Wet weather clears haze over Singapore

Satellite data shows drop in number of fires in Indonesia creating the smoke
Tania Tan, Straits Times 7 Mar 08;

SAY goodbye to the haze - for now.

The skies over Singapore have not only cleared, but they have also opened up, dumping 90mm of rain on parts of the island over the past week.

The wet weather that got rid of the haze - caused by slash-and-burn clearing of forests in Indonesia - is expected to stick around, said the National Environment Agency (NEA).

Moderate to heavy showers can be expected till the middle of this month, as the inter-monsoon season rolls in, said the NEA's Meteorological Service.

The rain has given Singaporeans at least a temporary respite from the smoke, which caused the air quality here to hit the moderate range last week.

The haze was sparked by smoke from forest fires in Sumatra.

The levels, though, were still a far cry from the worst haze episode in recent memory.

In October 2006, the PSI (Pollutant Standards Index) hit an unhealthy 150.

A reading of 101 to 200 can lead to sneezing, coughing or eye irritation among healthy people, and respiratory problems among those with breathing difficulties.

Last week, it hovered in the 50s. Yesterday's reading was 33.

Satellite data from the National University of Singapore (NUS) has shown a drop in Indonesian 'hot spots' - locations of fires or potential blazes.

'It has been very quiet in the past week, with a combined hot-spot count over Sumatra and Kalimantan of fewer than five every day,' said Mr Chia Aik Song, a scientist at the NUS' Centre for Remote Imaging, Sensing and Processing.

Heavy cloud cover over Sumatra also suggests rainfall, which would douse any fires in the region, he added.

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Outcry over cheap rents for forests in Indonesia

Govt is offering mining companies land to collect rent for state coffers
Salim Osman, Straits Times 7 Mar 08;

JAKARTA - A NEW decree offering open-pit mining companies cheap rents for Indonesia's 'protected' forests has sparked an uproar and a growing environmental campaign against the practice.

Under the decree, signed by the President last month, companies can rent forest for an annual rate of just 3 million rupiah (S$460) per hectare, or 300 rupiah per square metre.

Mr Rully Syumada of Walhi, the Indonesian Forum for the Environment, has now organised a campaign to get the public to rent as much forest land as possible, before the mining companies can get their hands on it.

And he says: 'It's so cheap and far below the market value of the forest land. With 300 rupiah, you can buy pisang goreng (banana fritters).'

Environmentalists also fear the mines will be just the thin end of the wedge, with the decree also opening the land up to exploitation for oil and gas drilling, and the construction of electricity transmission towers and toll roads.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has defended the decree, signed on Feb 4, as a follow-up to decrees set by the Megawati administration allowing 13 mining firms to operate in protected forests.

He says it will encourage mining firms to immediately contribute to state coffers.

But critics point to the fact that, unlike the earlier decrees, it does not limit rights to certain companies, something confirmed by Energy Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro last Friday when he said the scheme was open to any company which could pay the rent.

And the executive director of environmental group Greenomics Indonesia, Mr Elfian Effendi, says the mining sector would contribute only 0.17 per cent of the 1.5 trillion rupiah state budget for the year.

He says this is a far lower sum than what the environmentalists claim is the ecological cost of 70 trillion rupiah a year when protected forests are opened up to mining.

And he has accused the government of 'looking for so many ways to allow open pit mining in protected forests'.

So far, Mr Rully's move to block the mining companies has received support from Dr Din Syamsuddin, head of the second largest Muslim organisation Muhammadiyah and singer-cum-social activist Franky Sahilatua, who each donated 30 million rupiah to be used to rent 10ha of protected forest for two years.

Former environmental minister Nabiel Makarim, also donated 50,000 rupiah, saying that the decree 'will only allow businesses to destroy the forests'.

Meanwhile, the government has insisted on going ahead with enforcing the regulation, saying the fees collected could be used to 'regenerate' the country's ailing forests.

But Mr Rully told The Straits Times the decree was simply an 'about turn' by the government, coming hot on the heels of a strong commitment during the run-up to the Bali climate change meetings in December to preserve and restore Indonesia's forests.

'The President has not been consistent in his stand,' he said.

'He promised to protect the forest but now he has signed a decree that will destroy our forest and contribute to global warming.'

Indonesian mining rules alarm green groups
Reuters 7 Mar 08;

JAKARTA (Reuters) - An Indonesian conservation group said on Friday the government should be ashamed for approving a decree allowing mining companies operating in tropical forests to pay as little as $200 a hectare to rent more land.

Under a presidential decree issued on February 4, mining firms, including open-pit miners, will be able to pay between 1.8 million and 2.4 million rupiah ($200-$265) per hectare (2.5 acres) for forest land used for activities such as housing, roads, mine sites and waste dumps.

Indonesia had the fastest pace of deforestation in the world between 2000-2005, according to Greenpeace, with an area of forest equivalent to 300 soccer pitches destroyed every hour.

"Indonesia should be ashamed of itself," said Siti Maemunah of the Mining Advocacy Network, a conservation group.

She said the decree left open the prospect of more firms getting permits to operate in forests, adding that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono appeared not to recognize the huge environmental problems facing the country.

She called for the decree to be revoked and also noted it was issued weeks after Indonesia hosted a U.N. climate change conference in Bali at which curbing deforestation was a top issue.

Indonesian green group Walhi has also protested the move.

Since Monday, the Jakarta-based NGO has collected donations from almost 600 people to buy more than three million square meters of protected forest before mining companies get to it.

The money has been presented to the government and the campaign will open to international supporters next week, said Walhi forest campaigner Rully Syumada in Jakarta.

COMPENSATION FUND

Previously, firms had to provide new land to compensate for the use of forest areas, at twice the scale of the mining area for operations in Java and the same elsewhere in Indonesia.

But under the new decree, mining firms, during their contract period, pay into a compensation fund that would be used to replant forests, forestry ministry spokesman Ahmad Fauzi said.

"It's impossible to find new land to replant the forest that they have taken (for mining). We can't make rules which are not applicable. It may spark protest from the public," Fauzi said.

The decree applies to 13 mining firms that four years ago were allowed to resume operations in forest areas -- including Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold which operates the massive Grasberg mine in Indonesia's remote Papua province that has been a frequent source of controversy over its environmental impact.

Indonesia's forestry law issued in 1999 prohibited open-pit mining in protected forest areas. But in 2004, Indonesia's fourth president, Megawati Sukarnoputri, issued a decree to allow the companies to resume operations in protected areas.

It was not clear whether the new decree will be extended to allow other mining companies to apply for permits to operate in protected forests.

The decree also applies to oil and gas companies, as well as companies involved in power transmission, hydro and geothermal power, and toll road operators.

"Permits will depend on the energy and mines ministry. But as long as they use our forest, they have to pay," Fauzi said.

The Indonesian Coal Mining Association said the latest decree could help spur flagging investment in the mining sector.

"It would not immediately spur new investment but it will increase appetite," association chairman Jeffrey Mulyono told reporters late Thursday.

Indonesia has some of the world's largest deposits of coal, copper, tin, nickel and gold, and is keen to earn more from the sector, particularly as strong demand from China and India has been driving prices up for many commodities to record levels.

(Reporting by Muhammad Al Azhari, Fitri Wulandari and Sally Pranowo; Editing by Ed Davies and David Fogarty)

($1 = 9,055 rupiah)

Related article

More protected Indonesian forests up for grabs
Ika Krismantari, The Jakarta Post 1 Mar 08;

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Global warming not cooling travelers' wanderlust

Sylvia Westall, Reuters 6 Mar 08;

BERLIN (Reuters) - Global warming's threat to the existence of the exotic resorts and beaches tourists crave has not dented holidaymakers' appetites for pollution-producing, long-haul trips, experts said at Berlin's annual tourism fair.

In his opening speech to the International Tourism Exchange fair earlier this week, German Economy Minister Michael Glos said climate change was a serious problem for the future of the travel industry.

A Deutsche Bank report demonstrated how the industry would suffer if the effects of global warming, including rising temperatures and water shortages, hit popular holiday destinations such Spain and Australia.

According to United Nations' research, tourism accounts for 5 percent of world carbon dioxide emissions, which scientists have linked to rising atmospheric temperatures.

But exhibitors at the fair say tourists so far are not that worried about the environmental cost of their holidays.

"There is heightened awareness, but does that mean people are willing to change their approach to travel? The answer is no," said Geoff Buckley, managing director of Australia's tourism board.

Online travel agency Expedia says it has seen no decline in the number of people taking long-haul flights and that climate worries are a peripheral concern for travelers.

"People are concerned about climate change but they don't want to change their habits," said Expedia spokeswoman Claudia Ressel, who added that holidaymakers were happier to contribute to carbon-offsetting schemes rather than travel less.

Two of Germany's largest tourism groups, Thomas Cook and TUI said they will do more to promote carbon-offsetting schemes for customers booking flights. But interest in such voluntary schemes, where others are paid to cut emissions on the airlines' behalf, has so far been small.

Another area that has failed to take off yet is eco-tourism in which people opt for train over air travel and make shorter journeys, said Klaus Liedtke, editor of National Geographic Deutschland magazine.

German tourism companies say business is booming, despite an expected slowdown in national economic growth, with the tourism industry expected to grow by 3 percent to 4 percent this year.

And travel groups argue exotic destinations in developing countries would take a severe economic hit if they were to fall out of favor with tourists.

"Tourism is an easy target," said Nancy Cockerell from the Travel Business Partnership consultancy. "But it's both the culprit and the victim."

(Editing by Mary Gabriel)

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Manmade flood from US dam unleashed in Grand Canyon

Amanda Lee Myers, Associated Press Yahoo News 7 Mar 08;

Four arcs of water unleashed from a dam coursed through the Grand Canyon on Wednesday in a flood meant to mimic the natural ones that used to nourish the ecosystem by spreading sediment.

More than 300,000 gallons of water per second were released from Lake Powell above the dam near the Arizona-Utah border. That's enough water to fill the Empire State Building in 20 minutes, said Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne.

"This gives you a glimpse of what nature has been doing for millions of years, cutting through and creating this magnificent canyon," Kempthorne said after he pulled the lever releasing the water from Glen Canyon Dam, upstream from Grand Canyon National Park.

The water gushed from two of four giant steel tubes in parallel arcs into the Colorado River. By afternoon, water poured from all four tubes, creating a churning pool beneath the sheer, sandstone canyon walls rising hundreds of feet.

The water level in the Grand Canyon rose 2 to 15 feet in some places. After the flood ends Friday, officials hope the water will leave behind sediment and restore sandbars as it goes back to normal levels. Officials have flooded the canyon twice before, in 1996 and 2004.

Before the dam was built in 1963, the river was warm and muddy, and natural flooding built up sandbars that are essential to native plant and fish species. The river is now cool and clear, its sediment blocked by the dam.

The change helped speed the extinction of four fish species and push two others, including the endangered humpback chub, near the edge.

Shrinking beaches have led to the loss of half the camping sites in the canyon in the past decade. Since Glen Canyon Dam was built, 98 percent of the sediment carried by the Colorado River has been lost, Grand Canyon National Park Superintendent Steve Martin said.

Martin said manmade floods need to occur every time there's enough sediment to do so — about every one to two years depending on Arizona's volatile monsoon season.

"The science is really clear that's what we need to do," Martin said.

The Grand Canyon Trust, a Flagstaff-based group that has been critical of the federal Bureau of Reclamation's management of the dam, also is calling for more regular high flows.

"The power industry is driving the Bureau of Reclamation more than anything else, as opposed as to what's best for the canyon," trust spokesman Richard Mayol said.

Scientists will document habitat changes and determine how backwater habitats are used by the chub and other fish. Another study will look at how higher water flows affect the aquatic food base.

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China Province Seeks Dams Despite Environment Fears

PlanetArk 7 Mar 08;

BEIJING - China's southwestern province of Yunnan is still hoping to build controversial dams and hydropower plants on the upper reaches of the Salween River, a senior official said on Thursday, despite environmental concerns.

Premier Wen Jiabao in 2004 ordered an environmental study of the proposed dams on the river known in China as the Nu, after environmental officials and scientists mobilised opposition to the plans.

At that time, many critics of the project -- which is near a World Heritage site, leading the United Nations to express concern -- assumed it was entirely dead.

But Yunnan officials eager to promote economic growth, and energy officials eager to slake China's thirst for electricity, have continued to promote the dams.

Bai Enpei, Yunnan's Communist Party boss, told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of China's annual meeting of parliament that the dams would bring much needed income to the area, which in turn would help environmental protection.

"We are actively pushing the development of hydropower plants, including on the Nu River," he said. "But their construction must take into account those downstream. And the environment must protected. The people must also benefit.

"Some oppose and some support the Nu River projects. I am on the supporting team," Bai added.

"If you have never been, you would wonder how you could build dams in such a beautiful area. But that's not the case. It's in a remote border area, and the trees around have almost all been felled. Only if there is economic development can there be money to protect the environment," he said.

"So building dams is good for both the local people and the environment," Bai added.

Environmental groups say the projects would displace ethnic minority peoples, destroy a unique ecosystem and affect people living downstream in Myanmar and Thailand.

Many other Chinese dam projects have become mired in controversy, not least the massive Three Gorges Dam, where Chinese officials have said areas around it were paying a heavy, potentially calamitous environmental cost.

Bai said work still needed to be done to convince Myanmar about the dams, but he didn't think that would be a problem.

Persuading environmental groups to drop their opposition could be a harder task, he admitted, but added he thought it unfair not to bring development to the local people.

"You cannot expect the people of the Nu River to keep wearing animal skins and bring in everyone to have a look in the name of ecotourism," Bai said. "They also have the right to exist, and to development."

The government would ensure that money earned from the power produced would be ploughed back into the community, he added, although critics say the power generated will be shipped off to factories and developments in more prosperous provinces.

"We have to do this, not only for the Nu River, but for other rivers too," Bai said, refering to the plan to spend a proportion of the hydroplants' income on local people.

But Beijing will only sign off on the scheme if the province can show it has consulted widely, including with Myanmar and non-governmental bodies, he said.

"We will step up work in this regard," Bai added, though he said he did not know when construction might start.

(Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)


Story by Ben Blanchard

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New Book Puts Cost of Saving Planet at $190 Billion

PlanetArk 7 Mar 08;

LONDON - What would it cost to wipe out world poverty, guarantee universal health care, stabilise population growth and roll back the ravages of global warming?

About $190 billion a year, or the equivalent of a third of US annual military expenditure, a prominent environmental economist says in a new book.

"Once you accept that climate change, population growth, spreading water shortages, rising food prices etcetera are threats to our security, it changes your whole way of thinking about how you use public resources," Lester Brown told Reuters in an interview.

From eradicating adult illiteracy to restoring fisheries and stabilising water tables, the head of the Earth Policy Institute think tank in Washington calculates the cost of saving civilisation in a new edition of his best-selling "Plan B".

The $190 billion price tag compares with $1.2 trillion that world governments spent on military budgets in 2006. The United States splurged the most with $560 billion.

Describing a planet on the brink of environmental meltdown, Brown calls for a "great mobilisation" to fight climate change, equivalent to the Allied wartime effort to beat Nazi Germany.

Plan A would be for the world to continue on its present course. Plan B is Brown's strategy to stabilise climate, stem runaway population growth, eradicate poverty and restore damaged ecosystems.

Brown argues that failure to achieve any one of these goals would result in defeat overall.

"I don't think Plan B is perfect, but it's the only plan out there -- the only alternative to business as usual," he said.

"One might think that the World Bank or the UN or someone would have a plan that takes into account how systems are interacting and what that translates into, but the reality is this is the only one."


"ECOLOGICAL HONESTY"

The centrepiece of Brown's blueprint for change is a detailed plan to cut global carbon dioxide emissions by 80 percent by 2020 to keep a lid on future temperature rises.

He also calls for a restructuring of the world economy -- and tax systems in particular -- to make markets "ecologically honest", meaning that commodity prices should reflect indirect environmental costs.

Take the price of water, which Brown argues is too cheap to discourage countries from exhausting vital sources.

"The thing to keep in mind is that it takes 1,000 tonnes of water to produce one tonne of grain," he said.

"Seventy percent of all the water we use in the world -- that we pump from underground or divert from rivers -- is used in irrigation. Not everyone has connected the dots to see that a future of water shortages will be a future of food shortages."

Brown, who has authored or coauthored more than 50 books, was one of the first economists to warn that the boom in biofuels could be a threat to global food security.

"In this new world where the price of grain is tied to the price of oil, if the price of oil goes up, so grain goes up," he said. "And that is a threat to political stability in the world that I don't think we've come close to grasping yet."

A central theme of "Plan B" is that it's not too late to save the planet -- if we act now.

That optimism sets Brown apart from eco-pioneers like Gaia guru James Lovelock, who has concluded it's too late to reverse the devastating effects of climate change.

"He might be right, and he's not the only one who thinks that," Brown said. "I have to hope there's a chance we can turn it around. Otherwise there's no point. Even if we lose it's better to go down fighting than just standing there."

(Editing by Andrew Roche)

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UK Women's Institutes members reduce rubbish

WI do their bit for the environment
Charles Clover, The Telegraph 6 Mar 08;

Members of the Women's Institutes have reduced the amount of household rubbish they put out each year to 18 stone (118 kg) compared with the national average of 152 stone (970kg), according to figures published today.

WI members were already doing much better than the national average, putting out an average of only 23 stone of rubbish a year when they got involved in a four-month initiative in which they joined an eco-team.

This was thought to be because many WI members did their own cooking so they did not buy so many ready meals which come in lots of packaging.

Those who joined the eco-teams still managed to reduce that amount by 22 per cent mainly by recycling more than they did before.

Ruth Bond, chairman of the National Federation of Women's Institutes public affairs committee, said: "These are fantastic results. Our members have shown that through a concerted effort we can reduce our impact on the environment and therefore decrease out household's contribution to climate change."

Joy Evans, of Hagley, Worcs, who was on one of the eco-teams, said: "The trick is to think about what you are buying and recycle everything you possibly can.

"Don't buy veg with packaging on it. Buy it from the local shop where there is no packaging at all. My shopping habits have changed since I have been in the eco-team. I shop much more locally."

She takes the plastic bags she does use back to the supermarket.

Jill Glover of Little Chalfont, Bucks, said: "I think WI members are generally more aware. We have campaigned on environmental problems for years."

While on an eco-team she discovered a way of recycling Tetrapak cardboard containers at her local Tesco. "Only I don't shop there," she added.

The WI eco-teams also tried to cut their output of carbon dioxide from household heating and electricity. They were above the national average of 469 kg per month when they started at 491 kg a month. This they managed to reduce to 421 kg a month on average by turning switches off, taking equipment off standby and using low-energy lighting.

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Middle classes 'more immediate threat than climate change'

Roger Highfield, The Telegraph 6 Mar 08;

The relentless rise of the middle classes presents a more immediate threat to developing countries than climate change, says the Prime Minister's chief scientist.

As an increasing proportion of people rise out of poverty, a surge in investment in modern agriculture and irrigation will be essential if global food security is to be achieved and to avoid huge hikes in the cost of food, says Prof John Beddington, Chief Scientific Adviser, who was speaking at the Sustainable Development UK conference in Westminster.

He says that there had already been references to how "a perfect storm" was brewing for agriculture as a result of many factors - increasing food and energy prices, a shift to non food crops, climate change, the rise in the world's population - expected to reach 9 billion by 2050 - water supply issues and alleviating poverty.

But he warns that of these factors it is the rise of the middle classes that most concerns him, since they leave a much bigger footprint on the planet's resources, as they demand high-value agricultural products and processed food compared with the desperately poor.

Prof Beddington believes that this factor has been relatively neglected and will have more immediate effects than either climate change or the burgeoning overall world population.

The World Bank estimates that, as the economies of China and India boom, the number of households in developing countries with incomes above £8,000 per annum will rise from 352 million in 2000 to 2.1 billion by 2030. Meanwhile, the global population will surge from 6.5 billion to around 8.5 billion.

So in the short term, the world needs to invest in agriculture to cope with a crisis in energy and food production, to make better and more efficient use of water, concludes Prof Beddington, a mathematical biologist at Imperial College London who has done work in fields such as chaos theory,

The strain is already showing in the food supply, which is at an all time low. Since 2005, world agricultural production has started to lag behind population growth and the resulting rise in demand for energy, and as the middle classes change from pulses and grains to eating more meat, will put huge pressure on irrigation and agriculture. Chicken, pigs and some beef are fed on grain, so the global demand for grain will rise along with the need for water.

At the same time, the world's food resources are at an all time low, the demand for cereals for biofuels is rising, and world energy demand is projected to soar by over half by 2030.

In his talk, Prof Beddington refers to a report by Joachim von Braun, Director General, of the International Food Policy Research Institute that points out how low-growing supply, low stocks, and supply shock at a time of surging demand for feed, food, and fuel have led to drastic price increases, "and these high prices do not appear likely to fall soon."

Higher food prices will cause the poor to shift to even less-balanced diets, with adverse impacts on health in the short and long run. "Business as usual could mean increased misery, especially for the world's poorest populations. "

Another pressure is global urbanisation, Prof Beddington says. Cities are now home to half of the world's 6.6 billion humans and by 2030 that urban fraction will rise to 60 per cent as nearly 5 billion people will live in cities of the projected global population of around 8.5 billion,. This is likely to put a huge strain on resources, particularity water supplies.

The UK also needs to maintain if not grow the capacity for food production, as the population is projected to rise from 59 million to 70 million by 2030, although there has been a decline in agriculture and food sciences in our universities.

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Greening of CeBIT fails to revive shrinking IT fair

Georgina Prodhan, Reuters 6 Mar 08;

HANOVER, Germany (Reuters) - Europe's biggest information technology fair went green this year. The problem was that there weren't many people around to notice.

CeBIT 2008 was a slimmed-down, serious affair, cut back to six days from seven. Formerly sprawling exhibits were corralled into order by theme and publicity stunts banished to the weekend that now comes at the end of the show, not the middle.

The idea was to turn dwindling exhibitor and visitor interest into a virtue by using the lack of gadgety distractions to create a business-like arena where managers could get on with meeting, greeting and checking out the competition.

The result was an atmosphere free of the chaos of previous years but also devoid of excitement, casting a feeling of desertion over the vast trade-fair grounds in the northern German city of Hanover.

"We decided to do product launches globally at CES," said Michael Langbehn, in charge of PR and marketing in Germany for electronics maker Panasonic (6752.T: Quote, Profile, Research), referring to the huge annual consumer electronics show held in January in Las Vegas.

"Then there's IFA, which is a must," he added, meaning the August/September consumer gadgets fair in Berlin that has drawn electronics makers and the German public away from CeBIT.

"And then consider the BRIC countries, which also have their own fairs that are growing."

Like most exhibitors who still elect to come to CeBIT -- this year there are 5,845 of them, 5 percent down from last year -- Panasonic is using CeBIT to explain its less glamorous business-system products to potential clients.

Talk of "solutions" of all kinds -- vertical, digital and security -- abounded at the fair.

Cisco (CSCO.O: Quote, Profile, Research) was one of the few to talk about the problems demanding these solutions as it launched a new Internet router to help cope with a surge in monthly data sent over the Internet to 29 exabytes by 2011 -- equivalent to 144 times all the world's printed matter.

TREE-HUGGERS

CeBIT organizers declared the theme of this year's show to be the environment and built a "green village" to house companies peddling products to boost corporate energy efficiency and reduce toxic waste.

"CeBIT Goes Green -- Big Time" was the main headline of the official CeBIT News on Wednesday, recognizing that "green IT" is a trend impossible to ignore as both energy costs and climate-altering carbon emissions soar.

Microsoft (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, by far the highest-profile speaker at CeBIT, conformed with the trend by announcing a deal with German energy provider Yello Strom for technology to display electricity consumption on a home PC.

But most journalists were only interested in quizzing him on Microsoft's campaign to buy Yahoo (YHOO.O: Quote, Profile, Research) in a bid currently valued at $42 billion.

The information and communications industry has overtaken aviation in terms of carbon emissions believed to cause global warming, accounting for just over 2 percent of emissions, according to research firm IDC.

The picture is complicated, however, by the hidden environmental cost of transporting electronic parts around the world to assemble them where labor is cheap as well as the fact that IT can cut the need for travel to face-to-face meetings.

Environmental group Greenpeace promised a hard look at the green claims of electronics manufacturers, driven more by a need to cut costs than a desire to save the planet.

At a sparsely attended news conference, it singled out products from Apple (AAPL.O: Quote, Profile, Research), Sony Ericsson (6758.T: Quote, Profile, Research)(ERICb.ST: Quote, Profile, Research) and Nokia (NOK1V.HE: Quote, Profile, Research) for praise while cautioning, "It's not enough just to offer a green computer for the tree-huggers."

Greenpeace's "could do better" verdict on the industry -- following a gadget survey severely limited by manufacturers' willingness to cooperate -- could apply to the new-concept CeBIT as a whole.

CeBIT continues in Hanover until Sunday.

(Editing by Quentin Bryar)

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Energy for internet equal to CO2 emissions of airline industry

Second Life avatars and Brazilians: the same carbon footprint
Aurelia End, Yahoo News 6 Mar 08;

What do an avatar on Second Life and the average inhabitant of Brazil in the real world have in common? Incredibly, they both use the same amount of electricity.

It is perhaps not a fair example as the average virtual being in the online community is not active all the time, but the statistic does show that all that time the rich world spends online has an impact on the environment.

And how. Providing energy to work the Internet needs the equivalent of 14 power stations, which in turn cough out the same amount of harmful carbon dioxide emissions as the airline industry, research has estimated.

This does not even include all the emissions created by making PCs, mobile phones and PDAs and shipping them around the planet. If you add the energy required to recycle them -- not that that many are recycled -- the industry has quite a footprint.

It is with this in focus that CeBIT, the world's largest technology fair, opened its doors this week in Hanover, Germany with 5,500 exhibitors showing off the smartest, coolest -- and this year the greenest -- gadgets.

With oil and gas prices pushing up energy bills, a main motivation is also cutting down the costs for consumers and businesses.

IBM, for example, devoted large parts of its stand at CeBIT, which runs to March 9, to showing how its new servers use less energy.

Vast farms of servers made by IBM and others are used to power the Internet, and it is these gas-guzzling data centres of immense size and energy consumption that drive Second Life and indeed the entire Internet.

Siegfried Behrendt, a researcher at Berlin's IZT institute, calculates that downloading his daily newspaper uses the same amount of electricity as running a washing machine.

German IT firm Strato, meanwhile, reckons that looking for something on Internet search engine Google requires as much energy as an energy-efficient light-bulb uses in an hour.

This won't show up on your monthly electricity bill though, because most of the energy required for these actions takes place in a server somewhere on a data farm.

And consumption is growing. A study commissioned by US microchip maker AMD at Stanford University in the United States calculated that between 2000 and 2004 data farms' energy use doubled.

At this rate, in less than a quarter century the Internet will consume as much energy as the whole of humanity does today, Gerhard Fettweis from Dresden University in Germany believes.

Between now and 2010, "everything is possible. Either nothing changes, and the consumption of data centres grows 50 percent. Or real efforts are made, and a lowering of 50 percent is conceivable," Fettweis told AFP.

Real efforts were on show at CeBIT, raising hopes that innovation will find a way to lessen the IT industry's environmental impact.

Data centres produce a huge amount of heat but the rooms they are in also have to be kept cool to avoid overheating.

IBM -- which also operates server farms on behalf of other firms -- wants to capture that heat and use it to power air conditioning to keep things cool.

And software giant Microsoft has a data centre near Quincy in the United States -- right next to a hydro-electric plant, providing its servers with renewable energy.

Another solution is so-called virtualisation of servers, a technique whereby special software turns spare capacity on the server to function as multiple computers.

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World Food Programme chief warns EU about biofuels

Yahoo News 6 Mar 08;

The UN agency in charge of alleviating world hunger warned the European Union on Thursday that the fast-growing use of biofuels is driving up food prices for the world's poor.

"The shift to biofuels production has diverted lands out of the food chain," World Food Programme executive director Josette Sheeran told lawmakers at the European Parliament in Brussels.

"Food prices such as palm oil in Africa are now set at fuel prices," she added.

Sheeran warned that booming food prices were hurting the WFP's "capacity to respond to hunger" by increasing its operating costs, which have risen by 40 percent since June 2007 alone.

The price of many food commodities has soared worldwide to record levels over the last year due to booming demand in fast-growing Asian countries as well as the increased use of biofuels.

Although Sheeran attributed some of the price increase to market speculation, she also said that "structural factors are part of today's high prices."

"It may be a bonanza for farmers -- I hope it is true -- but in the short-term, the world's poorest are hit hard," she said.

The 27-nation EU aims to ramp up its use of biofuels in coming years after the bloc's leaders set tough renewable energy targets last year.

They committed to increase the EU's renewable energy use by 20 percent by 2020, compared to 1990 levels, with biofuels to make up 10 percent of all transport fuels used by then.

However, since EU leaders fixed those targets in March last year, concerns have risen about possible negative effects from biofuels, including their impact on food prices and the environment.

UN Sees More Hunger, Unrest Over Food Inflation
PlanetArk 7 Mar 08;

BRUSSELS - Record high food prices and resulting inflation are set to continue until at least 2010, fuelling a "new hunger" across the globe and anarchy on the streets of poorer nations, a top UN official said.

Josette Sheeran, executive director of the United Nations' World Food Programme, said the world's economy "has now entered a perfect storm for the world's hungry" caused by high oil and food prices and low food stocks.

"Our assessment is that the current level will continue for the next few years ... in fact rise in 2008, 2009 and probably at least until 2010," she said on a visit to Brussels on Thursday where she met European Union officials.

Her visit came on a day that oil, gold and copper surged to record highs as investors fleeing a weak dollar piled into commodities.

Sheeran said food prices were rising due to a combination of soaring oil and energy prices, the effects of climate change, growing demand from countries such as India and China and use of crops to produce biofuels.

"This is leading to a new face of hunger in the world, what we call the newly hungry. These are people who have money, but have been priced out of being able to buy food," she said.

"Higher food prices will increase social unrest in a number of countries which are sensitive to inflationary pressures and are import-dependent. We will see a repeat of the riots we have already reported on the streets such as we have seen in Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Senegal."


FOOD GAP

Over 25,000 people die from hunger or a related illness every day across the world, with one child dying every five seconds.

The UN aid official was in Brussels seeking help in bridging a $500 million dollar "food gap" created by soaring commodity costs which have increased by around 40 percent since 2007.

The WFP is currently drawing up a list of 30 countries which they believe are "most vulnerable" to the current food inflation crises such as Afghanistan where $77 million is needed to feed an additional 2.5 million people.

"Our budget shortfall for 2008 means that at the moment we have to decide do we provide 40 percent less food or do we reach out to 40 percent less people. This is unacceptable," Sheeran said.

Along with extra funding, she said one solution would be to increase food production by using more land for agriculture and reducing the amount of land set aside for biofuels.

The EU last year set itself a target for biofuels to account for 10 percent of fuel used by transport in the bloc by 2020.

But critics have recently questioned whether the plan needs to be reviewed in the light of concerns about the impact of biofuels on food supplies and whether they really contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

"Governments need to look more carefully at the link between the acceleration in biofuels and food supply and give more thought to it (biofuels policy)," Sheeran said.

"We are not seeing any benefits to small farmers, particularly in the less-developed world. This land could be better used."

Speculative investment in commodities markets in products such as grains and cereals, which has helped fuel the price surge, is not a short-term phenomenon, she said.

"This is not a short-term bubble and will definitely continue," Sheeran said.

(Editing by Michael Roddy)

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US sewage-based fertilizer safety doubted

John Heilprin and Kevin S. Vineys, Associated Press Yahoo News 7 Mar 08;

It was a farm idea with a big payoff and supposedly no downside: ridding lakes and rivers of raw sewage and industrial pollution by converting it all into a free, nutrient-rich fertilizer.

Then last week, a federal judge ordered the Agriculture Department to compensate a farmer whose land was poisoned by sludge from the waste treatment plant here. His cows had died by the hundreds.

The Associated Press also has learned that some of the same contaminants showed up in milk that regulators allowed a neighboring dairy farmer to market, even after some officials said they were warned about it.

In one case, according to test results provided to the AP, the level of thallium — an element once used as rat poison — found in the milk was 120 times the concentration allowed in drinking water by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The contaminated milk and the recent ruling by U.S. District Judge Anthony Alaimo raise new doubts about a 30-year government policy that encourages farmers to spread millions of tons of sewage sludge over thousands of acres each year as an alternative to commercial fertilizers.

The program is still in effect.

Alaimo ordered the government to compensate dairy farmer Andy McElmurray because 1,730 acres he wanted to plant in corn and cotton to feed his herd was poisoned. The sludge contained levels of arsenic, toxic heavy metals and PCBs two to 2,500 times federal health standards.

Also, data endorsed by Agriculture and EPA officials about toxic heavy metals found in the free sludge provided by Augusta's sewage treatment plant was "unreliable, incomplete, and in some cases, fudged," Alaimo wrote.

EPA-commissioned research by the University of Georgia based on the Augusta data was included in a National Academy of Sciences report and served as a linchpin for the government's assertion that sludge didn't pose a health risk.

In his 45-page ruling, Alaimo said that along with using the questionable data, "senior EPA officials took extraordinary steps to quash scientific dissent, and any questioning of EPA's biosolids program."

Benjamin H. Grumbles, EPA's assistant administrator for water programs, said Thursday that the judge's order underscored the significance of what he called strong national standards on sludge rather than undercutting the giveaway program.

"This unfortunate instance of poor recordkeeping and biosolids sampling techniques on the part of one plant reiterates the importance of our national biosolids program," Grumbles said in a written response to AP questions about the ruling.

About 7 million tons of biosolids — the term that waste producers came up with for sludge in 1991 — are produced each year as a byproduct from 1,650 waste water treatment plants around the nation.

Slightly more than half is used on land as fertilizer; the rest is incinerated or burned in landfills. Giving it away to farmers is cheaper than burning or burying it, and the government's policy has been to encourage the former.

Alaimo's decision was a bittersweet victory for McElmurray, whose silos and dairy barns sit mostly empty since his herd was wiped out. He contends the cows were done in by grazing on sludge-treated hay for more than a decade, beginning in 1979.

Interviewed before the ruling, McElmurray crossed his arms, scowling at the empty pastures and idle equipment where his prize-winning herds once grazed here in eastern Georgia. "This farm never would have looked like this if we hadn't used the city's sludge," he said angrily.

The city of Augusta recently settled a lawsuit with him over the dead cows for $1.5 million. Another nearby dairy farmer, Bill Boyce, won a $550,000 court judgment against the city on his claim that sludge was responsible for the deaths of more than 300 of his cows.

The deaths of McElmurray's and Boyce's cows in the 1990s and their suits against Augusta raised a red flag with officials at EPA, which since 1978 had been promoting the use of sludge as a fertilizer.

In 1999, the agency awarded a $12,274 grant to the University of Georgia to study the problem. That research would result in a study published in 2003 in the Journal of Environmental Quality finding that the city's sludge was safe and that EPA's regulations were working.

Cities' sewage and industrial pollution had spewed untreated into lakes, rivers and oceans until 1972, when Congress passed the landmark Clean Water Act.

Back then, cleaning up waterways was the first target of the newly created EPA. The agency oversaw a multibillion-dollar grant program that Congress set up to help cities and counties build wastewater treatment plants that would filter out pollutants.

Alaimo, citing data from an environmental engineer hired by McElmurray, found that the Augusta plant was sending out hundreds of truckloads of sludge daily with dangerously high levels of cadmium, molybdenum and chlordane.

The engineer, William Hall of Atlanta, had been a project manager at seven Superfund cleanup sites and had extensive experience with toxic chemicals and heavy metals. His tests found polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs in the Augusta sludge at levels 2,500 times higher than the EPA standard, thallium levels 25 times the legal limit, and arsenic levels twice the government's health standard.

William Miller, a University of Georgia soil scientist who co-authored the 2003 study commissioned by EPA, stands by the conclusions it drew on how much sludge had been applied to McElmurray's and Boyce's land and the composition of it.

But in a draft of the paper obtained by The Associated Press, he wrote a note by hand saying the authors should "fess up" that they didn't know those things.

"Now, we didn't really know exactly how much sludge and we didn't know the quality of sludge," Miller told the AP in an interview. Despite the discrepancies, he maintained the study was valid. "It does not include fake data," he said.

Boyce told the AP that in January 1999 he informed Georgia dairy regulators and EPA that tests he had ordered on the milk from his cows had come back showing high levels of thallium, molybdenum and cadmium.

A top state official alerted the Food and Drug Administration, but Boyce said no one ever told him to stop selling his milk or mentioned a possible threat to public health.

"We were a little startled," Boyce recalled. "They concluded that our permit was good, and we could continue to sell milk. So we did."

EPA lists thallium as a toxic heavy metal that can cause gastrointestinal irritation and nerve damage, but the agency has no standard on the metal's presence in milk. Neither does the Agriculture Department, even though it regards thallium as one of the most dangerous agents of potential bioterrorism against the nation's food supply.

State and EPA officials followed up by testing Boyce's milk, but he said they wouldn't share all their results with him or McElmurray. There is no evidence that those officials took any further action. Boyce said he decided finally to reveal the milk contamination to the AP to illuminate a broader issue.

"The real problem was the state and federal regulatory agencies did not do their jobs," he said, adding that EPA and Augusta officials "tried to say we were just a disease-infested herd. Well, that's just a bunch of bullhockey."

Charles Murphy, then head of Georgia's dairy program, said he notified FDA's Administration's office in Atlanta of Boyce's contaminated samples. "I know I talked to them some, shared some of that information with them," he recalled. "I don't think they sent anybody out."

Murphy said he was persuaded by evidence provided to him by Boyce and McElmurray to seek broader state testing of dairy cows, but there wasn't enough money.

FDA officials in Atlanta and Washington said they had no record of Murphy's account.

But over the Super Bowl weekend in 1999, two senior EPA officials, Robert Bastian and Bob Brobst, huddled with the two dairy farmers and their lawyer, Ed Hallman, to talk about sludge.

"They showed us some data," Bastian recalled. "I don't ever remember seeing any milk data."

Boyce and McElmurray insist they shared all of their data with the two EPA officials, including separate tests they ran on milk pulled from store shelves in Charleston, S.C. That milk, which came from other farms in the Southeast, suggested more widespread contamination, they said. It had heavy metals similar to those found in Boyce's milk.

There are no records that anyone became ill because of milk tainted with heavy metals or other contaminants that could have come from sludge.

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