Australian Environment Minister urged to suspend shark fin exports

ABC 30 Jun 08;

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Eco-tourism's green brings in the greenbacks

Richard Ingham, Yahoo News 30 Jun 08;

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

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

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

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

This is where eco-tourism comes in.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Lebanon's eco-tourism dream survives crisis

Jocelyne Zablit, Yahoo News 30 Jun 08;

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read more!

Midwest Floodwaters Falling, Costs Rising

Carey Gillam, PlanetArk 1 Jul 08;

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


COSTS, RELIEF REQUESTS RISING

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The bulb hoarders

Steve Tomkins, BBC News 30 Jun 08;

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Buzzing noise

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aesthetic issue

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read more!

Germany to start storing carbon dioxide underground

Yahoo News 30 Jun 08;

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Britain Seeks to Set Pace in Carbon Capture Quest

Jeremy Lovell, PlanetArk 1 Jul 08;

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

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

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

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

The reason is cost.

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

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

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

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


VAST MARKET

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


MORE AND MORE URGENT

But the problem is increasingly urgent.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But the scale of the challenge is also vast.

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

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Experts urge states to invest in CO2 carbon capture and storage

Yahoo News 30 Jun 08;

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read more!

Study: World Gets Happier

LiveScience.com, Yahoo News 30 Jun 08;

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

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

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

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

The United States ranks 16th.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Read more!

Best of our wild blogs: 30 Jun 08

Nature guides may soon need to be certified
on the wildfilms blog

Shell looking into a new petrochemicals facility
any impact on Hantu and Cyrene? on the wildfilms blog

Interview with Eric Lim, director of Remember Chek Jawa
on singapore celebrates our reefs blog

Lim Chu Kang mangrove clean up on 19 Jul
sign up to help clean it up on the toddycats blog

More EnviroFest 2008
Day 2 events on the wildfilms blog and also on the hantu blog

Chek Jawa boardwalk tour
a huge turnout with lots of sightings, on the adventures of the naked hermit crabs

Does Singapore need a Ministry of Energy?
exploring the issues on the AsiaIsGreen blog

Scarlet-breasted Flowerpecker eating figs
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog

The butterfly proboscis
a lifeline on the butterflies of singapore blog

Read more!

Green Singapore has blue-water dreams: about the Marina Barrage

Agence France Presse, ABS-CBN 30 Jun 08;

But the water is certainly not blue. After heavy rain the rivers become a soupy olive-brown and filled with vegetation, discarded plastic drink bottles and other garbage. "We will no longer have the benefit of the sea flushing out the pollutants on a daily basis." The biggest challenge is ensuring the cleanliness of water flowing into the catchment.

SINGAPORE - Singapore is known for its greenery but it may soon be recognized for its blue -- as in blue water.

That is the hope of civic officials behind a project to seal off the city-state's waterfront from the sea and create a three-in-one water source for drinking, flood control and recreation.

Recently finished after about three years of construction, the 240-million Singapore dollar (176 million US) Marina Barrage will create a new source of precious water in a city-state with almost no natural resources of its own.

When reporters toured the project shortly before its completion, workers with trowels were finishing the edges of a bridge more than 300 meters (330 yards) long -- the key structure in the barrage.

Below the bridge are nine steel gates that act as a tidal barrier, the developers said. The gates are activated by giant black cylinders that look like cannons.

On one side of the bridge, sun glints off the rippling greenish sea filled with ships. On the other side, the still water is brownish against a backdrop of Singapore's business district.

"The water here is still seawater," Yap Kheng Guan, project director for Singapore's water agency, PUB, says as he stands on the bridge and points behind him toward the reservoir and Marina Bay.

PUB officials say rainwater will eventually flush out that sea water. Probably by early 2010, they say, the flushing will have created a freshwater lake for drinking and recreational use on the edge of the city's commercial heart and a burgeoning tourist and entertainment district.

Yap said the type of fish in the water will change along with the water. "There will be a different biodiversity," he said.

Marina Bay itself is undergoing dramatic change with the construction of a multi-billion-dollar casino complex, the new Singapore Flyer observation wheel, renovation of an old ferry terminal, and the Gardens by the Bay horticultural development adjoining Marina Barrage.

Sealing off the reservoir and stopping its three-meter tidal variation will make it an even more appealing venue for boating, windsurfing and other activities, the PUB says.

A boat hoist has been installed at one end of the barrage, which officials said was already operating as a tide gate.

"Gradually we are kicking in the functions, step by step," said Khoo Teng Chye, PUB's chief executive, who forecasts an opening early next year.

The barrage itself is completed but final work continues on a visitors' center.

"We are on schedule," Yap said.

During heavy rain, the barrage's steel gates can be opened to release storm water into the sea at low tide, the PUB says.

At high tide, seven pumps inside a spacious and bright building at one end of the barrage will send the excess storm water into the sea, helping to ease the threat of flooding in older, low-lying parts of the city.

During a test of the flood gates, water pours into the sea, making it look like a wide stretch of frothy rapids.

A curving ramp will lead visitors to the roof of the pump house, where a worker hosed down freshly-laid grass. PUB hopes the pump house and its attached dining spots will become a destination in themselves.

Aside from flood control and recreation, the barrage will create the city-state's largest catchment area which will meet about 10 percent of the city's current water demand, the water agency said.

"This is probably the only one of its kind where you have a reservoir taking water from a highly urbanized area," Yap said.

Several rivers drain into the catchment but they carry little ground water.

"Basically you're bringing in rain water," Yap said. Sewage is captured in a separate system.

Water from Marina Reservoir and others in the city is one of four sources of Singapore's water. Some is imported from Malaysia, some comes from a desalination plant, and the rest is known as NEWater. The NEWater starts as treated sewage, which is reclaimed and further purified. Most of it goes to industrial and commercial users, PUB says.

For Singapore, the Marina Barrage project marks the culmination of a cleanup effort that began about two decades ago when working barges still plied and polluted the main Singapore River.

Now, tiny fish dart about in city river water, which is visited at times by long-necked white birds.

But the water is certainly not blue. After heavy rain the rivers become a soupy olive-brown and filled with vegetation, discarded plastic drink bottles and other garbage.

Water for drinking from the reservoir will be specially treated to make it safe, the PUB says.

"We will no longer have the benefit of the sea flushing out the pollutants on a daily basis," Khoo said, adding that the biggest challenge is ensuring the cleanliness of water flowing into the catchment.

Clean-up crews in small boats patrol the water system but the PUB is counting on the public to play their part in keeping their aquatic playground and drinking fountain clean.

"We want them to understand that water should be something that you cherish," Yap said.

Eventually, he said, they hope the water will be blue.

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Increase patrols along Johor waters, says assemblyman

The Star 30 Jun 08;

ENFORCEMENT agencies such as the Maritime Agency and the Marine police must increase patrols along Johor waters to prevent further intrusion of the state’s islands.

Datuk Aziz Sapian (BN-Nusajaya) told the state assembly that the agencies should be on their toes especially after the Johor Sultan reminded everyone that Pulau Batu Puteh was under Johor’s sovereignty and must be reclaimed.

“The state government must take proactive actions to ensure the sovereignty of all islands in the state.

“The government agencies must patrol all the islands especially the ones near Singapore,” he said adding that, so far he has not seen much patrols along the waters near Singapore.

Aziz said he did not rule out the possibility that Singapore was using Pulau Batu Puteh’s lighthouse to monitor Malaysia's shipping lanes.

He said islands such as Pulau Merambong, situated about 1.5km from Singapore, must be developed so that the mistakes would not be repeated.

“The island has a lot of potential to be developed under eco-tourism. We must develop it as the distance from Singapore is getting nearer because of land reclamation works,” he said.

He added that the island could also be used as a military watch post to monitor the nation’s waters and security.

Aziz explained that the island was also very strategic as it is situated near international waters as well as Tanjung Pelepas Port.

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