Indonesians being tricked out of rainforest land

Paul Eccleston, The Telegraph 11 Feb 08;

Native peoples who depend on the rainforest for survival are being tricked out of their land by corrupt officials so they can grow lucrative biofuel crops, according to environmental groups.

Forests that have supported generations of native peoples are being snatched and levelled for palm oil plantations, says Friends of the Earth.

Unscrupulous companies are using force or conning families in the Indonesian rainforests into giving up their rights to the land by promising jobs and new developments.

In its report Losing Ground FoE claims people end up in poorly paid work and locked into debt while the companies profit from palm oil plantations which destroy the forest and pollute village water supplies.

It blames the rush to biofuels for fuelling demand for the huge amount of land needed to grow oil palm and calls on the EU to scrap its 10 per cent target for road transport biofuels by 2010.

The report claims that although the EU wants to use biofuels sustainably it has not addressed the problems caused by its production and this will lead to more of the types of problems seen in Indonesia.

More than 85 per cent of the worlds palm oil is produced in plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia. Indonesia alone plans a further 20m hectares of plantations by 2020 - an area the size of England, Holland and Switzerland combined.

The palm oil industry says that plantation expansion is vital for economic development and methods used are both environmentally sustainable and benefit the local people. In reality little else survives in the plantations and half the habitat of the orang-utan lost in the last decade has been linked to palm oil plantation expansion.

The deforestation and drainage of peat swamps for palm oil production has made Indonesia the third highest emitter of green house gases after the USA and China.

FoE, which worked with environment groups Sawit Watch and LifeMosaic on the report, says there is mounting evidence that biofuels cannot deliver on the reduction needed in CO2 emissions to combat climate change.

Hannah Griffiths, Friends of the Earth biofuels campaigner, said: "This report shows that as well as being bad for the environment, biofuels from palm oil are a disaster for people. MEPs should listen to the evidence and use the forthcoming debate on this in the European Parliament to reject the 10 per cent target.

"Instead of introducing targets for more biofuels the EU should insist that all new cars are designed to be super efficient. The UK Government must also take a strong position against the 10 per cent target in Europe and do its bit to reduce transport emissions by improving public transport and making it easier for people to walk and cycle.".

The environment groups have been helping communities affected by palm oil plantations in Indonesia since 2005 to give an insight into the social, economic and cultural impacts of oil palm plantations.

Serge Marti from LifeMosaic said: "Indonesia is a uniquely diverse country whose communities and environment are being sacrificed for the benefit of a handful of companies and wealthy individuals.

"This report should help the Indonesian government to recognise that there is a problem, and to step up efforts to protect the rights of communities. In Europe we must realise that encouraging large fuel companies to grab community land across the developing world is no solution to climate change. The EU must play its part by abandoning its 10 per cent target for biofuels."

Abetnego Tarigan, deputy director of Sawit Watch, said: "Oil palm companies have already taken over 7.3 million hectares of land for plantations, resulting in 513 ongoing conflicts between companies and communities.

"Given the negative social and environmental impacts of oil palm, Sawit Watch demands reform of the Indonesian oil palm plantation system and a re-think of plantation expansion plans."

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KL embarks on $142b boost for Sarawak

Today Online 12 Feb 08;

KUALA LUMPUR — Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi yesterday launched a develop- ment project worth nearly US$100 billion ($141.8 billion) to fuel growth in resource-rich Sarawak state on Borneo island.

Mr Abdullah said the government will spend an initial RM5 billion ($2.2 billion) to kickstart the Sarawak Corridor of Renewable Energy, with private investment targeted at RM300 billion. The Sarawak plan focuses on developing energy resources of hydropower, coal, natural gas and petroleum.

The government is gearing up for elections expected in March and has launched another four big-budget masterplans worth billions of dollars to attract foreign investment and develop rural states over the next two decades.

The Premier said the project aims to bring economic growth and eradicate poverty in Sarawak by 2030, by creating 800,000 jobs and luring billions in private investment. The area earmarked for development is a 320km stretch along the Borneo coast facing the South China Sea, and covers 57 per cent of the state.

Officials say the main engine of growth for the project is the use of hydroelectricity supplied by the controversial Bakun Dam to power heavy industries.

Sarawak also signed 13 agreements yesterday with several firms, including a deal with global miner Rio Tinto Alcan for an aluminium smelter. — Agencies

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Philippines Strives to Control Boom on Paradise Isle

Raju Gopalakrishnan, PlanetArk 11 Feb 08;

BORACAY, Philippines - It's getting crowded in paradise.

About 600,000 tourists came last year to Boracay in the central Philippines, regarded as one of the world's best holiday destinations, and swam, ate and slept on an island that has only about 18,000 full-time residents.

Arrivals should rise to about 670,000 this year, and pressure is mounting on the island's infrastructure as more and more hotels and resorts are built to cater for the boom.

The single narrow road that runs the length of Boracay is jam-packed, drain pipes bring floodwater to the beach and hotel taps can suddenly run dry. About 10 tonnes of garbage need to be treated and disposed of each day.

"It's really taken off (in terms of) congestion, overgrowth," said David Light, a retired American actor who has been visiting Boracay for its windsurfing since 1991.

"It was a pristine natural environment and I hated to see it change, but it did."

Three decades ago, Boracay was the legendary secret destination for a generation of backpackers, pretty much deserted, with stunning beaches, a few huts and only basic facilities.

Now, over 150 hotels and restaurants are crowded along the 5-km (3-mile) White Beach, renowned for its soft, powdery sand and the clear blue water that it gently descends into. Other parts of the island are less crowded but may be getting there.

The government, concerned that the crown jewel of its tourism brochures is getting shopworn, is trying to step in but with limited success.

Environment Secretary Lito Atienza announced a ban on construction on Boracay in August, but it was not implemented until January, and then only for new projects. The moratorium will stay in place at least until July. A master plan for developing the island will be in place by then.


FRAGILE

"I feel that the island is very fragile," said Loubelle Cann, president of the Boracay Foundation, a local business association.

"I don't really know how much the island can carry in terms of physical capacity so we are pushing that we should at least study these things because you cannot just build and build and build."

Despite the moratorium, about 100 unfinished shops, hotels and restaurants have been allowed to be completed and the noise of jackhammers, excavators and power saws can be heard across the island.

These include a huge 183-room deluxe resort being built by Shangri-La north of White Beach. The hotel will cost $100 million and will offer rooms starting at $500 per night. It is expected to open by November this year.

Nearby, a hillside is being excavated to build the Alta Vista resort while the Shangri-La's staff quarters are being constructed across the street.

But still, there's no let up on the boatloads of tourists who cross from the main Panay island through the day.

White Beach, despite the crowds, is clean, and all buildings are a maximum two storeys high, lower than the coconut palms that fringe the sands. Unlike beaches elsewhere in the world, it remains safe at night and there are no overt signs of sleaze or drugs.

"It's nice," said Roger Mestric, a Frenchman from Nantes who was on the island with his wife after visits to China and Cambodia.

"It's not particularly crowded. From an ecologist's point of view, Martinique (in the Caribbean) is better, but you can live here easily."

The government and the resort-owners, residents say, have to find the balance between controlling expansion, providing infrastructure, offering facilities and retaining some mystique.

It's not the big resorts like the Shangri-La or the Alta Vista that are the problem, they say, it's the smaller buildings which sometimes block natural waterways or do not have proper sewage or waste disposal.

And there is never an easy answer for those who hanker for the good old days.

"Some people moan that it was much better 20 years ago," said Victor Ocskai, a German who owns a resort on the beach. "And then they want cold beer, running hot water and air-conditioning.

"Twenty years ago, it was quiet, but there was no cold beer."

(Editing by Megan Goldin)

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King penguins could be wiped out by climate change: study

Yahoo News 11 Feb 08;

One of the emblems of the Antarctic, the king penguin, could be driven to extinction by climate change, a French study published on Monday warned.

In a long-term investigation on the penguins' main breeding grounds, investigators found that a tiny warming of the Southern Ocean by the El Nino effect caused a massive fall in the birds' ability to survive.

If predictions by UN scientists of ever-higher temperatures in coming decades prove true, the species faces a major risk of being wiped out, they say.

Second in size only to the emperor penguin, king penguins (Aptenodytes patagonicus) live on islands on the fringes of Antarctica in the southern Indian Ocean, with an estimated population of two million breeding pairs.

The species is unusual in that it takes a whole year for all the birds to complete their breeding cycle -- the ritual of courtship, egg laying, incubating and chick rearing.

This extreme length, spanning the Antarctic winter and summer, means the birds are vulnerable to downturns in seasonal food resources for incubating their eggs and nurturing their chicks.

Their main diet, small fish and squid, depends on krill. These minute crustaceans are in turn extremely sensitive to temperature rise.

The team, led by Yvon Le Maho of France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), marked 456 penguins with subcutaneous electronic tags at a big breeding ground on Possession Island on the Crozet archipelago in the southern.

They buried radio antennas on pathways used by the penguins on the island and connected them to a computer that automatically recorded when the birds came and went.

The surveillance programme ran from November 1997 to April 2006, a period that included an El Nino, the cyclical warming event that is not linked to climate change.

During the El Nino, penguins that were early breeders did well, but those that bred later were badly hit, as the progressively warmer seas made food rarer.

But the overall impact on population only became visible two years later, because of the penguins' long reproductive cycle.

An increase of just 0.25 degrees Celsius (0.45 degrees Fahrenheit) in surface sea temperature translated into a nine-percent decline in an adult bird's chance of survival, Le Maho calculates.

According to the UN's Nobel-winning panel of climate scientists, the mean global temperature is already set to rise by around 0.2 C (0.35 F) per decade over the next two decades as part of a longer warming trend this century.

"Our findings suggest the king penguin populations are at heavy extinction risk under the current global warming predictions," the scientists say.

Their paper is published on Monday by the US journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

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Insect Invasion Possible as Climate Warms

Andrea Thompson, LiveScience Yahoo News 12 Feb 08;

Global warming could bring about a veritable insect explosion, if past performance is an indication of future gains.

Just such a buggy invasion swarmed parts of the northern United States during an abrupt global warming event more than 50 million years ago, a new study of leaf fossils shows.

The study's findings, detailed in the Feb. 11 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, indicate that the same thing could happen during our current period of warming.

Holes, mines and galls

The most diverse range of insects today can be found in the tropics, along with the most insect damage to leaves. These observations indicate a correlation between warmer temperatures and insect diversity.

Insect diversity in an area can be inferred from the amount and types of damage found on the leaves of local plant life. The scars left on leaves from munching insects can even be seen in fossils.

Different types of insects leave different types of marks from their meal. Some, such as beetles, simply chew holes in the leaves. Some butterflies leave marks called "mines" that result when the insect's egg hatches and the larva eats a "feeding channel" through the leaf, says study leader Ellen Currano, a graduate student at Penn State.

Another mark left by insect larvae that hatch in the leaf, called "galls," are like "balls of thickened tissue" that the larva eats, as Currano describes it.

The researchers looked for evidence of these scars in more than 5,000 leaf fossils from the Bighorn Basin in Wyoming. The leaf fossils date from before, during and after the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), an abrupt global warming event comparable to our current state of climate change that occurred about 56 million years ago. The changes in the amount and types of marks left by leaf-munching insects, as well as the percentage of devoured leaves, indicated how many of the creepy crawlies were in the area under different climatic conditions.

Hungry, hungry insects

Currano and her colleagues found that during the comparatively cooler end of the Paleocene epoch, 15 to 38 percent of leaves showed insect damage. Similarly, later on at the beginning of the Eocene, when temperatures had dropped after the thermal maximum, 33 percent of leaves were damaged. But during the warmth of the PETM, insect damage was found on 57 percent of leaves.

"We … see this big jump in the percentage of leaves that have any kind of damage," Currano said.

Currano and her colleagues think these more voracious insect appetites were a result of a concurrent rise in carbon dioxide levels during the PETM that would have made plant leaves less nutritious.

"With more carbon dioxide available to plants, photosynthesis is easier and plants can make the same amount of food for themselves without having to put so much protein in their leaves," so insects have to eat more of a leaf to get the same amount of nutrition they did before, Currano explained.

The same feeding frenzy could occur as carbon dioxide levels continue to rise today, as several studies have shown that some plants produce fewer nutrients in elevated carbon dioxide levels.

Along with hungrier insects could come a change in the type of plants and bugs in northerly regions.

The plants in the three different time periods the team studied were all different and showed an increase in biodiversity in the PETM that suggests to the researchers that plant species slowly migrated from the Gulf Coast area as temperatures warmed. Currano says that insects could have followed the same route.

"They're also following the plants that they ate on further south," she told LiveScience.

Because the PETM is comparable in the size and rate of warming to the current climate change regime, Currano and her team think it likely that such an invasion of hungry insects could eventually occur in modern times.

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Experts challenge ice shelf claim

BBC News 7 Feb 08;

Two scientists have claimed that climate change was not the only cause of the collapse of a 500bn tonne ice shelf in Antarctica six years ago.

The 656ft (200m) thick, 1,255 sq mile (3,250 sq km) Larsen B shelf broke apart in March 2002.

But Neil Glasser of Aberystwyth University and Ted Scambos of Colorado University claim in a new study that it had been on the brink for decades.

They argue that glaciological and atmospheric factors were also invoved.

In a paper published in the Journal of Glaciology, the pair say that when Larsen B collapsed it appeared to be the latest in a long line of victims of Antarctic summer heatwaves linked to global warming.

Researchers from the British Antarctic Survey predicted in 1998 that several ice shelves around the peninsula were doomed because of rising temperatures in the region, but the speed with which Larsen B went shocked them in 2002.



But Prof Glasser said the dramatic event was "not as simple as we first thought".

He acknowledged that global warming had a major part to play in the collapse, but emphasised that it was only one of a number of contributory factors.

"Because large amounts of meltwater appeared on the ice shelf just before it collapsed, we had always assumed that air temperature increases were to blame," he added.

"But our new study shows that ice-shelf break up is not controlled simply by climate.

"A number of other atmospheric, oceanic and glaciological factors are involved.

"For example, the location and spacing of fractures on the ice shelf such as crevasses and rifts are very important too because they determine how strong or weak the ice shelf is."

Dr Scambos, of the University of Colorado's national snow and ice data centre, said the ice shelf had probably been in distress for decades before its demise.

"It's likely that melting from higher ocean temperatures, or even a gradual decline in the ice mass of the peninsula over the centuries, was pushing the Larsen to the brink," he added.

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Greek shoppers told to kick plastic bag habit

Yahoo News 11 Feb 08;

Greece's top supermarket chains and the city of Athens launched Monday a campaign to turn shoppers off plastic bags, some 2.5 billion of which are used nationwide each year.

"We need to persuade people to stop using plastic bags," Christophoros Giokas, general sales manager at Greek chain My Market, told reporters. "We frequently see shoppers taking five spare bags home."

Nine chains -- AB Vassilopoulos, Atlantic, Veropoulos, Bazaar, Galaxias, Carrefour Marinopoulos, Dia Hellas, My Market Metro, and Sklavenitis -- signed a memorandum with Athens Mayor Nikitas Kaklamanis to provide reusable and environment-friendly bags on a two-month trial ran starting April 14.

The measure will begin in earnest on June 1 along with efforts to expand it to the rest of the country, Kaklamanis told a news conference.

Around 40 percent of Greece's 11 million people live in Athens, where increasing levels of domestic waste are being generated, the memorandum said.

Plastic bags end up in hundreds of unofficial or substandard landfills around the country that are a major headache for Greek authorities, but also pose a threat to river and marine wildlife.

Ninety-eight percent of European sea birds have pieces of plastic in their stomachs, the memorandum said.

The European Union has repeatedly expressed alarm over the disposal of environmentally-hazardous waste at these sites, and Greece is often singled out by both the EU and environmental groups such as Greenpeace and WWF for failing to enforce even its own environmental legislation.

Only around 20 percent of waste generated in the country is recycled, the Greek environment ministry said in July.

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U.N. climate fund seen fed by more sources

Reuters 11 Feb 08;

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A fund to help poor countries adapt to consequences of climate change such as rising seas and searing temperatures could soon be enriched by more sources, the U.N.'s top climate change official said on Monday.

Recognizing that climate change may be hard to reverse, experts are now examining "adaptation," or protection against potential catastrophes, in addition to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The United Nations agreed to start an adaptation fund for poor countries late last year at climate talks in Bali, Indonesia. Currently, the fund receives money from a levy on deals under the Clean Development Mechanism, or investments from rich countries in green technology projects in developing countries under the Kyoto Protocol.

"One of the things under discussion is whether the levy ought to be extended to other mechanisms as well which would significantly increase revenues," Yvo de Boer, the head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, told reporters on the sidelines of a General Assembly climate debate.

The levy could be extended to Kyoto Protocol climate deals between rich countries, known as Joint Implementation, or to carbon credit trade, he said.

The fund now comprises about $36 million, but might rise to as much as $5 billion a year by 2030 if investments in green technology rise.

De Boer said it was hard to tell how much the fund would grow this year because the U.N. has a backlog of about 2,000 of the CDM projects and it is uncertain how many tons of emissions reductions they would generate or where emissions prices will go.

(Reporting by Timothy Gardner, editing by Matthew Lewis)

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Age of 'Green Economics' is Upon Us: UN Secretary General

PlanetArk 11 Feb 08;

CHICAGO - UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Thursday the world is on the cusp of "the age of green economics" and called on nations to cooperate to fight global warming and promote the transformation.

"With the right financial incentives and a global framework, we can steer economic growth in a low-carbon direction," Ban said in remarks prepared for delivery to a Chicago business group.

Ban, who has made the environment a centerpiece of his year-long leadership of the UN, urged the United States and other countries to partner with the "world's only truly global institution" to combat such scourges as climate change, terrorism and infectious diseases.

"No nation, alone, can deal with such problems," Ban said. "Operating effectively in today's world requires partnership. It requires co-operation, engagement and dialogue -- as well as global rules."

Three-quarters of Americans in surveys believe the United Nations should play a larger role in the world, he said, and a similar proportion say US foreign policy should be coordinated with the international body.

The United States is the biggest single funder of the United Nations though the body has been an object of frequent criticism, particularly from Republicans, for how it is run and for the perception it impedes US goals.

Ban said global investment in green energy is projected to hit $1.9 trillion by 2020, an indication of an economic shift that will rival the industrial revolution and the technology revolution of the past two centuries.

"We're now on the threshold of another (transformation) -- the age of green economics," Ban said.

"Businesspeople in so many parts of the world are demanding clear and consistent policies on climate change -- global policies for a global problem," he said.

(Reporting by Andrew Stern; editing by Stuart Grudgings)

UN chief calls for climate change action
Edith M. Lederer, Associated Press Yahoo News 12 Feb 08;

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday urged all nations to join private companies, civic groups and individuals this year in sustaining "the unprecedented momentum" to fight global warming.

"If 2007 was the year when climate change rose to the top of the global agenda, 2008 is the time we must take concerted action," Ban said at the start of a two-day U.N. General Assembly debate to generate support for a new treaty by 2009 to fight global warming.

General Assembly President Srgjan Kerim invited U.N. member states, government officials and business and civic leaders to the United Nations to follow up December's international climate conference on the Indonesian resort island of Bali. There, delegates from nearly 190 nations agreed to adopt a blueprint to control global warming gases before the end of next year.

"The conference delivered what it set out to do," Ban said. "Now the real work begins. The challenge is huge. We have less than two years to craft an agreement on action that measures up to what the science tells us."

In key reports last year, a U.N. network of climate and other scientists warned of severe consequences — from rising seas, droughts, severe weather, species extinction and other effects — without sharp cutbacks in emissions of the industrial, transportation and agricultural gases blamed for global warming.

To avoid the worst, the Nobel Prize-winning U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said greenhouse gas emissions should be reduced by 25 percent to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 — and by at least half by 2050.

"This is just as important as stopping nuclear proliferation. This is just as important as stopping terrorism," New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday in the keynote address.

The new agreement would replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which requires 36 industrial nations to radically reduce emissions by 2012, when it expires. The United States is the only major industrial country that did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

A new agreement needs to be adopted by the end of 2009 to ensure a smooth transition to a new post-Kyoto regime. Before then, Ban said, the international community must map emission limitation commitments; mobilize the financing needed and technological innovation; and agree on "essential action to adapt to the impacts of climate change."

He called on governments, organizations, and individuals around the world to "help sustain the unprecedented momentum that propelled the climate change agenda forward so dramatically last year."

"Developed countries need to take a clear lead, but success is possible only if all countries act," Ban said. "The more ambitious the commitments by developed countries, the more actions we can expect from developing countries."

Kerim said new technologies, renewable energies and more research are essential to solve the problem.

"What is needed is ... a global alliance for action, shared by individuals, the media, lawmakers, business leaders, governments, regional organizations and ultimately the global community embodied in the U.N," Kerim said. "Only then will we have a chance to tackle this enormous challenge to our way of life."

Bloomberg said the world's cities can help lead the way toward reducing the greenhouse gases blamed for warming the planet. He also called on the United States to set "real and binding" targets to reduce emissions, instead of the current U.S. strategy that largely relies on voluntary approaches and spending for research and technology.

"I believe that the American people are prepared for our responsibility to lead by example," he said.

Special guests at the climate debate include British billionaire Richard Branson, who has decided to invest heavily in "biofuels," and actress Daryl Hannah. Nearly 100 countries have signed up to speak and 20 are sending ministers, assembly spokesman Janos Tisovszky said Friday.

The debate follows a recent report by the secretary-general which said global warming could cost the world up to $20 trillion over two decades for cleaner energy sources and do the most harm to people who can least afford to adapt.

UN chief, NY mayor urge world action on climate change
Gerard Aziakou Yahoo News 11 Feb 08;

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg joined UN chief Ban Ki-moon here Monday in galvanizing world action to roll back climate change, an issue he described as "just as important" as nuclear proliferation and terrorism.

"We are damaging our planet. Nobody knows at what rate but at any rate it is not good," Bloomberg told reporters after addressing a UN General Assembly debate on the impact of global warming.

"We have to do something about it and we have to do it now," he added.

Calling climate change "perhaps one of the most important issues facing us," Bloomberg said: "This is just as important as stopping nuclear proliferation. This is just as important as stopping terrorism."

"Terrorists kill people, weapons of mass destruction have the potential to kill enormous numbers of people. Global warming long-term has the potential to kill everybody," the New York mayor said.

At the opening of a two-day meeting, Ban underscored the need to "encourage new kinds of cleaner technologies, industries and jobs and integrate climate change risks into national policies and practices."

He reminded participants of the achievements made at last December's Bali conference in Indonesia, where agreement was reached on setting a 2009 deadline for a landmark new treaty to cut global-warming greenhouse gases once the current Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.

"Developed countries need to take a clear lead, but success is possible only if all countries act," the UN chief said.

"The more ambitious the commitments by developed countries, the more actions we can expect from developing countries," he said. "The more developing countries engage, the more ambitiously the developed countries will commit."

British tycoon Richard Branson, president of the Virgin Atlantic airline called for "a powerful partnership that helps to scale up the best innovation by bringing together business leaders, economists, environmental groups and other expert organizations to tackle the war against global warming."

He insisted that this was indeed "a war ... the first war that truly threatens almost all human life -- a war that to win we must all fight together."

And he said that Virgin was doing its part by putting up a 25 million-dollar (17.25 million-euro) prize to "encourage scientists and inventors to put their mind to it.

"Today, we would like to urge the 20 wealthiest governments to match us in this endeavor so we can make the largest scientific price ever: a half a billion-dollar prize," Branson told the meeting.

Bloomberg said that in the United States, "cities and states have stepped up to the plate where the government has been unwilling to do so."

In New York City, he cited a campaign to "reduce our carbon footprint," for instance by converting taxis to fuel-saving hybrids over the next five years, a move which he said would reduce the city's entire carbon footprint by half of one percent.

He also cited a drive to plant one million trees throughout the city over the next 10 years, a move which "will not only capture carbon dioxide, but also clean the air, cool our streets, reduce street flooding and raise property values."

Bloomberg also highlighted efforts to make the city's buildings environmentally friendly -- "not just to cut carbon emissions, but also because it will allow us to redirect billions of dollars a year it now takes to heat and cool these buildings, often inefficiently, to better purposes."

And he unveiled a long-term initiative to reduce consumption of tropical hardwoods by city agencies.

In the short-term, the plan aims to cut tropical hardwood use by 20 percent by eliminating these woods from construction and maintenance of park benches, and piloting alternative materials for existing boardwalks.

"Setting serious carbon targets will not hamper growth," Bloomberg said.

"If the US and the developing nations make such commitments, then the prospects for a new international global warming accord improve greatly."

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New York Mayor slams U.S. energy law over corn ethanol

Bloomberg slams U.S. energy law over corn ethanol
Louis Charbonneau and Timothy Gardner, Reuters 11 Feb 08;

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A new U.S. energy law will cause an increase in global food prices and lead to starvation deaths worldwide because it continues to promote corn ethanol, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on Monday.

"People literally will starve to death in parts of the world, it always happens when food prices go up," Bloomberg told reporters after addressing a U.N. General Assembly debate on climate change.

The new U.S. law, which came into force late last year, increased fivefold the required amount of blending of biofuels like corn ethanol -- creating higher demand for the grain that will push up corn prices.

By 2022 some 15 billion gallons of the required 36 billion could come from corn ethanol, with the rest mandated to come from lower-carbon sources such as crop waste and switchgrass.

The new law favored corn ethanol by continuing to subsidize it while taxing sugar ethanol, Bloomberg said. This is because corn ethanol is mainly domestically produced while sugar ethanol is imported from Brazil and subject to import tariffs.

Bloomberg joined other critics of corn ethanol production in saying it was not a net producer of energy, unlike sugar ethanol. That is, corn ethanol does not yield more energy than it takes to produce, transport and use it.

Biofuels are seen by some people as a means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and boosting energy security by providing an alternative to fossil fuels.

Richard Branson, the billionaire British entrepreneur and head of Virgin Group, agreed that sugar ethanol was preferable to corn-based biofuel. It would make more sense, he said, for the United States to grow food and let countries like Brazil use their land to produce sugar for biofuels.

"I think if America got rid of the importation duty on sugar-based ethanol, that's what would happen and I think the world would benefit from that," Branson told reporters.

Cuban leader Fidel Castro blasted the Bush administration's biofuels policy as "genocidal" in a series of articles last year, saying they threatened to worsen global hunger by pushing up prices for food crops used to make ethanol.

GLOBAL WARMING IS AS BAD AS TERRORISM

The international Sugar Cane Industry Union (Unica) has said that sugar cane-based fuel yields more energy than corn fuel, providing seven liters of ethanol per hectare compared with three liters with corn. The group also claimed that sugar ethanol production costs are lower.

The European Commission said last month that the European Union would set tougher environmental criteria for biofuels after admitting that the drive for these fuels has done unforeseen damage, like endangering rain forests in Asia and causing a rise in food prices.

Bloomberg also told reporters that global warming is just as much a threat to the human race as terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

"Terrorists kill people, weapons of mass destruction have the potential to kill enormous numbers of people, global warming has the potential to kill everybody," said the head of the city where nearly 3,000 people died in the September 11 attacks.

"This is really just as lethal, it's just that the results are something we will face long term," he said.

The mayor has set a goal of reducing New York's greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by 2030 through measures like converting the taxi cab fleet to hybrid cars by 2012 and trying to reduce city driving through "congestion pricing" or charging vehicles a user fee to the heart of the city's business district.

(Editing by Philip Barbara)

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No amnesty for Amazon deforestation: Brazil

Yahoo News 11 Feb 08;

Brazil's government on Monday dismissed reports suggesting an amnesty was being considered for landowners who were contributing to the deforestation of the Amazon.

Brasilia "is not working on any amnesty proposal for those behind illegal deforestation or on any weakening of legislation" protecting the woodland, Environment Minister Marina Silva told reporters.

She and Agriculture Minister Reinhold Stephanes criticized a congessional committee bill that aims at revising current environmental protection laws for the Amazon by giving landowners more leeway to clear vegetation.

That text, if passed, "would not result in lesser deforestation but rather the legalization of passive environmental protection, and would cause more deforestation," Silva said.

Brazil is currently redoubling efforts to conserve the Amazon -- sometimes called the "lungs" of the planet for its role in absorbing carbon dioxide and producing oxygen -- after seeing increased deforestation in the last half of 2007.

It is stepping up monitoring by police and rangers, and reinforcing penalties against cattle ranchers and loggers who violate the protection laws.

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Ecuadoran warned about oil fields in nature preserve

Yahoo News 10 Feb 08;

Attorney General Xavier Garaicoa urged oil companies from China, Brazil, Spain and Ecuador to pull up their stakes from an Amazonian natural preserve to prevent "environmental and social problems."

The oil fields "are inside the Yasuni national park," which has been declared a world nature preserve and is home to the Tagaeri and Taromenane indigenous communities, Garaicoa said in a statement addressed to the government of President Rafael Correa.

He said the presence of the four oil companies -- Spain's Repsol YPF, Brazil's Petrobras, China's Andes Petroleum and Ecuador's Petroecuador -- in the region "could create environmental and social problems in the future."

He reminded the government of its international commitments in defense of the environment and human rights, especially the protective measures the Interamerican Commission has requested to keep the Tagaeri and Taromenane people in their voluntary isolation in the preserve.

"There's a pressing need for the oil fields to be removed from the protected area, even though their locations were set out before the Yasuni area was established," Garaicoa said.

With a daily production of 508,000 barrels of oil, Ecuador is the smallest member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

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