but this is the first that makes predictions about the ultimate fate of a species as a whole.
"I don't see any reason not to take these predictions very seriously," said Dan Reuman, a population biologist at Imperial College London.
"The study is based on a wide range of climate forecasts, it takes a conservative approach, it's based on a large amount of data on penguin demography, and the model accurately forecasts the data that already exist."
Dr Reuman suggests that more of this kind of work should be done to understand the species-by-species effects of climate change, and thereby the influence on whole communities.
It is an idea echoed by Joel Cohen, head of the Laboratory of Populations at Rockefeller University.
"The emperor penguin is an important species in its own right, but the whole communities in which it's embedded are also of importance," he told BBC News.
The penguins also serve as a species that particularly draws attention to the crisis in their region, he added.
"They are to Antarctica what the polar bear is to the Arctic.
"This study takes our knowledge, puts it together, gives us some insights, arouses concern and suggests that we ought to be understanding this situation a lot better."
The emperor penguin is marching towards extinction because the Antarctic sea ice on which it depends for survival is shrinking at a faster rate than the bird is able to evolve if it is to avoid disaster, a study has found.
By the end of the century there could be just 400 breeding pairs of emperor penguins left, a dramatic decline from the population of about about 6,000 breeding pairs in the 1960s, scientists estimated.
The latest assessment is based on the projected increase in global temperatures and subsequent loss of sea ice due to the changes in the Antarctic climate that are expected in the 21st century, the study found.
Scientists based their pessimistic outlook on the long-term changes to the number of emperor penguins in a colony living in a part of the Antarctic Peninsula called Terre Adelie, which has been surveyed regularly since 1962 and has experienced regional warming over the past 50 years. The study, by Stephanie Jenouvrier and Hal Caswell of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, concluded that there was at least a 36 per cent probability of "quasi extinction" of the emperor penguin – when the population declines by at least 95 per cent – by the year 2100.
"To avoid extinction, emperor penguins will have to adapt, migrate or change the timing of their growth stages," the scientists report in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "However, given the future projected increases in greenhouse gases and their effect on Antarctic climate, evolution or migration seem unlikely for such long-lived species at the remote southern end of the Earth."
Fluctuations in sea ice during the 1970s, and the effect that it had on the penguin population, were used as a model of what could happen on a larger scale during the next 100 years. Dr Jenouvrier said that if future climate change happened as predicted, the penguin population on Terre Adelie would probably decline dramatically in the coming decades. "Unlike some other Antarctic bird species that have altered their life cycles, penguins don't catch on so quickly," Dr Jenouvrier said.
"They are long-lived organisms, so they adapt slowly. This is a problem because the climate is changing very fast," she added.
Slimming odds for emperor penguin
BBC News 26 Jan 09;
Emperor penguins, whose long treks across Antarctic ice to mate have been immortalised by Hollywood, are heading towards extinction, scientists say.
Based on predictions of sea ice extent from climate change models, the penguins are likely to see their numbers plummet by 95% by 2100.
That corresponds to a decline to just 600 breeding pairs in the world.
The research is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Emperor penguins, the largest species, are unique in that they are the only penguins that breed during the harsh Antarctic winters.
Colonies gather far inland after long treks across sea ice, where the females lay just one egg that is tended by the male. That means that the ice plays a major role in their overall breeding success.
What is more, the extent of sea ice cover influences the abundance of krill and the fish species that eat them - both food sources for the penguins.
Hal Caswell of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and his colleagues used projections of sea ice coverage from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) last report.
In addition, they used a "population dynamics" model describing the mating patterns and breeding success of emperor penguins.
The model has been honed using 43 years' worth of observations of an emperor colony in Antarctica's Terre Adelie.
Slow learners
While there are a number of models and scenarios in the IPCC report, the team used only 10 of them - those that fit with existing satellite data on sea ice.
They then ran 1,000 simulations of penguin population growth or decline under each of those 10 climate scenarios.
The results suggest that by the year 2100, emperor penguins in the region are likely to experience a reduction in their numbers by 95% or more.
The likelihood of this occurring, according to the researchers, is at least a one-in-three chance and possibly more than eight out of 10.
Though the penguins could avert disaster by shifting their breeding patterns with the climate, the study's lead author Stephanie Jenouvrier said that was unlikely.
"Unlike some other Antarctic bird species that have altered their life cycles, penguins don't catch on so quickly," she said.
"They are long-lived organisms, so they adapt slowly. This is a problem because the climate is changing very fast."
'Conservative approach'
Several prior studies have shown that climate change can affect the reproduction and geographic distribution of species, but this is the first that makes predictions about the ultimate fate of a species as a whole.
"I don't see any reason not to take these predictions very seriously," said Dan Reuman, a population biologist at Imperial College London.
"The study is based on a wide range of climate forecasts, it takes a conservative approach, it's based on a large amount of data on penguin demography, and the model accurately forecasts the data that already exist."
Dr Reuman suggests that more of this kind of work should be done to understand the species-by-species effects of climate change, and thereby the influence on whole communities.
It is an idea echoed by Joel Cohen, head of the Laboratory of Populations at Rockefeller University.
"The emperor penguin is an important species in its own right, but the whole communities in which it's embedded are also of importance," he told BBC News.
The penguins also serve as a species that particularly draws attention to the crisis in their region, he added.
"They are to Antarctica what the polar bear is to the Arctic.
"This study takes our knowledge, puts it together, gives us some insights, arouses concern and suggests that we ought to be understanding this situation a lot better."
Oil spill in Russian Far East kills hundreds of birds: reports
Yahoo News 26 Jan 09;
MOSCOW (AFP) – A fuel oil spill off Russia's far eastern island of Sakhalin has killed hundreds of birds in a wildlife area of international importance, Russian news agencies reported Monday.
"Hundreds of birds have been killed, including ducks, guillemots and divers," the RIA Novosti news agency quoted the head of the Sakhalin diving centre Vladimir Bardin as saying.
"The shore is covered for three kilometres (two miles) with birds stuck in the fuel oil. The local population are trying to rescue the birds that are still alive and wash them," he said.
He added there was a risk that the stricken birds could attract the rare Steller's Sea Eagle -- one of the island's foremost wildlife attractions -- which could choke and die if it attempts to eat them.
The spill in Aniva Bay on the south of Sakhalin took place six kilometres from a major liquified natural gas (LNG) plant being built by the international consortium exploiting its Sakhalin-2 reserves.
Bardin said the spill was linked to the arrival of an oil tanker at the LNG plant on Sunday and said this was proved from where the wind had blown the oil.
However, a spokesman for Sakhalin Energy, the operator of the project, said that "there had not been a single incident connected with the spill of oil products into the Aniva Bay," RIA Novosti reported.
Russia's Gazprom is a majority shareholder in the consortium developing the Sakhalin-2 reserves, with British-Dutch energy major Shell and Japanese conglomerates Mitsui and Mitsubishi Corporation the minority partners.
The news agency also quoted prosecutors as saying that their investigators had been on the scene to take samples and investigate what had caused the death of the birds.
Sakhalin Energy has vowed to abide by environmentally friendly principles in exploiting the energy reserves of Sakhalin, which is known for its vast populations of bears, salmon and seabirds and also some whales.
MOSCOW (AFP) – A fuel oil spill off Russia's far eastern island of Sakhalin has killed hundreds of birds in a wildlife area of international importance, Russian news agencies reported Monday.
"Hundreds of birds have been killed, including ducks, guillemots and divers," the RIA Novosti news agency quoted the head of the Sakhalin diving centre Vladimir Bardin as saying.
"The shore is covered for three kilometres (two miles) with birds stuck in the fuel oil. The local population are trying to rescue the birds that are still alive and wash them," he said.
He added there was a risk that the stricken birds could attract the rare Steller's Sea Eagle -- one of the island's foremost wildlife attractions -- which could choke and die if it attempts to eat them.
The spill in Aniva Bay on the south of Sakhalin took place six kilometres from a major liquified natural gas (LNG) plant being built by the international consortium exploiting its Sakhalin-2 reserves.
Bardin said the spill was linked to the arrival of an oil tanker at the LNG plant on Sunday and said this was proved from where the wind had blown the oil.
However, a spokesman for Sakhalin Energy, the operator of the project, said that "there had not been a single incident connected with the spill of oil products into the Aniva Bay," RIA Novosti reported.
Russia's Gazprom is a majority shareholder in the consortium developing the Sakhalin-2 reserves, with British-Dutch energy major Shell and Japanese conglomerates Mitsui and Mitsubishi Corporation the minority partners.
The news agency also quoted prosecutors as saying that their investigators had been on the scene to take samples and investigate what had caused the death of the birds.
Sakhalin Energy has vowed to abide by environmentally friendly principles in exploiting the energy reserves of Sakhalin, which is known for its vast populations of bears, salmon and seabirds and also some whales.
German coalition at loggerheads over global warming test
Yahoo News 26 Jan 09;
BERLIN (AFP) – Germany's coalition government on Monday was at loggerheads over plans to dump iron sulphate in the South Atlantic to see if it can absorb greenhouse gases and help stop global warming.
The Social Democrat-led environment ministry issued a statement criticising the Christian Democrat-led research ministry's earlier decision to approve the controversial experiment.
The public nature of the row is seen as a sign of deteriorating relations between the two ruling parties ahead of September general elections.
Research Minister Annette Schavan, who is a member of the CDU, gave the test the green light Monday saying "after a study of expert reports, I am convinced there are no scientific or legal objections against the... ocean research experiment LOHAFEX."
However, a spokesman for the environment ministry, whose head Sigmar Gabriel is a member of the SDP, later said in the statement that the ministry "regrets the decision" to approve the LOHAFEX test.
An expedition set sail from Cape Town in South Africa on January 7 and is poised to drop six tonnes of the dissolved iron over 300 square kilometres (115 square miles) of ocean.
Gabriel had reportedly told Schavan in an earlier letter that the experiment "destroys Germany's credibility and its vanguard role in protecting biodiversity."
Scientists on board the Polarstern research vessel hope the release of iron will cause an exponential growth in phytoplankton, which will then absorb more carbon dioxide -- the main greenhouse gas -- through photosynthesis.
But opponents of the plan fear the consequences could be catastrophic. They are concerned it could cause the sea to become more acidic or trigger algal blooms that would strip swathes of the ocean of oxygen.
Once written off as irresponsible or madcap, geo-engineering schemes such as LOHAFEX are getting a closer hearing in the absence of political progress to roll back the greenhouse gas problem.
Other, far less advanced, projects include sowing sulphur particles in the stratosphere to reflect solar radiation and erecting mirrors in orbit that would deflect sunrays and thus slightly cool the planet.
Green groups worry that such projects could cause more problems than they resolve. They also say these schemes' financial cost is unknown -- and possibly cost far more than reducing emissions in the first place.
BERLIN (AFP) – Germany's coalition government on Monday was at loggerheads over plans to dump iron sulphate in the South Atlantic to see if it can absorb greenhouse gases and help stop global warming.
The Social Democrat-led environment ministry issued a statement criticising the Christian Democrat-led research ministry's earlier decision to approve the controversial experiment.
The public nature of the row is seen as a sign of deteriorating relations between the two ruling parties ahead of September general elections.
Research Minister Annette Schavan, who is a member of the CDU, gave the test the green light Monday saying "after a study of expert reports, I am convinced there are no scientific or legal objections against the... ocean research experiment LOHAFEX."
However, a spokesman for the environment ministry, whose head Sigmar Gabriel is a member of the SDP, later said in the statement that the ministry "regrets the decision" to approve the LOHAFEX test.
An expedition set sail from Cape Town in South Africa on January 7 and is poised to drop six tonnes of the dissolved iron over 300 square kilometres (115 square miles) of ocean.
Gabriel had reportedly told Schavan in an earlier letter that the experiment "destroys Germany's credibility and its vanguard role in protecting biodiversity."
Scientists on board the Polarstern research vessel hope the release of iron will cause an exponential growth in phytoplankton, which will then absorb more carbon dioxide -- the main greenhouse gas -- through photosynthesis.
But opponents of the plan fear the consequences could be catastrophic. They are concerned it could cause the sea to become more acidic or trigger algal blooms that would strip swathes of the ocean of oxygen.
Once written off as irresponsible or madcap, geo-engineering schemes such as LOHAFEX are getting a closer hearing in the absence of political progress to roll back the greenhouse gas problem.
Other, far less advanced, projects include sowing sulphur particles in the stratosphere to reflect solar radiation and erecting mirrors in orbit that would deflect sunrays and thus slightly cool the planet.
Green groups worry that such projects could cause more problems than they resolve. They also say these schemes' financial cost is unknown -- and possibly cost far more than reducing emissions in the first place.
U.S., Japan Discussing Whaling Trade-Off: Report
Chisa Fujioka, PlanetArk 27 Jan 09;
TOKYO - The United States is working on a proposal that would allow Japan to hunt whales near its own shores in exchange for scaling back its Antarctic whale hunt, the Washington Post reported. An official at Japan's Fisheries Agency declined to comment on the report on Monday, which comes as the members of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) try to reach a compromise between pro- and anti-whaling nations. Under the draft proposal, Japan would be permitted to engage in coastal whaling near its shores in return for a cut in the number of Antarctic minke whales it culls every year in the Southern Ocean, the Post said.
IWC Chairman William Hogarth had been working on a pact over the weekend, it added.
Such a trade off has been floated in the past.
Commercial whaling was banned under a 1986 treaty, with which Japan officially complied. But the Japanese government has continued what it calls a scientific whaling program, the target of criticism from anti-whaling countries such as Australia and Britain.
Japan's whaling fleet is currently engaged in its annual Antarctic whale hunt, aimed at catching about 900 whales.
Japan has frequently threatened to quit the IWC, but it has denied that the country would be better off if the IWC were to collapse. The group is set to hold its 61st annual meeting in Madeira in June.
A senior Japanese fisheries official said last week that the coming year would be "a moment of truth for the IWC" and added that if talks at the body failed, meetings could stop for several years.
Japan in talks on whaling compromise: official
Yahoo News 26 Jan 09;
TOKYO (AFP) – Members of the international whale body are negotiating a compromise to let Japan hunt whales near its shores in exchange for cutting back its Antarctic hunts, an official said Monday.
William Hogarth, the chairman of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and US delegate to the body, told Sunday's Washington Post that he had made the proposal in closed-door weekend talks in Hawaii.
Japan would be allowed to hunt whales near its shores in return for scaling back its Antarctic expeditions in the name of research which have infuriated Australia and New Zealand, the newspaper said.
"It is true that we have had many proposals with members of IWC," Shigeki Takaya, an official in the whaling division of Japan's Fisheries Agency, told AFP. He said the report refers to "one of the proposals being negotiated."
"We need to make a very important decision this year, as it may be the last chance to normalise the IWC," he said.
Japan argues that the IWC should be "normalised" by managing the hunting of whales.
The body imposed a moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986 but Japan continues to kill whales using a loophole that allows "lethal research" on the ocean giants. Norway and Iceland defy the moratorium altogether.
"We are trying to come up with something substantial at the interim meeting in March," Takaya said, referring to talks to be held in Rome.
The annual IWC gathering for this year is due to be held on the Portuguese island of Madeira from June 22 to 26.
IWC meetings have for years been passionate showdowns pitting Japan, which says whaling is part of its culture, against Australia and other Western nations.
Hogarth, who steps down after the Madeira meeting, persuaded Japan to stay with the IWC and to freeze its plans to expand its slaughter to humpback whales, which are a popular tourist attraction in Australia.
Last week Japan's top whaling negotiator Joji Morishita praised Hogarth's role and warned that the IWC could collapse if the Madeira meeting fails to reach an agreement.
TOKYO - The United States is working on a proposal that would allow Japan to hunt whales near its own shores in exchange for scaling back its Antarctic whale hunt, the Washington Post reported. An official at Japan's Fisheries Agency declined to comment on the report on Monday, which comes as the members of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) try to reach a compromise between pro- and anti-whaling nations. Under the draft proposal, Japan would be permitted to engage in coastal whaling near its shores in return for a cut in the number of Antarctic minke whales it culls every year in the Southern Ocean, the Post said.
IWC Chairman William Hogarth had been working on a pact over the weekend, it added.
Such a trade off has been floated in the past.
Commercial whaling was banned under a 1986 treaty, with which Japan officially complied. But the Japanese government has continued what it calls a scientific whaling program, the target of criticism from anti-whaling countries such as Australia and Britain.
Japan's whaling fleet is currently engaged in its annual Antarctic whale hunt, aimed at catching about 900 whales.
Japan has frequently threatened to quit the IWC, but it has denied that the country would be better off if the IWC were to collapse. The group is set to hold its 61st annual meeting in Madeira in June.
A senior Japanese fisheries official said last week that the coming year would be "a moment of truth for the IWC" and added that if talks at the body failed, meetings could stop for several years.
Japan in talks on whaling compromise: official
Yahoo News 26 Jan 09;
TOKYO (AFP) – Members of the international whale body are negotiating a compromise to let Japan hunt whales near its shores in exchange for cutting back its Antarctic hunts, an official said Monday.
William Hogarth, the chairman of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and US delegate to the body, told Sunday's Washington Post that he had made the proposal in closed-door weekend talks in Hawaii.
Japan would be allowed to hunt whales near its shores in return for scaling back its Antarctic expeditions in the name of research which have infuriated Australia and New Zealand, the newspaper said.
"It is true that we have had many proposals with members of IWC," Shigeki Takaya, an official in the whaling division of Japan's Fisheries Agency, told AFP. He said the report refers to "one of the proposals being negotiated."
"We need to make a very important decision this year, as it may be the last chance to normalise the IWC," he said.
Japan argues that the IWC should be "normalised" by managing the hunting of whales.
The body imposed a moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986 but Japan continues to kill whales using a loophole that allows "lethal research" on the ocean giants. Norway and Iceland defy the moratorium altogether.
"We are trying to come up with something substantial at the interim meeting in March," Takaya said, referring to talks to be held in Rome.
The annual IWC gathering for this year is due to be held on the Portuguese island of Madeira from June 22 to 26.
IWC meetings have for years been passionate showdowns pitting Japan, which says whaling is part of its culture, against Australia and other Western nations.
Hogarth, who steps down after the Madeira meeting, persuaded Japan to stay with the IWC and to freeze its plans to expand its slaughter to humpback whales, which are a popular tourist attraction in Australia.
Last week Japan's top whaling negotiator Joji Morishita praised Hogarth's role and warned that the IWC could collapse if the Madeira meeting fails to reach an agreement.
Liberian leader declares state of emergency over insect plague
Yahoo News 26 Jan 09;
MONROVIA (AFP) – Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf on Monday declared a state of emergency in the west African country where thousands of people are affected by an invasion of crop-destroying insects.
"I am hereby declaring a state of emergency," Sirleaf said in a speech broadcast on television.
Declaring a state of emergency over the plague by the voracious caterpillars, known as army worms, will make it easier for the president to free up government money to fight the invasion but it is also a cry for attention.
Monrovia has already said it does not have the means to spray the army worms with insecticide from planes and has asked the international community for help.
"Thousands of people have been affected by the invasion of millions of army worms in the centre of the country (...) I have mandated the minister of finance to mobilise all possible resources to enable us to curtail the situation," Sirleaf said.
Authorities say more than 53 towns and villages in Liberia have now been affected by the caterpillars which can lay waste to an entire crop in a matter of days.
Monrovia has warned that tens of thousands of Liberians face hunger due to the insect invasion.
Last week the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said the invasion by tens of millions of army worms was a "national emergency" for Liberia that could spread across west Africa.
An FAO delegation currently in Liberia is due to visit other potentially affected countries Tuesday to take samples of the insects to determine the best way to combat the plague.
According to reports, the army worms have passed into neighbouring Guinea.
Liberia's other neighbour, Sierra Leone, announced Monday it had started a massive drive sending chemicals and spraying personnel to the border districts to keep the invading insects at bay.
MONROVIA (AFP) – Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf on Monday declared a state of emergency in the west African country where thousands of people are affected by an invasion of crop-destroying insects.
"I am hereby declaring a state of emergency," Sirleaf said in a speech broadcast on television.
Declaring a state of emergency over the plague by the voracious caterpillars, known as army worms, will make it easier for the president to free up government money to fight the invasion but it is also a cry for attention.
Monrovia has already said it does not have the means to spray the army worms with insecticide from planes and has asked the international community for help.
"Thousands of people have been affected by the invasion of millions of army worms in the centre of the country (...) I have mandated the minister of finance to mobilise all possible resources to enable us to curtail the situation," Sirleaf said.
Authorities say more than 53 towns and villages in Liberia have now been affected by the caterpillars which can lay waste to an entire crop in a matter of days.
Monrovia has warned that tens of thousands of Liberians face hunger due to the insect invasion.
Last week the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said the invasion by tens of millions of army worms was a "national emergency" for Liberia that could spread across west Africa.
An FAO delegation currently in Liberia is due to visit other potentially affected countries Tuesday to take samples of the insects to determine the best way to combat the plague.
According to reports, the army worms have passed into neighbouring Guinea.
Liberia's other neighbour, Sierra Leone, announced Monday it had started a massive drive sending chemicals and spraying personnel to the border districts to keep the invading insects at bay.
UN debates global food cost rise
David Loyn, BBC News 26 Jan 09;
Just because the issue of food prices has not been in the headlines recently it has not gone away.
Although prices have fallen from the highs recorded during the unprecedented spike at the beginning of 2008, they have not fallen back to where they had been before the crisis began.
And many of the factors that contributed to the rise then are still driving prices up.
These include competition with biofuels for scarce land, worsening agricultural productivity, the increasing proportion of people living in cities, and the effects of climate change threatening harvests.
Since an emergency summit meeting in Rome last June, the UN has set up a task force to coordinate action on food, now headed by Dr David Nabarro, who established a troubleshooting reputation when he led the UN response to the threat of bird flu.
Ahead of a two-day meeting in Madrid designed to put fresh momentum into the food price issue, Dr Nabarro said: "The worldwide economic crash did not put an end to the food crisis; instead, it complicates and exacerbates the situation."
Careful policies
As the ripples spread out from the banking sector in the richest countries in the world, the waves are hitting those least able to cope - in the poorest countries.
There is less money to invest in new businesses, and as well as a cut in foreign direct investment, the global economic slowdown means that money sent home by those working abroad has gone down.
In a country like Kenya, where locally prices have continued to rise, the effect is being felt hard.
According to the World Bank, the volume of world trade is likely to contract for the first time since 1982, further reducing the potential for growth in developing countries.
The collapse in commodity prices has taken the pressure off food price rises, but has also given new problems to some developing countries that depend on commodities, like Zambia, with its reliance on copper.
A World Bank report on economic prospects for 2009 concluded that it is not inevitable that there will be shortages of food and oil, but that careful policies need to be followed.
The author of the report, Andrew Burns, said aid needs to be better targeted.
"Action is needed at the global level to discourage export bans of food grains, strengthen agencies like the World Food Programme, and improve information about and coordination of existing domestic grain reserves," he said.
The World Bank has earmarked $1.2bn to help those countries worst hit by the price spike last year, part of more than $18bn committed worldwide, but anti-poverty campaigners say that not all the money promised has been delivered.
The head of the Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP) in Kenya, Mwangi Waituru, said that food prices continue to rise, making it harder for people to feed their families.
"The current consumer society is rapidly eroding the traditional security nets system, leaving the poor more and more vulnerable," he said
All of this means that efforts made to reach Millennium Development Goals on poverty and hunger are now being undermined, as the number of people in the world who go to bed hungry comes close to a billion, while the colossal sums needed to bail out banks make further demands on funds in the richest countries, cutting their ability to feed the hungry, or fund agricultural innovation.
Just because the issue of food prices has not been in the headlines recently it has not gone away.
Although prices have fallen from the highs recorded during the unprecedented spike at the beginning of 2008, they have not fallen back to where they had been before the crisis began.
And many of the factors that contributed to the rise then are still driving prices up.
These include competition with biofuels for scarce land, worsening agricultural productivity, the increasing proportion of people living in cities, and the effects of climate change threatening harvests.
Since an emergency summit meeting in Rome last June, the UN has set up a task force to coordinate action on food, now headed by Dr David Nabarro, who established a troubleshooting reputation when he led the UN response to the threat of bird flu.
Ahead of a two-day meeting in Madrid designed to put fresh momentum into the food price issue, Dr Nabarro said: "The worldwide economic crash did not put an end to the food crisis; instead, it complicates and exacerbates the situation."
Careful policies
As the ripples spread out from the banking sector in the richest countries in the world, the waves are hitting those least able to cope - in the poorest countries.
There is less money to invest in new businesses, and as well as a cut in foreign direct investment, the global economic slowdown means that money sent home by those working abroad has gone down.
In a country like Kenya, where locally prices have continued to rise, the effect is being felt hard.
According to the World Bank, the volume of world trade is likely to contract for the first time since 1982, further reducing the potential for growth in developing countries.
The collapse in commodity prices has taken the pressure off food price rises, but has also given new problems to some developing countries that depend on commodities, like Zambia, with its reliance on copper.
A World Bank report on economic prospects for 2009 concluded that it is not inevitable that there will be shortages of food and oil, but that careful policies need to be followed.
The author of the report, Andrew Burns, said aid needs to be better targeted.
"Action is needed at the global level to discourage export bans of food grains, strengthen agencies like the World Food Programme, and improve information about and coordination of existing domestic grain reserves," he said.
The World Bank has earmarked $1.2bn to help those countries worst hit by the price spike last year, part of more than $18bn committed worldwide, but anti-poverty campaigners say that not all the money promised has been delivered.
The head of the Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP) in Kenya, Mwangi Waituru, said that food prices continue to rise, making it harder for people to feed their families.
"The current consumer society is rapidly eroding the traditional security nets system, leaving the poor more and more vulnerable," he said
All of this means that efforts made to reach Millennium Development Goals on poverty and hunger are now being undermined, as the number of people in the world who go to bed hungry comes close to a billion, while the colossal sums needed to bail out banks make further demands on funds in the richest countries, cutting their ability to feed the hungry, or fund agricultural innovation.
The great divide: Green dilemma over plans for UK Severn barrage
Britain's biggest engineering project since the Channel tunnel threatens to divide the environmental movement
Michael McCarthy, The Independent 27 Jan 09;
Britain's environmental movement was yesterday presented with its starkest choice yet: whether or not to support the world's largest-ever renewable energy project which will result in unprecedented ecological damage to one of our most important natural habitats.
The giant £20bn Severn barrage, which would stretch 10 miles from Lavernock Point near Cardiff to Brean Down near Weston-super-Mare, would harness the tides to generate up to 5 per cent of the UK's electricity needs – the equivalent of eight typical coal-fired power stations. This is crucially important in the fight against climate change.
But environmentalists fear that by blocking the Severn estuary completely, the barrage would destroy vast areas of mudflats and mashes, which are vital feeding grounds for tens of thousands of wading birds, and prevent migratory fish such as salmon and eels from ascending rivers to spawn. Other environmentalists think such a large project would divert resources away from other key renewable technologies such as wind power.
Yesterday the barrage appeared on a shortlist of five renewable energy schemes for the Severn estuary indicating that the project, which the Government is known to favour, is moving closer to formal acceptance. The shortlist will now be the subject of a public consultation and a final decision will be taken by 2010.
But the proposal is causing real difficulties for Britain's green movement, whose members are united in the need to take action against global warming, yet view with deep dismay the unprecedented ecological damage a Severn barrage would undoubtedly bring about. The dilemma could not be more acute: on the one hand, the prospect of more renewable energy from one place than is currently produced in the entire UK; on the other, the virtual wiping out of one of Britain's most important wildlife sites. The dilemma will only increase as the imperative of countering climate change with major developments runs up against the damage to the natural world which such large-scale schemes may cause.
The Government's official green advisers, the Sustainable Development Commission, thinks the barrage should be built if it can pass two tests: that new wildlife habitats can be created to compensate for those lost and that the project remains in public ownership. The SDC favours it because with the Severn having the second highest tidal range in the world – the difference between high and low tides can be as much as 45ft – the energy-producing potential of a barrage is enormous, capable of generating more than eight gigawatts of power.
However, Friends of the Earth believe it would simply be too damaging and divert too much money that could be better spent fighting climate change in other ways. Greenpeace agrees it has potential but thinks the Government should give priority to wind power. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the Wildlife Trusts and the Government's own wildlife watchdog, Natural England, are all concerned over the impact on wildlife.
"It is hugely disappointing to see the Government still pushing forward with the environmentally destructive option of a Cardiff-Weston barrage," said Martin Harper, the RSPB's head of sustainable development.
"Climate change threatens an environmental catastrophe for humans and wildlife and we urgently need to find low and zero carbon alternatives to our insatiable appetite for fossil fuels, so harnessing the huge tidal power of the Severn has to be right. But it cannot be right to trash the natural environment in the process. The final scheme must be the one that generates as much clean energy as possible while minimising harm to the estuary and its wildlife. We know the Cardiff-Weston Barrage would destroy huge areas of estuary marsh and mudflats used by 69,000 birds each winter and block the migration routes of countless fish."
Natural England's chief executive Helen Phillips said yesterday: "Tackling climate change requires us to make a step change in the way we think about renewable energy but we have to ensure that the decisions we make stand the test of time and do not leave a legacy of environmental destruction in their wake."
There is little doubt that a barrage would destroy more wildlife habitat than any other British construction project in modern times. The Severn Estuary, where the celebrated naturalist Sir Peter Scott founded Slimbridge, the wildfowl refuge which became one of the world's most famous nature reserves, provides an 86,000-acre feeding ground for wild swans, geese and many thousands of wading birds, such as dunlin, turnstone, oystercatcher and ringed plover, from all over Europe.
Under EU wildlife habitat laws, if the Government were to go ahead, it would have to find alternative compensatory habitat – mudflats and marshes – which might be as much as 40,000 acres, and which might cost anything up to £3bn.
But that is unlikely to hold the Government back, such will be the temptation to grab that massive 5 per cent renewable energy boost from a barrage – for in December ministers took on the enormous obligation, in an EU-wide deal, of sourcing 20 per cent of total UK energy demand from renewables by 2020. Twenty per cent of total energy (which includes heating and transport) means finding about 40 per cent of electricity from renewables – nearly 10 times the current figure of about 4.5 per cent.
The Herculean size of that task means the Government is very likely to go for the barrage, especially as the onshore wind industry is suffering strongly from the rise in the euro against the pound, meaning turbines made in Germany and Denmark are now about a third dearer than they were a year ago.
Apart from the main barrage, four other shortlisted schemes were announced by the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, David Miliband, yesterday. They are: Shoots barrage, further upstream which would generate around 1GW; Beachley barrage, an even smaller scheme just above the river Wye, which would generate around 625MW; Bridgwater Bay lagoon, a proposal which would impound a section of the estuary on the coast from east of Hinkley Point to Weston-super-Mare, which could generate 1.36GW and Fleming lagoon, a similar scheme which would generate the same amount of power from a section of the Welsh shore between Newport and the Severn road crossings.
Mr Miliband acknowledged fighting climate change involved "tough choices" and said: "The five schemes shortlisted are what we believe can be feasible but this doesn't mean we have lost sight of others. Half a million pounds of new funding will go some way to developing technologies still in their infancy, like tidal reefs and fences. We will consider the progress of this work before any final decisions are taken."
Is it the right decision to build the barrage?
Andrew Lee: Yes
Climate science is telling us that we will have to reduce our carbon emissions to near zero by 2050, if the rest of the world is to have any chance to develop at all, so we must take all options for Severn tidal power very seriously indeed. In our report Turning the Tide, the SDC felt that a Cardiff-Weston barrage could be sustainable if it passed two tough tests. The first is EU law: breaching the habitats and birds directives would set a dangerous precedent. The second is the public interest – we said that any scheme must be publicly managed and owned. The barrage is a player for 2050, as are the newly emerging tidal fence and tidal reef technologies which might have less environmental impact. Ironically, a smaller scheme could also have significant environmental impact, while being too small to help much in the energy mix and hived off entirely to the private sector to boot.
Andrew Lee is chief executive of the Sustainable Development Commission
Gordon James: No
For the amount of energy produced, a Severn barrage would be too damaging to the ecological features and species of international importance in the estuary – even given that climate change and sea-level rise would be gradually affecting habitats. At a cost of around £15bn it would be uneconomic, and public funds for "climate mitigation" projects could be better spent generating more energy in a shorter period of time from alternative renewable and or low-carbon schemes. The barrage would preclude the building of large tidal lagoon impoundments and other tidal schemes in the Severn estuary from Bridgwater Bay eastwards, which may amount to considerable electricity and storage potential, and it would generate large amounts of electricity in two pulses of around four hours each day,which would not necessarily match high demand, and create problems for the national grid.
Gordon James is a director of Friends of the Earth Cymru
Huge barrage plan makes estuary shortlist
Emily Beament, Press Association The Independent 26 Jan 09;
A 10-mile barrage across the Severn is among five projects on a shortlist for potential schemes to harness the tidal power of the estuary published by the Government today.
Two innovative "lagoon" schemes, which would impound a section of the estuary without damming it, and two smaller barrages are also on the list.
Publishing the proposed shortlist today, Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband said ministers had not "lost sight" of other innovative plans, including a huge "reef" project and tidal fences, which had been on a list of 10 schemes under consideration.
He announced £500,000 of funding to develop the new technologies such as the tidal reefs, which supporters say could harness the power of the estuary without causing the environmental damage associated with a barrage.
And he said progress on those technologies would be considered before any final decisions on a tidal power scheme for the Severn estuary were made.
The proposed shortlist, which is now being put out to public consultation, is as follows:
* The Cardiff-Weston barrage - a 10-mile scheme stretching from near Cardiff to near Weston-super-Mare which could generate up to 5 per cent of the UK's energy needs;
* Shoots barrage - a scheme further upstream which would generate around 1GW, equivalent to a large fossil fuel plant;
* Beachley barrage - an even smaller scheme, just above the Wye River, which would generate around 625MW;
* Bridgwater Bay lagoon - a proposal which would impound a section of the estuary on the coast between east of Hinkley Point and Weston-super-Mare, which could generate 1.36GW;
* Fleming lagoon - a similar scheme which would generate the same amount of power from a section of the Welsh shore between Newport and the Severn road crossings.
The Severn, which has the second-largest tidal range in the world, has the capacity to provide significant amounts of "green" electricity but conservationists fear some of the plans for the estuary could be hugely damaging to wildlife.
For example, the Cardiff-Weston barrage could destroy between 11,000 and 15,000 hectares of saltmarsh and mudflats, which under European law would have to be replaced with compensatory habitat elsewhere at an estimated cost of £1 billion to £3 billion.
Mr Miliband said there were tough choices to be made in fighting climate change, the "biggest long-term challenge we face".
"Failing to act on climate change could see catastrophic effects on the environment and its wildlife, but the estuary itself is a protected environment, home to vulnerable species including birds and fish," he said.
"We need to think about how to balance the value of this unique natural environment against the long-term threat of global climate change."
He went on: "The five schemes shortlisted today are what we believe can be feasible, but this doesn't mean we have lost sight of others.
"Half a million pounds of new funding will go some way to developing technologies still in their infancy, like tidal reefs and fences.
"We will consider the progress of this work before any final decisions are taken."
A tidal fence project over part of the Cardiff-Weston line with tidal stream turbines to harness the ebbing and flowing tides, and a reef proposal on the line of the outer barrage, which would have included floating turbines, were on the long list but not today's shortlist.
The biggest barrage proposal, an "outer barrage" which would have stretched from Minehead to Aberthaw, has not been included in the shortlist.
Neither has a barrage which would have been similar in size to the Cardiff-Weston scheme but would have landed at Hinkley rather than Brean Down on the English side.
And a 0.6-mile (1km) wide barrage on the Cardiff-Weston line, which would have had a wave farm and four marinas, has also been left off.
All 10 projects from the long list, and the proposed shortlist, will now be subject to a three-month consultation, after which the Government will publish a final shortlist.
Those five projects will be considered in more depth, with a view to making a final decision on how best to harness the energy of the Severn estuary in 2010.
The two-year multimillion-pound feasibility study by the Government aims to assess the costs, benefits and impacts of a tidal scheme in the Severn and identify a single preferred project from the options that have been proposed.
Welsh Assembly Government Environment Minister Jane Davidson said: "Harnessing the power of the Severn estuary ties could make a significant contribution towards achieving the UK targets for renewable energy and reducing carbon emissions, but we must ensure that environmental issues are taken fully into account.
"The shortlisted schemes are based on relatively well understood hydroelectric technologies, with a mix of existing and new engineering structures.
"It is proposed that the economic, social and environmental impacts of these be studied further in the second phase of the Government study."
The barrage proposals in particular have attracted controversy, with conservation groups concerned over the level of environmental damage they could do.
A study for the RSPB suggested the 12-mile "reef" could be cheaper and less damaging to wildlife than a barrage.
While a barrage would effectively dam the estuary, flooding huge areas of tidal habitat upstream of the construction, the reef would not hold back the full height of the tide and therefor have less impact on those sites.
Martin Harper, head of sustainable development at the RSPB, said: "It is hugely disappointing to see Government still pushing forward with the environmentally destructive option of a Cardiff-Weston barrage.
"We believe the focus should shift to innovative and potentially less- damaging alternatives like a tidal reef or tidal fence.
"The announcement of £500,000 to develop these schemes is very welcome, but it makes no sense to leave them off the shortlist.
"By excluding them, Government is excluding what could be the most environmentally benign options from its assessment of environmental impacts."
Natural England, the Government's conservation agency, said it was right to consider harnessing the power of the Severn estuary.
But the project should not go ahead without a detailed consideration of its environmental impacts and and a wider assessment of whether there were better ways to meet the drive towards renewable energy.
Helen Phillips, Natural England's chief executive, said: "We cannot sacrifice an environment as sensitive as the Severn estuary without resolving, once and for all, whether there are better alternatives.
"We need to look at renewable energy and energy conservation in the round and satisfy ourselves that tidal power in this area - with all the environmental consequences that go with it - really is the best route to take."
The Wildlife Trusts expressed concern that schemes where shortlisted at an early stage in the feasibility study, warning that it favoured proven technology - barrages - which would be highly damaging environmentally.
The Trusts said a barrage would destroy habitat on which species of bird such as shelduck, dunlin, redshank, teal, European white fronted geese and pintail depend.
Migrating fish species, such as salmon, trout and eel, would also be at risk.
The Trusts acknowledged the Government's commitment to funding for innovative technologies but said less environmentally damaging schemes such as the reefs should have made it on to the shortlist.
Mr Miliband and Ms Davidson presented the shortlist this morning at a stakeholders conference in the hands-on science museum in Bristol.
They were joined by minister of state for the DECC Mike O'Brien MP.
Addressing concerns that a number of the schemes would have a detrimental impact on the bio-diversity of the Severn estuary, Mr Miliband told a press conference: "The impact of catastrophic climate change, or dangerous climate change on biodiversity is extremely significant.
"If you had water levels rising by a metre for example, that would have a very bad, very negative effect on the Severn estuary.
"There are issues, of course, around the local environmental effects of the kind of technologies that are on the table.
"But I think you also have to take into account the wider climate effects and their potential impact on biodiversity. That's part of the process we are embarking upon.
"Of course climate change is overwhelming and important, but part of the next stage of the process is specifically looking at the biodiversity impact and the compensatory measure that might be necessary."
While coastal tidal lagoons were included on today's shortlist alongside the more conventional barrage proposals, Friends of the Earth Cymru criticised the Government's failure to pursue offshore lagoon proposals.
Friends of the Earth Cymru director Gordon James said: "Offshore tidal lagoons offer the best option for harnessing the huge renewable energy potential of the Severn estuary - their exclusion from the Government's shortlist is utterly incomprehensible and raises serious concerns about the consultation process.
"The development of tidal lagoons would have delivered huge quantities of green power more cheaply and quickly than a barrage, and with less impact on the environment.
"Ministers must abandon their fixation with the Severn barrage and invest in more effective and less damaging alternatives instead."
Environmentalists react angrily to shortlisted projects for Severn estuary
Biodiversity at risk as shortlist sidelines greener options in favour of big projects, say campaigners
Alok Jha, guardian.co.uk 26 Jan 09;
Environmentalists have reacted angrily to the government's proposed shortlist of projects for what could become the UK's single biggest renewable energy project. Campaigners are dismayed that the smaller, more environmentally friendly ideas for harnessing the power of the tides in the Severn estuary have been sidelined in favour of larger projects that threaten to destroy the local area's biodiversity.
The five projects selected by the government today range from a 10-mile barrage across the entire estuary from Cardiff to Weston-super-mare to a series of tidal lagoons on the English and Welsh coasts. The government is committed to generating 20% of the nation's energy from renewable sources by 2020 and the Severn estuary, with a tidal range of 14 metres (the second largest tidal range in the world), could make a major contribution. But set against that is the impact of large schemes on wildlife, ports and coasts.
Top of the government's proposed shortlist is the largest barrage proposal, Cardiff-Weston. It could generate up to 8GW of electricity, cost around £14bn to build and could supply 5% of the UK's electricity needs. Two smaller barrage projects further upstream – Shoots and Beachley – also made it to the short list of five. Between them they could generate around 1.65GW of electricity.
"We're talking about an extraordinary resource of tidal power which, if properly deployed, could have enormous benefits in terms of meeting our renewable energy targets and our wider climate change objectives," said the climate change and energy secretary, Ed Miliband, said it was possible that more than one project could be selected.
But campaigners criticised the proposals. Martin Harper, head of sustainable development at the RSPB said it was "hugely disappointing" that the Cardiff-Weston barrage option was on the short list. "Harnessing the huge tidal power of the Severn has to be right, but it cannot be right to trash the natural environment in the process. The final scheme must be the one that generates as much clean energy as possible while minimising harm to the estuary and its wildlife."
"The Cardiff-Weston Barrage would destroy huge areas of estuary marsh and mudflats used by 69,000 birds each winter and block the migration routes of countless fish."
Miliband acknowledged that biodiversity was an important issue and said that not tackling climate change through renewable energy schemes would pose its own risk to wildlife, through rising sea levels. "If you had water levels rising by a metre, that would have very bad effects on the Severn estuary," he said.
Two tidal lagoon projects on the coasts at Bridgewater Bay and Fleming also made the shortlist. Tidal lagoons involve retaining water along a section of the estuary as the tide comes in and then releasing it at low tide to generate electricity.
But Friends of the Earth Cymru said proposals for offshore tidal lagoons had been excluded. The group said this technology could deliver large amounts of green electricity quickly, more cheaply and with less environmental impact than the larger Severn barrage ideas favoured by government.
"Their exclusion from the government's shortlist of technologies being assessed is utterly incomprehensible," said FOE Cymru director Gordon James. "We have long suspected that the UK government has already decided on the Cardiff to Weston Severn barrage, and that this consultation process is little more than a cosmetic exercise."
Earlier this month, the Guardian revealed allegations that the government's engineering consultants, Parsons Brinckerhoff, had miscalculated the costs of a tidal lagoon project of the kind championed by FOE. The report sent by the consultants to ministers said the tidal lagoon option would be eight times more expensive than the barrage scheme and would not generate as much power, claims denied by FOE and the designers of the offshore lagoons.
David Elliott, co-director of the energy and environment research unit at the Open University, said a single big barrage was problematic in terms of harnessing energy. "It will only provide two short bursts of power each 24 hour lunar cycle." He said building several smaller tidal turbines around the coast that could operate at different times would be a better soltution.
"The fact that we've got a shortlist of five doesn't mean that we will pick one," said Miliband. "It's possible we have more than one project."
The five projects selected are those that the government's engineering consultants, Parsons Brinckerhoff, deemed to be based on the most proven technology. Not included are tidal reefs and tidal fences: the former would deploy a series of slow-moving, fish-friendly turbines over a purpose-built causeway in the estuary while the latter involves building only a partial barrier between Cardiff and Weston-super-mare. Both these proposals are acknowledged as having minimal impact on the local environment.
Miliband announced that £500,000 would be available to further develop such technologies. "We recognise there are more innovative, less tried and tested and more speculative technologies including tidal reefs and fences, which deserve a fair crack of the whip," said Miliband. "They're not on the shortlist because they don't meet the technical standards that have been rightly set."
The government will now seek further consultation on the Severn plans with final decisions on which projects would be given the green light to be made in 2010.
At the launch of the shortlist, Miliband also hinted that some funding for the bigger projects would have to come from the public purse. "We acknowledge the sheer scale of the capital cost is very challenging. However, for future generations, given the demands of climate change and given the demands around renewable energy, it would be wrong to rule [them] out at this stage simply on the grounds of cost. We are thinking here of a project that could last 120 years."
Michael McCarthy, The Independent 27 Jan 09;
Britain's environmental movement was yesterday presented with its starkest choice yet: whether or not to support the world's largest-ever renewable energy project which will result in unprecedented ecological damage to one of our most important natural habitats.
The giant £20bn Severn barrage, which would stretch 10 miles from Lavernock Point near Cardiff to Brean Down near Weston-super-Mare, would harness the tides to generate up to 5 per cent of the UK's electricity needs – the equivalent of eight typical coal-fired power stations. This is crucially important in the fight against climate change.
But environmentalists fear that by blocking the Severn estuary completely, the barrage would destroy vast areas of mudflats and mashes, which are vital feeding grounds for tens of thousands of wading birds, and prevent migratory fish such as salmon and eels from ascending rivers to spawn. Other environmentalists think such a large project would divert resources away from other key renewable technologies such as wind power.
Yesterday the barrage appeared on a shortlist of five renewable energy schemes for the Severn estuary indicating that the project, which the Government is known to favour, is moving closer to formal acceptance. The shortlist will now be the subject of a public consultation and a final decision will be taken by 2010.
But the proposal is causing real difficulties for Britain's green movement, whose members are united in the need to take action against global warming, yet view with deep dismay the unprecedented ecological damage a Severn barrage would undoubtedly bring about. The dilemma could not be more acute: on the one hand, the prospect of more renewable energy from one place than is currently produced in the entire UK; on the other, the virtual wiping out of one of Britain's most important wildlife sites. The dilemma will only increase as the imperative of countering climate change with major developments runs up against the damage to the natural world which such large-scale schemes may cause.
The Government's official green advisers, the Sustainable Development Commission, thinks the barrage should be built if it can pass two tests: that new wildlife habitats can be created to compensate for those lost and that the project remains in public ownership. The SDC favours it because with the Severn having the second highest tidal range in the world – the difference between high and low tides can be as much as 45ft – the energy-producing potential of a barrage is enormous, capable of generating more than eight gigawatts of power.
However, Friends of the Earth believe it would simply be too damaging and divert too much money that could be better spent fighting climate change in other ways. Greenpeace agrees it has potential but thinks the Government should give priority to wind power. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the Wildlife Trusts and the Government's own wildlife watchdog, Natural England, are all concerned over the impact on wildlife.
"It is hugely disappointing to see the Government still pushing forward with the environmentally destructive option of a Cardiff-Weston barrage," said Martin Harper, the RSPB's head of sustainable development.
"Climate change threatens an environmental catastrophe for humans and wildlife and we urgently need to find low and zero carbon alternatives to our insatiable appetite for fossil fuels, so harnessing the huge tidal power of the Severn has to be right. But it cannot be right to trash the natural environment in the process. The final scheme must be the one that generates as much clean energy as possible while minimising harm to the estuary and its wildlife. We know the Cardiff-Weston Barrage would destroy huge areas of estuary marsh and mudflats used by 69,000 birds each winter and block the migration routes of countless fish."
Natural England's chief executive Helen Phillips said yesterday: "Tackling climate change requires us to make a step change in the way we think about renewable energy but we have to ensure that the decisions we make stand the test of time and do not leave a legacy of environmental destruction in their wake."
There is little doubt that a barrage would destroy more wildlife habitat than any other British construction project in modern times. The Severn Estuary, where the celebrated naturalist Sir Peter Scott founded Slimbridge, the wildfowl refuge which became one of the world's most famous nature reserves, provides an 86,000-acre feeding ground for wild swans, geese and many thousands of wading birds, such as dunlin, turnstone, oystercatcher and ringed plover, from all over Europe.
Under EU wildlife habitat laws, if the Government were to go ahead, it would have to find alternative compensatory habitat – mudflats and marshes – which might be as much as 40,000 acres, and which might cost anything up to £3bn.
But that is unlikely to hold the Government back, such will be the temptation to grab that massive 5 per cent renewable energy boost from a barrage – for in December ministers took on the enormous obligation, in an EU-wide deal, of sourcing 20 per cent of total UK energy demand from renewables by 2020. Twenty per cent of total energy (which includes heating and transport) means finding about 40 per cent of electricity from renewables – nearly 10 times the current figure of about 4.5 per cent.
The Herculean size of that task means the Government is very likely to go for the barrage, especially as the onshore wind industry is suffering strongly from the rise in the euro against the pound, meaning turbines made in Germany and Denmark are now about a third dearer than they were a year ago.
Apart from the main barrage, four other shortlisted schemes were announced by the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, David Miliband, yesterday. They are: Shoots barrage, further upstream which would generate around 1GW; Beachley barrage, an even smaller scheme just above the river Wye, which would generate around 625MW; Bridgwater Bay lagoon, a proposal which would impound a section of the estuary on the coast from east of Hinkley Point to Weston-super-Mare, which could generate 1.36GW and Fleming lagoon, a similar scheme which would generate the same amount of power from a section of the Welsh shore between Newport and the Severn road crossings.
Mr Miliband acknowledged fighting climate change involved "tough choices" and said: "The five schemes shortlisted are what we believe can be feasible but this doesn't mean we have lost sight of others. Half a million pounds of new funding will go some way to developing technologies still in their infancy, like tidal reefs and fences. We will consider the progress of this work before any final decisions are taken."
Is it the right decision to build the barrage?
Andrew Lee: Yes
Climate science is telling us that we will have to reduce our carbon emissions to near zero by 2050, if the rest of the world is to have any chance to develop at all, so we must take all options for Severn tidal power very seriously indeed. In our report Turning the Tide, the SDC felt that a Cardiff-Weston barrage could be sustainable if it passed two tough tests. The first is EU law: breaching the habitats and birds directives would set a dangerous precedent. The second is the public interest – we said that any scheme must be publicly managed and owned. The barrage is a player for 2050, as are the newly emerging tidal fence and tidal reef technologies which might have less environmental impact. Ironically, a smaller scheme could also have significant environmental impact, while being too small to help much in the energy mix and hived off entirely to the private sector to boot.
Andrew Lee is chief executive of the Sustainable Development Commission
Gordon James: No
For the amount of energy produced, a Severn barrage would be too damaging to the ecological features and species of international importance in the estuary – even given that climate change and sea-level rise would be gradually affecting habitats. At a cost of around £15bn it would be uneconomic, and public funds for "climate mitigation" projects could be better spent generating more energy in a shorter period of time from alternative renewable and or low-carbon schemes. The barrage would preclude the building of large tidal lagoon impoundments and other tidal schemes in the Severn estuary from Bridgwater Bay eastwards, which may amount to considerable electricity and storage potential, and it would generate large amounts of electricity in two pulses of around four hours each day,which would not necessarily match high demand, and create problems for the national grid.
Gordon James is a director of Friends of the Earth Cymru
Huge barrage plan makes estuary shortlist
Emily Beament, Press Association The Independent 26 Jan 09;
A 10-mile barrage across the Severn is among five projects on a shortlist for potential schemes to harness the tidal power of the estuary published by the Government today.
Two innovative "lagoon" schemes, which would impound a section of the estuary without damming it, and two smaller barrages are also on the list.
Publishing the proposed shortlist today, Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband said ministers had not "lost sight" of other innovative plans, including a huge "reef" project and tidal fences, which had been on a list of 10 schemes under consideration.
He announced £500,000 of funding to develop the new technologies such as the tidal reefs, which supporters say could harness the power of the estuary without causing the environmental damage associated with a barrage.
And he said progress on those technologies would be considered before any final decisions on a tidal power scheme for the Severn estuary were made.
The proposed shortlist, which is now being put out to public consultation, is as follows:
* The Cardiff-Weston barrage - a 10-mile scheme stretching from near Cardiff to near Weston-super-Mare which could generate up to 5 per cent of the UK's energy needs;
* Shoots barrage - a scheme further upstream which would generate around 1GW, equivalent to a large fossil fuel plant;
* Beachley barrage - an even smaller scheme, just above the Wye River, which would generate around 625MW;
* Bridgwater Bay lagoon - a proposal which would impound a section of the estuary on the coast between east of Hinkley Point and Weston-super-Mare, which could generate 1.36GW;
* Fleming lagoon - a similar scheme which would generate the same amount of power from a section of the Welsh shore between Newport and the Severn road crossings.
The Severn, which has the second-largest tidal range in the world, has the capacity to provide significant amounts of "green" electricity but conservationists fear some of the plans for the estuary could be hugely damaging to wildlife.
For example, the Cardiff-Weston barrage could destroy between 11,000 and 15,000 hectares of saltmarsh and mudflats, which under European law would have to be replaced with compensatory habitat elsewhere at an estimated cost of £1 billion to £3 billion.
Mr Miliband said there were tough choices to be made in fighting climate change, the "biggest long-term challenge we face".
"Failing to act on climate change could see catastrophic effects on the environment and its wildlife, but the estuary itself is a protected environment, home to vulnerable species including birds and fish," he said.
"We need to think about how to balance the value of this unique natural environment against the long-term threat of global climate change."
He went on: "The five schemes shortlisted today are what we believe can be feasible, but this doesn't mean we have lost sight of others.
"Half a million pounds of new funding will go some way to developing technologies still in their infancy, like tidal reefs and fences.
"We will consider the progress of this work before any final decisions are taken."
A tidal fence project over part of the Cardiff-Weston line with tidal stream turbines to harness the ebbing and flowing tides, and a reef proposal on the line of the outer barrage, which would have included floating turbines, were on the long list but not today's shortlist.
The biggest barrage proposal, an "outer barrage" which would have stretched from Minehead to Aberthaw, has not been included in the shortlist.
Neither has a barrage which would have been similar in size to the Cardiff-Weston scheme but would have landed at Hinkley rather than Brean Down on the English side.
And a 0.6-mile (1km) wide barrage on the Cardiff-Weston line, which would have had a wave farm and four marinas, has also been left off.
All 10 projects from the long list, and the proposed shortlist, will now be subject to a three-month consultation, after which the Government will publish a final shortlist.
Those five projects will be considered in more depth, with a view to making a final decision on how best to harness the energy of the Severn estuary in 2010.
The two-year multimillion-pound feasibility study by the Government aims to assess the costs, benefits and impacts of a tidal scheme in the Severn and identify a single preferred project from the options that have been proposed.
Welsh Assembly Government Environment Minister Jane Davidson said: "Harnessing the power of the Severn estuary ties could make a significant contribution towards achieving the UK targets for renewable energy and reducing carbon emissions, but we must ensure that environmental issues are taken fully into account.
"The shortlisted schemes are based on relatively well understood hydroelectric technologies, with a mix of existing and new engineering structures.
"It is proposed that the economic, social and environmental impacts of these be studied further in the second phase of the Government study."
The barrage proposals in particular have attracted controversy, with conservation groups concerned over the level of environmental damage they could do.
A study for the RSPB suggested the 12-mile "reef" could be cheaper and less damaging to wildlife than a barrage.
While a barrage would effectively dam the estuary, flooding huge areas of tidal habitat upstream of the construction, the reef would not hold back the full height of the tide and therefor have less impact on those sites.
Martin Harper, head of sustainable development at the RSPB, said: "It is hugely disappointing to see Government still pushing forward with the environmentally destructive option of a Cardiff-Weston barrage.
"We believe the focus should shift to innovative and potentially less- damaging alternatives like a tidal reef or tidal fence.
"The announcement of £500,000 to develop these schemes is very welcome, but it makes no sense to leave them off the shortlist.
"By excluding them, Government is excluding what could be the most environmentally benign options from its assessment of environmental impacts."
Natural England, the Government's conservation agency, said it was right to consider harnessing the power of the Severn estuary.
But the project should not go ahead without a detailed consideration of its environmental impacts and and a wider assessment of whether there were better ways to meet the drive towards renewable energy.
Helen Phillips, Natural England's chief executive, said: "We cannot sacrifice an environment as sensitive as the Severn estuary without resolving, once and for all, whether there are better alternatives.
"We need to look at renewable energy and energy conservation in the round and satisfy ourselves that tidal power in this area - with all the environmental consequences that go with it - really is the best route to take."
The Wildlife Trusts expressed concern that schemes where shortlisted at an early stage in the feasibility study, warning that it favoured proven technology - barrages - which would be highly damaging environmentally.
The Trusts said a barrage would destroy habitat on which species of bird such as shelduck, dunlin, redshank, teal, European white fronted geese and pintail depend.
Migrating fish species, such as salmon, trout and eel, would also be at risk.
The Trusts acknowledged the Government's commitment to funding for innovative technologies but said less environmentally damaging schemes such as the reefs should have made it on to the shortlist.
Mr Miliband and Ms Davidson presented the shortlist this morning at a stakeholders conference in the hands-on science museum in Bristol.
They were joined by minister of state for the DECC Mike O'Brien MP.
Addressing concerns that a number of the schemes would have a detrimental impact on the bio-diversity of the Severn estuary, Mr Miliband told a press conference: "The impact of catastrophic climate change, or dangerous climate change on biodiversity is extremely significant.
"If you had water levels rising by a metre for example, that would have a very bad, very negative effect on the Severn estuary.
"There are issues, of course, around the local environmental effects of the kind of technologies that are on the table.
"But I think you also have to take into account the wider climate effects and their potential impact on biodiversity. That's part of the process we are embarking upon.
"Of course climate change is overwhelming and important, but part of the next stage of the process is specifically looking at the biodiversity impact and the compensatory measure that might be necessary."
While coastal tidal lagoons were included on today's shortlist alongside the more conventional barrage proposals, Friends of the Earth Cymru criticised the Government's failure to pursue offshore lagoon proposals.
Friends of the Earth Cymru director Gordon James said: "Offshore tidal lagoons offer the best option for harnessing the huge renewable energy potential of the Severn estuary - their exclusion from the Government's shortlist is utterly incomprehensible and raises serious concerns about the consultation process.
"The development of tidal lagoons would have delivered huge quantities of green power more cheaply and quickly than a barrage, and with less impact on the environment.
"Ministers must abandon their fixation with the Severn barrage and invest in more effective and less damaging alternatives instead."
Environmentalists react angrily to shortlisted projects for Severn estuary
Biodiversity at risk as shortlist sidelines greener options in favour of big projects, say campaigners
Alok Jha, guardian.co.uk 26 Jan 09;
Environmentalists have reacted angrily to the government's proposed shortlist of projects for what could become the UK's single biggest renewable energy project. Campaigners are dismayed that the smaller, more environmentally friendly ideas for harnessing the power of the tides in the Severn estuary have been sidelined in favour of larger projects that threaten to destroy the local area's biodiversity.
The five projects selected by the government today range from a 10-mile barrage across the entire estuary from Cardiff to Weston-super-mare to a series of tidal lagoons on the English and Welsh coasts. The government is committed to generating 20% of the nation's energy from renewable sources by 2020 and the Severn estuary, with a tidal range of 14 metres (the second largest tidal range in the world), could make a major contribution. But set against that is the impact of large schemes on wildlife, ports and coasts.
Top of the government's proposed shortlist is the largest barrage proposal, Cardiff-Weston. It could generate up to 8GW of electricity, cost around £14bn to build and could supply 5% of the UK's electricity needs. Two smaller barrage projects further upstream – Shoots and Beachley – also made it to the short list of five. Between them they could generate around 1.65GW of electricity.
"We're talking about an extraordinary resource of tidal power which, if properly deployed, could have enormous benefits in terms of meeting our renewable energy targets and our wider climate change objectives," said the climate change and energy secretary, Ed Miliband, said it was possible that more than one project could be selected.
But campaigners criticised the proposals. Martin Harper, head of sustainable development at the RSPB said it was "hugely disappointing" that the Cardiff-Weston barrage option was on the short list. "Harnessing the huge tidal power of the Severn has to be right, but it cannot be right to trash the natural environment in the process. The final scheme must be the one that generates as much clean energy as possible while minimising harm to the estuary and its wildlife."
"The Cardiff-Weston Barrage would destroy huge areas of estuary marsh and mudflats used by 69,000 birds each winter and block the migration routes of countless fish."
Miliband acknowledged that biodiversity was an important issue and said that not tackling climate change through renewable energy schemes would pose its own risk to wildlife, through rising sea levels. "If you had water levels rising by a metre, that would have very bad effects on the Severn estuary," he said.
Two tidal lagoon projects on the coasts at Bridgewater Bay and Fleming also made the shortlist. Tidal lagoons involve retaining water along a section of the estuary as the tide comes in and then releasing it at low tide to generate electricity.
But Friends of the Earth Cymru said proposals for offshore tidal lagoons had been excluded. The group said this technology could deliver large amounts of green electricity quickly, more cheaply and with less environmental impact than the larger Severn barrage ideas favoured by government.
"Their exclusion from the government's shortlist of technologies being assessed is utterly incomprehensible," said FOE Cymru director Gordon James. "We have long suspected that the UK government has already decided on the Cardiff to Weston Severn barrage, and that this consultation process is little more than a cosmetic exercise."
Earlier this month, the Guardian revealed allegations that the government's engineering consultants, Parsons Brinckerhoff, had miscalculated the costs of a tidal lagoon project of the kind championed by FOE. The report sent by the consultants to ministers said the tidal lagoon option would be eight times more expensive than the barrage scheme and would not generate as much power, claims denied by FOE and the designers of the offshore lagoons.
David Elliott, co-director of the energy and environment research unit at the Open University, said a single big barrage was problematic in terms of harnessing energy. "It will only provide two short bursts of power each 24 hour lunar cycle." He said building several smaller tidal turbines around the coast that could operate at different times would be a better soltution.
"The fact that we've got a shortlist of five doesn't mean that we will pick one," said Miliband. "It's possible we have more than one project."
The five projects selected are those that the government's engineering consultants, Parsons Brinckerhoff, deemed to be based on the most proven technology. Not included are tidal reefs and tidal fences: the former would deploy a series of slow-moving, fish-friendly turbines over a purpose-built causeway in the estuary while the latter involves building only a partial barrier between Cardiff and Weston-super-mare. Both these proposals are acknowledged as having minimal impact on the local environment.
Miliband announced that £500,000 would be available to further develop such technologies. "We recognise there are more innovative, less tried and tested and more speculative technologies including tidal reefs and fences, which deserve a fair crack of the whip," said Miliband. "They're not on the shortlist because they don't meet the technical standards that have been rightly set."
The government will now seek further consultation on the Severn plans with final decisions on which projects would be given the green light to be made in 2010.
At the launch of the shortlist, Miliband also hinted that some funding for the bigger projects would have to come from the public purse. "We acknowledge the sheer scale of the capital cost is very challenging. However, for future generations, given the demands of climate change and given the demands around renewable energy, it would be wrong to rule [them] out at this stage simply on the grounds of cost. We are thinking here of a project that could last 120 years."
Clinton Climate Change Envoy Vows "Dramatic Diplomacy"
John Whitesides, PlanetArk 27 Jan 09;
WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton named a special envoy on Monday to lead U.S. efforts to fight global warming and forge new international accords on reducing carbon emissions and developing clean energy.
The appointment -- which accompanied other energy policy steps announced by President Barack Obama -- signaled a break from the Bush administration's climate policies, and Clinton's pick promised "vigorous, dramatic diplomacy."
Todd Stern, a senior White House official under former President Bill Clinton, will be the administration's principal adviser on international climate policy and strategy and its chief climate negotiator.
"With the appointment today of a special envoy we are sending an unequivocal message that the United States will be energetic, focused, strategic and serious about addressing global climate change and the corollary issue of clean energy," Clinton said at a State Department ceremony.
Stern's appointment came as Obama announced moves to force auto makers to produce more fuel-efficient and less polluting cars, including telling the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider a California request to impose strict limits on vehicle carbon dioxide emissions.
"As we take steps at home, we will also vigorously pursue negotiations, those sponsored by the United Nations and those at the sub-global, regional and bilateral level, that can lead to binding international climate agreements," Clinton said.
"No solution is feasible without all major emitting nations joining together and playing an important part," she said.
Stern coordinated climate change policy from 1997 to 1999 in her husband Bill Clinton's administration, acting as the senior White House negotiator in the Kyoto talks.
About 190 countries are trying to craft a broader climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol that binds wealthy nations to emission targets between 2008 and 2012. The new deal is supposed to be wrapped up in Copenhagen by December.
"The time for denial, delay and dispute is over. The time for the United States to take up its rightful place at the negotiating table is here," Stern said.
"We can only meet the climate challenge with a response that is genuinely global," he said. "We will need to engage in vigorous, dramatic diplomacy."
From 1999 to 2001, Stern advised the U.S. Treasury secretary on economic and financial issues and supervised the department's anti-money laundering strategy. He is a partner in a Washington law firm and a senior fellow at Center for American Progress think tank, which is home to many veterans of the Clinton administration.
(Editing by Frances Kerry)
WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton named a special envoy on Monday to lead U.S. efforts to fight global warming and forge new international accords on reducing carbon emissions and developing clean energy.
The appointment -- which accompanied other energy policy steps announced by President Barack Obama -- signaled a break from the Bush administration's climate policies, and Clinton's pick promised "vigorous, dramatic diplomacy."
Todd Stern, a senior White House official under former President Bill Clinton, will be the administration's principal adviser on international climate policy and strategy and its chief climate negotiator.
"With the appointment today of a special envoy we are sending an unequivocal message that the United States will be energetic, focused, strategic and serious about addressing global climate change and the corollary issue of clean energy," Clinton said at a State Department ceremony.
Stern's appointment came as Obama announced moves to force auto makers to produce more fuel-efficient and less polluting cars, including telling the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider a California request to impose strict limits on vehicle carbon dioxide emissions.
"As we take steps at home, we will also vigorously pursue negotiations, those sponsored by the United Nations and those at the sub-global, regional and bilateral level, that can lead to binding international climate agreements," Clinton said.
"No solution is feasible without all major emitting nations joining together and playing an important part," she said.
Stern coordinated climate change policy from 1997 to 1999 in her husband Bill Clinton's administration, acting as the senior White House negotiator in the Kyoto talks.
About 190 countries are trying to craft a broader climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol that binds wealthy nations to emission targets between 2008 and 2012. The new deal is supposed to be wrapped up in Copenhagen by December.
"The time for denial, delay and dispute is over. The time for the United States to take up its rightful place at the negotiating table is here," Stern said.
"We can only meet the climate challenge with a response that is genuinely global," he said. "We will need to engage in vigorous, dramatic diplomacy."
From 1999 to 2001, Stern advised the U.S. Treasury secretary on economic and financial issues and supervised the department's anti-money laundering strategy. He is a partner in a Washington law firm and a senior fellow at Center for American Progress think tank, which is home to many veterans of the Clinton administration.
(Editing by Frances Kerry)
Obama orders push to cleaner, more efficient cars
Ben Feller, Associated Press Yahoo News 27 Jan 09;
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama opened an ambitious, double-barreled assault on global warming and U.S. energy woes Monday, moving quickly toward rules requiring cleaner-running cars that guzzle less gas — a must, he said, for "our security, our economy and our planet."
He also vowed to succeed where a long line of predecessors had failed in slowing U.S. dependence on foreign oil.
Starting his second week in office, Obama took a major step toward allowing California and other states to target greenhouse gases through more stringent auto emission standards, and he ordered new federal rules directing automakers to start making more fuel-efficient cars as required by law.
The auto industry responded warily. Reducing planet-warming emissions is a great idea, carmakers and dealers said, but they expressed deep concern about costly regulations and conflicting state and federal rules at a time when people already are not buying cars. U.S. auto sales plunged 18 percent in 2008.
And industry analysts said the changes could cost consumers thousands of dollars — for smaller, "greener" cars.
Obama on Monday directed the Environmental Protection Agency to review whether California and more than a dozen states should be allowed to impose tougher auto emission standards on carmakers to fight greenhouse gas emissions. The Bush administration had blocked the efforts by the states, which account for about half of the nation's auto sales.
The new president also said his administration would issue new fuel-efficiency requirements to cover 2011 model year vehicles.
Obama acknowledged the worries of automakers but said urgent action was needed nonetheless. He said, "Our goal is not to further burden an already struggling industry. It is to help America's automakers prepare for the future."
He said that U.S. imports of foreign oil have continued to climb, even as previous presidents pledged to reverse the trend. No more, he said.
"I want to be clear from the beginning of this administration that we have made our choice: America will not be held hostage to dwindling resources, hostile regimes and a warming planet," Obama said in the ornate East Room of the White House, where an audience of environmentalists cheered him on.
Underscoring environmental worries, a new report said many damaging effects of climate change are already all but irreversible, sure to last until the year 3000 and beyond. "It's not like air pollution where if we turn off a smokestack, in a few days the air is clear," said Susan Solomon, chief author of the international report and a climate researcher with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo.
Showing the early limits of bipartisanship, House Republican leader John Boehner said Obama's reopening of a key California ruling was dangerous. "The effect of this policy will be to destroy American jobs at the very time government leaders should be working together to protect and create them," he said.
Obama's order for an EPA review of California's case could shake up the auto industry — 13 other states and the District of Columbia have adopted California's standards, and others are considering them. If California gets a federal waiver to enact tougher emissions standards, the other states could then sign on.
Also, Obama directed federal transportation officials to get going on new fuel efficiency rules, which will affect cars produced and sold for the 2011 model year. That step was needed to enforce a 2007 energy law, which calls for cars and trucks to be more efficient every year, to at least 35 miles per gallon by 2020.
Obama also meant to set a tone with his promises: Science will trump ideology and special interests, attention will stay high even when gas prices fall.
It was a none-too-subtle admonishing of previous administrations, chiefly George W. Bush's.
"It falls on us to choose whether to risk the peril that comes with our current course or to seize the promise of energy independence," Obama said. "And for the sake of our security, our economy and our planet, we must have the courage and the commitment to change."
Obama put that peril he mentioned in stark terms. He said dependence on foreign oil "bankrolls dictators, pays for nuclear proliferation and funds both sides of our struggle against terrorism. It puts the American people at the mercy of shifting gas prices, stifles innovation and sets back our ability to compete."
Recent presidential history is littered with grand but broken promises about weaning a gas-guzzling country from foreign oil. As long ago as 1973, Richard Nixon wanted the nation to be energy independent by 1980. The U.S. now imports even a bigger share of its oil than it did then.
This time could be different, said Phyllis Cuttino, director of a global warming campaign for the Pew Environment Group.
"It is very telling that at a time when he's working feverishly to pass an $825 billion stimulus package, he took these concrete steps on day six," she said. "That speaks volumes to his commitment." Environmental advocates, she added, are "all going to be applauding him — and holding his feet to the fire."
Underscoring Obama's attempt to shore up America's environmental credentials, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday appointed a special envoy for climate change.
Going back to Nixon's time, the U.S. imported 36 percent of its oil and refined products, about half coming from the OPEC cartel. During the first 11 months of 2008, imports accounted for nearly 67 percent of the petroleum used each day in the U.S., according to the Energy Information Administration.
Robert Ebel, an authority on energy policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said public sentiment about the new promises may be, "Here we go again." But Obama, given his popularity, a cooperative leadership on Congress and the nation's desire for a reshaped economy, could have a window.
"The memory of $4 a gallon gasoline is not that old, and the financial crisis is very much in people's minds," he said. "All these things put together will help."
Obama framed his energy plan as steady and pragmatic. Sounding much like President Bush did, he warned that there is no quick fix.
___
Associated Press writers Ken Thomas, H. Josef Hebert, Dina Cappiello and Erica Werner contributed to this story.
President Obama announces push to wean US off the gas-guzzler
Times Online 27 Jan 09;
President Obama took the first steps yesterday towards weaning America off its gas-guzzling habits as he told his country and a beleaguered motor industry to show the courage needed to tackle global warming.
In another decisive break with the Bush Administration, he signed executive orders to hasten the introduction of cleaner vehicles for a nation that is the world’s biggest polluter.
“Now is the time to make the tough choices,” he declared.
His White House statement yesterday sought to frame climate change — for so long scorned, ignored or treated as a Cinderella issue by George W. Bush — in the context of economic revival and national security.
“Year after year, decade after decade, we’ve chosen delay over decisive action, rigid ideology has overruled sound science, special interests have overshadowed common sense. For the sake of our security, our economy and our planet, we must have the courage and commitment to change,” Mr Obama said. “The days of Washington dragging its heels are over. My Administration will not deny facts. We will be guided by them.”
The President warned that America’s dependence on foreign oil “bankrolls dictators, pays for nuclear proliferation and funds both sides of our struggle against terrorism”. If climate change was left unchecked, “violent conflict, terrible storms, shrinking coastlines and irreversible catastrophe” could result.
Mr Obama ordered the Transportation Department to enforce a 2007 law requiring carmakers to increase fuel-efficiency on models for 2011. He also ordered an urgent review of a policy blocking California and 13 other states from imposing even stricter economy and emissions standards.
Carmakers have lobbied hard to stop such regulations, claiming that they would force them to produce two sets of vehicles or limit sales at a time when companies such as GM and Chrysler already need vast federal bailouts to stave off bankruptcy.
Even as Mr Obama spoke yesterday, GM cut another 2,000 jobs in Ohio and Michigan. The Detroit-based manufacturer has been criticised for concentrating on big 4x4 vehicles and will struggle to increase fuel efficiency from the current average of 27mpg to meet new standards of about 35mpg by 2020. The President said he would take account of the “unique challenges” facing carmakers but added: “We must help them thrive by building the cars of tomorrow.”
Yesterday’s measures were intended as merely the first instalment towards making good campaign promises of cutting US greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent over the next 41 years.
The White House believes that it can create millions of “green-collar jobs”, beginning with an $820 billion (£590 billion) economic stimulus plan that will pay for insulating buildings, funding investment in the renewable energy industry and installing a new national electricity grid.
The EU recognises that it will be difficult for Mr Obama to legislate before the Copenhagen conference this year when the international community hopes to agree a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. EU diplomats hope he is given a mandate from Congress before difficult talks with China and India, two of the world’s top polluters.
Yesterday, Todd Stern was appointed as US chief envoy for the Copenhagen talks. He performed a similar role during the Kyoto negotiations before the advent of Mr Bush — who refused to submit the treaty for ratification.
CO2 targets
Obama By 2020 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels; by 2050, to reduce emissions by 80 per cent
EU By 2020 to reduce emissions to 20 per cent below 1990 levels
Bush By 2025 to stabilise greenhouse gas emissions
US greenhouse gas emissions In 1990 were 6,148 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents; by 2006 were 7,054 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents
Obama gives green light for states to set tougher limits on car emissions
US president asks environment agency to review Bush-era decision which put 'rigid ideology over sound science'
Daniel Nasaw, guardian.co.uk 26 Jan 09;
President Barack Obama today announced two broad measures aimed at curtailing America's greenhouse gas emissions and reducing American consumption of imported oil.
In the first steps signalling a major shift in US energy and climate policy from the Bush administration, Obama signed orders urging federal environmental regulators to allow states to set stricter automobile emissions, and increasing the fuel efficiency of American cars.
Obama pointedly criticised the Bush administration for its failure to act and its move to block California and other states from taking their own steps to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
"Year after year, decade after decade, we've chosen delay over decisive action," he said. "Rigid ideology has overridden sound science."
Obama's order directed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to reconsider a Bush-administration directive on vehicle fuel emissions. It stopped California, the nation's largest car market, and more than a dozen other states from regulating exhaust emissions linked to global warming more strictly than the federal government. He also directed the US Department of Transportation to issue guidelines which will increase the fuel efficiency of new cars sold in America to an average of 35mpg by 2020, beginning in 2011. The current average is 27.5mpg.
The moves will have a dramatic effect on the nation's car industry, because the vast size of the California market obliges auto manufacturers to redesign product lines to meet the state's standards. But Obama stressed that the moves are intended "not to further burden an already struggling industry" but to push it to "prepare for the future".
The changes are the first part of what is expected to be a broad change in the US government's role in climate policy, and Obama described them as the "first steps on our journey to American energy independence" and a "down payment on a broader and sustained effort to reduce our dependence on foreign oil".
Much of his address was clearly aimed at the US congress, urging it to enact the $850bn economic stimulus package the White House is currently negotiating with congressional leaders.
That legislation will include a massive investment in research and development of renewable energy, which Obama said he hopes will create "millions" of jobs in the new green economy.
Obama's executive decision can be put into effect immediately without the consent of Congress. The rule changes were promised by Obama during his White House campaign.
Obama this morning asked the EPA to reconsider a decision by Bush EPA director Stephen Johnson, who in December 2007 blocked a move by California and 17 other states, representing 45% of the US car market, to limit greenhouse gas emissions by cars and trucks. The block overruled the unanimous recommendation of the agency's legal and scientific staff. Johnson said federal action would curtail emissions better than a "patchwork of state rules". The car industry had fiercely lobbied White House and the EPA to block the California effort regulation. The rejection provoked lawsuits by California and other states and anger from Democrats who said the decision was based on ideology and politics rather than science.
Under the Clean Air Act, California is allowed to regulate emissions more strictly than the federal government, but only if the EPA grants a waiver to do so. Prior to the December 2007 decision, the agency has never before rejected a waiver request.
The EPA's reconsideration could take some time, because it will have to go through the agency's bureaucratic process, but is expected to turn in the states' favour. The proposed restrictions will force the car industry to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 30% in new cars and light trucks by 2016.
The day after Obama's inauguration, California's Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger sent Obama a letter urging him to ask the EPA to grant his and other states the authority to regulate emissions.
"Your administration has a unique opportunity to both support the pioneering leadership of these states and move America toward global leadership on addressing climate change," he wrote.
Obama today praised California's "bold and bipartisan leadership", and castigated the Bush administration for standing in the state's way. "The days of Washington dragging its heels are over," he said. "My administration will not deny facts, we will be guided by them".
Also today, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton is expected to name Todd Stern as a special state department envoy on climate change, the Politico website reported. Todd Stern was a top White House official under President Bill Clinton, and was also a senior White House negotiator at the Kyoto and Buenos Aires climate talks.
Obama to world: We will lead on climate change
Stephen Collinson Yahoo News 27 Jan 09;
WASHINGTON (AFP) – US President Barack Obama Monday vowed to lead the world on climate change as he set about shredding Bush administration policies with new domestic measures to force the development of fuel-efficient cars.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meanwhile picked a veteran of the Kyoto Protocol talks as her envoy for climate change, as world leaders target a historic global warming pact this year.
"We will make it clear to the world that America is ready to lead," Obama said, in an apparent swipe at former president George W. Bush's reluctance to take control of international efforts to combat climate change.
"To protect our climate and our collective security, we must call together a truly global coalition," the president said at a White House ceremony.
Obama signed memoranda aimed to prod the struggling US auto industry to design new fuel-efficient vehicles to lessen US dependence on energy sources which he said bankroll dictators, and to spur the US economy.
"The days of Washington dragging its heels are over," Obama said.
"My administration will not deny facts -- we will be guided by them," Obama said, in an apparent dig at Bush aides accused of subverting science for ideological reasons.
Obama required the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider whether to grant California a waiver to regulate car emissions blamed for contributing to global warming.
The Bush administration had blocked efforts by the vast western state and a dozen others to impose their own limits on carbon dioxide gas emissions.
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger reacted with delight.
"With this announcement from President Obama less than a week into his administration, it is clear that California and the environment now have a strong ally in the White House," he said in a statement.
Obama ordered the Transportation Department to produce guidelines to require US cars to reach average fuel efficiency of 35 miles per gallon by 2020.
There was a generally positive reaction from the "Big Three" auto giants, several of which are dependent on government cash to survive.
General Motors said it was "working aggressively on the products and the advance technologies that match the nation's and consumers' priorities to save energy and reduce emissions," and was ready to work with Obama and Congress.
The 11 member Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which includes Ford and Chrysler said it was also ready to work with the administration.
While promising action at home, Obama also made clear he would ask for action from giant developing economies to do more to limit greenhouse gases.
"I've made it clear that we will act, but so too must the world."
"That's how we will deny leverage to dictators and dollars to terrorists, and that's how we will ensure that nations like China and India are doing their part, just as we are now willing to do ours."
Environmentalists praised Obama, after years battling the White House on climate change issues.
"It's a terrific beginning," David Yarnold, executive director of the Environmental Defense Fund told AFP.
"It fires the starting gun for millions of new jobs, and amplifying the stimulus package and welding it to environmental benefits -- and it highlights how those issues are inseparable."
Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope welcomed the California move.
"This action deserves the loudest applause, President Obama is making good on campaign promises and sending yet another signal that global warming and clean energy are top priorities for his administration."
In another sharp break from Bush, Clinton picked Todd Stern as her envoy for climate change, a State Department official said.
Stern is a "former Clinton White House official with experience at Kyoto and Buenos Aires climate change negotiations," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Stern took part in the Kyoto Protocol negotiations from 1997 to 1999, before becoming an advisor to the secretary of the treasury from 1999 to 2001.
Bush rejected the Kyoto Protocol in 2001 dealing a blow to global climate change efforts, warning it would deal damage the US economy.
The Clinton administration agreed the Protocol but the pact was never ratified by the Senate.
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama opened an ambitious, double-barreled assault on global warming and U.S. energy woes Monday, moving quickly toward rules requiring cleaner-running cars that guzzle less gas — a must, he said, for "our security, our economy and our planet."
He also vowed to succeed where a long line of predecessors had failed in slowing U.S. dependence on foreign oil.
Starting his second week in office, Obama took a major step toward allowing California and other states to target greenhouse gases through more stringent auto emission standards, and he ordered new federal rules directing automakers to start making more fuel-efficient cars as required by law.
The auto industry responded warily. Reducing planet-warming emissions is a great idea, carmakers and dealers said, but they expressed deep concern about costly regulations and conflicting state and federal rules at a time when people already are not buying cars. U.S. auto sales plunged 18 percent in 2008.
And industry analysts said the changes could cost consumers thousands of dollars — for smaller, "greener" cars.
Obama on Monday directed the Environmental Protection Agency to review whether California and more than a dozen states should be allowed to impose tougher auto emission standards on carmakers to fight greenhouse gas emissions. The Bush administration had blocked the efforts by the states, which account for about half of the nation's auto sales.
The new president also said his administration would issue new fuel-efficiency requirements to cover 2011 model year vehicles.
Obama acknowledged the worries of automakers but said urgent action was needed nonetheless. He said, "Our goal is not to further burden an already struggling industry. It is to help America's automakers prepare for the future."
He said that U.S. imports of foreign oil have continued to climb, even as previous presidents pledged to reverse the trend. No more, he said.
"I want to be clear from the beginning of this administration that we have made our choice: America will not be held hostage to dwindling resources, hostile regimes and a warming planet," Obama said in the ornate East Room of the White House, where an audience of environmentalists cheered him on.
Underscoring environmental worries, a new report said many damaging effects of climate change are already all but irreversible, sure to last until the year 3000 and beyond. "It's not like air pollution where if we turn off a smokestack, in a few days the air is clear," said Susan Solomon, chief author of the international report and a climate researcher with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo.
Showing the early limits of bipartisanship, House Republican leader John Boehner said Obama's reopening of a key California ruling was dangerous. "The effect of this policy will be to destroy American jobs at the very time government leaders should be working together to protect and create them," he said.
Obama's order for an EPA review of California's case could shake up the auto industry — 13 other states and the District of Columbia have adopted California's standards, and others are considering them. If California gets a federal waiver to enact tougher emissions standards, the other states could then sign on.
Also, Obama directed federal transportation officials to get going on new fuel efficiency rules, which will affect cars produced and sold for the 2011 model year. That step was needed to enforce a 2007 energy law, which calls for cars and trucks to be more efficient every year, to at least 35 miles per gallon by 2020.
Obama also meant to set a tone with his promises: Science will trump ideology and special interests, attention will stay high even when gas prices fall.
It was a none-too-subtle admonishing of previous administrations, chiefly George W. Bush's.
"It falls on us to choose whether to risk the peril that comes with our current course or to seize the promise of energy independence," Obama said. "And for the sake of our security, our economy and our planet, we must have the courage and the commitment to change."
Obama put that peril he mentioned in stark terms. He said dependence on foreign oil "bankrolls dictators, pays for nuclear proliferation and funds both sides of our struggle against terrorism. It puts the American people at the mercy of shifting gas prices, stifles innovation and sets back our ability to compete."
Recent presidential history is littered with grand but broken promises about weaning a gas-guzzling country from foreign oil. As long ago as 1973, Richard Nixon wanted the nation to be energy independent by 1980. The U.S. now imports even a bigger share of its oil than it did then.
This time could be different, said Phyllis Cuttino, director of a global warming campaign for the Pew Environment Group.
"It is very telling that at a time when he's working feverishly to pass an $825 billion stimulus package, he took these concrete steps on day six," she said. "That speaks volumes to his commitment." Environmental advocates, she added, are "all going to be applauding him — and holding his feet to the fire."
Underscoring Obama's attempt to shore up America's environmental credentials, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday appointed a special envoy for climate change.
Going back to Nixon's time, the U.S. imported 36 percent of its oil and refined products, about half coming from the OPEC cartel. During the first 11 months of 2008, imports accounted for nearly 67 percent of the petroleum used each day in the U.S., according to the Energy Information Administration.
Robert Ebel, an authority on energy policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said public sentiment about the new promises may be, "Here we go again." But Obama, given his popularity, a cooperative leadership on Congress and the nation's desire for a reshaped economy, could have a window.
"The memory of $4 a gallon gasoline is not that old, and the financial crisis is very much in people's minds," he said. "All these things put together will help."
Obama framed his energy plan as steady and pragmatic. Sounding much like President Bush did, he warned that there is no quick fix.
___
Associated Press writers Ken Thomas, H. Josef Hebert, Dina Cappiello and Erica Werner contributed to this story.
President Obama announces push to wean US off the gas-guzzler
Times Online 27 Jan 09;
President Obama took the first steps yesterday towards weaning America off its gas-guzzling habits as he told his country and a beleaguered motor industry to show the courage needed to tackle global warming.
In another decisive break with the Bush Administration, he signed executive orders to hasten the introduction of cleaner vehicles for a nation that is the world’s biggest polluter.
“Now is the time to make the tough choices,” he declared.
His White House statement yesterday sought to frame climate change — for so long scorned, ignored or treated as a Cinderella issue by George W. Bush — in the context of economic revival and national security.
“Year after year, decade after decade, we’ve chosen delay over decisive action, rigid ideology has overruled sound science, special interests have overshadowed common sense. For the sake of our security, our economy and our planet, we must have the courage and commitment to change,” Mr Obama said. “The days of Washington dragging its heels are over. My Administration will not deny facts. We will be guided by them.”
The President warned that America’s dependence on foreign oil “bankrolls dictators, pays for nuclear proliferation and funds both sides of our struggle against terrorism”. If climate change was left unchecked, “violent conflict, terrible storms, shrinking coastlines and irreversible catastrophe” could result.
Mr Obama ordered the Transportation Department to enforce a 2007 law requiring carmakers to increase fuel-efficiency on models for 2011. He also ordered an urgent review of a policy blocking California and 13 other states from imposing even stricter economy and emissions standards.
Carmakers have lobbied hard to stop such regulations, claiming that they would force them to produce two sets of vehicles or limit sales at a time when companies such as GM and Chrysler already need vast federal bailouts to stave off bankruptcy.
Even as Mr Obama spoke yesterday, GM cut another 2,000 jobs in Ohio and Michigan. The Detroit-based manufacturer has been criticised for concentrating on big 4x4 vehicles and will struggle to increase fuel efficiency from the current average of 27mpg to meet new standards of about 35mpg by 2020. The President said he would take account of the “unique challenges” facing carmakers but added: “We must help them thrive by building the cars of tomorrow.”
Yesterday’s measures were intended as merely the first instalment towards making good campaign promises of cutting US greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent over the next 41 years.
The White House believes that it can create millions of “green-collar jobs”, beginning with an $820 billion (£590 billion) economic stimulus plan that will pay for insulating buildings, funding investment in the renewable energy industry and installing a new national electricity grid.
The EU recognises that it will be difficult for Mr Obama to legislate before the Copenhagen conference this year when the international community hopes to agree a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. EU diplomats hope he is given a mandate from Congress before difficult talks with China and India, two of the world’s top polluters.
Yesterday, Todd Stern was appointed as US chief envoy for the Copenhagen talks. He performed a similar role during the Kyoto negotiations before the advent of Mr Bush — who refused to submit the treaty for ratification.
CO2 targets
Obama By 2020 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels; by 2050, to reduce emissions by 80 per cent
EU By 2020 to reduce emissions to 20 per cent below 1990 levels
Bush By 2025 to stabilise greenhouse gas emissions
US greenhouse gas emissions In 1990 were 6,148 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents; by 2006 were 7,054 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents
Obama gives green light for states to set tougher limits on car emissions
US president asks environment agency to review Bush-era decision which put 'rigid ideology over sound science'
Daniel Nasaw, guardian.co.uk 26 Jan 09;
President Barack Obama today announced two broad measures aimed at curtailing America's greenhouse gas emissions and reducing American consumption of imported oil.
In the first steps signalling a major shift in US energy and climate policy from the Bush administration, Obama signed orders urging federal environmental regulators to allow states to set stricter automobile emissions, and increasing the fuel efficiency of American cars.
Obama pointedly criticised the Bush administration for its failure to act and its move to block California and other states from taking their own steps to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
"Year after year, decade after decade, we've chosen delay over decisive action," he said. "Rigid ideology has overridden sound science."
Obama's order directed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to reconsider a Bush-administration directive on vehicle fuel emissions. It stopped California, the nation's largest car market, and more than a dozen other states from regulating exhaust emissions linked to global warming more strictly than the federal government. He also directed the US Department of Transportation to issue guidelines which will increase the fuel efficiency of new cars sold in America to an average of 35mpg by 2020, beginning in 2011. The current average is 27.5mpg.
The moves will have a dramatic effect on the nation's car industry, because the vast size of the California market obliges auto manufacturers to redesign product lines to meet the state's standards. But Obama stressed that the moves are intended "not to further burden an already struggling industry" but to push it to "prepare for the future".
The changes are the first part of what is expected to be a broad change in the US government's role in climate policy, and Obama described them as the "first steps on our journey to American energy independence" and a "down payment on a broader and sustained effort to reduce our dependence on foreign oil".
Much of his address was clearly aimed at the US congress, urging it to enact the $850bn economic stimulus package the White House is currently negotiating with congressional leaders.
That legislation will include a massive investment in research and development of renewable energy, which Obama said he hopes will create "millions" of jobs in the new green economy.
Obama's executive decision can be put into effect immediately without the consent of Congress. The rule changes were promised by Obama during his White House campaign.
Obama this morning asked the EPA to reconsider a decision by Bush EPA director Stephen Johnson, who in December 2007 blocked a move by California and 17 other states, representing 45% of the US car market, to limit greenhouse gas emissions by cars and trucks. The block overruled the unanimous recommendation of the agency's legal and scientific staff. Johnson said federal action would curtail emissions better than a "patchwork of state rules". The car industry had fiercely lobbied White House and the EPA to block the California effort regulation. The rejection provoked lawsuits by California and other states and anger from Democrats who said the decision was based on ideology and politics rather than science.
Under the Clean Air Act, California is allowed to regulate emissions more strictly than the federal government, but only if the EPA grants a waiver to do so. Prior to the December 2007 decision, the agency has never before rejected a waiver request.
The EPA's reconsideration could take some time, because it will have to go through the agency's bureaucratic process, but is expected to turn in the states' favour. The proposed restrictions will force the car industry to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 30% in new cars and light trucks by 2016.
The day after Obama's inauguration, California's Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger sent Obama a letter urging him to ask the EPA to grant his and other states the authority to regulate emissions.
"Your administration has a unique opportunity to both support the pioneering leadership of these states and move America toward global leadership on addressing climate change," he wrote.
Obama today praised California's "bold and bipartisan leadership", and castigated the Bush administration for standing in the state's way. "The days of Washington dragging its heels are over," he said. "My administration will not deny facts, we will be guided by them".
Also today, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton is expected to name Todd Stern as a special state department envoy on climate change, the Politico website reported. Todd Stern was a top White House official under President Bill Clinton, and was also a senior White House negotiator at the Kyoto and Buenos Aires climate talks.
Obama to world: We will lead on climate change
Stephen Collinson Yahoo News 27 Jan 09;
WASHINGTON (AFP) – US President Barack Obama Monday vowed to lead the world on climate change as he set about shredding Bush administration policies with new domestic measures to force the development of fuel-efficient cars.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meanwhile picked a veteran of the Kyoto Protocol talks as her envoy for climate change, as world leaders target a historic global warming pact this year.
"We will make it clear to the world that America is ready to lead," Obama said, in an apparent swipe at former president George W. Bush's reluctance to take control of international efforts to combat climate change.
"To protect our climate and our collective security, we must call together a truly global coalition," the president said at a White House ceremony.
Obama signed memoranda aimed to prod the struggling US auto industry to design new fuel-efficient vehicles to lessen US dependence on energy sources which he said bankroll dictators, and to spur the US economy.
"The days of Washington dragging its heels are over," Obama said.
"My administration will not deny facts -- we will be guided by them," Obama said, in an apparent dig at Bush aides accused of subverting science for ideological reasons.
Obama required the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider whether to grant California a waiver to regulate car emissions blamed for contributing to global warming.
The Bush administration had blocked efforts by the vast western state and a dozen others to impose their own limits on carbon dioxide gas emissions.
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger reacted with delight.
"With this announcement from President Obama less than a week into his administration, it is clear that California and the environment now have a strong ally in the White House," he said in a statement.
Obama ordered the Transportation Department to produce guidelines to require US cars to reach average fuel efficiency of 35 miles per gallon by 2020.
There was a generally positive reaction from the "Big Three" auto giants, several of which are dependent on government cash to survive.
General Motors said it was "working aggressively on the products and the advance technologies that match the nation's and consumers' priorities to save energy and reduce emissions," and was ready to work with Obama and Congress.
The 11 member Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which includes Ford and Chrysler said it was also ready to work with the administration.
While promising action at home, Obama also made clear he would ask for action from giant developing economies to do more to limit greenhouse gases.
"I've made it clear that we will act, but so too must the world."
"That's how we will deny leverage to dictators and dollars to terrorists, and that's how we will ensure that nations like China and India are doing their part, just as we are now willing to do ours."
Environmentalists praised Obama, after years battling the White House on climate change issues.
"It's a terrific beginning," David Yarnold, executive director of the Environmental Defense Fund told AFP.
"It fires the starting gun for millions of new jobs, and amplifying the stimulus package and welding it to environmental benefits -- and it highlights how those issues are inseparable."
Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope welcomed the California move.
"This action deserves the loudest applause, President Obama is making good on campaign promises and sending yet another signal that global warming and clean energy are top priorities for his administration."
In another sharp break from Bush, Clinton picked Todd Stern as her envoy for climate change, a State Department official said.
Stern is a "former Clinton White House official with experience at Kyoto and Buenos Aires climate change negotiations," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Stern took part in the Kyoto Protocol negotiations from 1997 to 1999, before becoming an advisor to the secretary of the treasury from 1999 to 2001.
Bush rejected the Kyoto Protocol in 2001 dealing a blow to global climate change efforts, warning it would deal damage the US economy.
The Clinton administration agreed the Protocol but the pact was never ratified by the Senate.