Fishing ban injunction will kill dolphins - WWF

www.stuff.co.nz 30 Sep 08;

A High Court ruling putting a hold on some government-enforced fishing bans will cost the lives of at least 30 Hector's dolphins within three months, World Wildlife Fund (WWF) claims.

Proposed bans have temporarily been lifted for fishers off some areas of the west coast of the North Island, the Marlborough Sounds, and at Te Waewae Bay in Southland.

Released last Friday, the court decision granting an interim injunction on the measures came after the commercial fishing industry took legal action.

The bans, put forward in May this year and due to be enforced this week, were an attempt to help protect Hector's and Maui's dolphins.

WWF said today the decision was a sad day for New Zealand.

"The new protection measures are essential to stopping the serious decline of Hector's and Maui's dolphins," said WWF-New Zealand's marine programme manager Rebecca Bird.

She said the past three decades of fishing with nets had been killing the dolphins faster than they could breed.

"As a consequence, there is now a struggling population threatened with extinction -- from over 30,000 Hector's dolphins in the 1970s to just 7270 today."

Ms Bird said WWF would now advise its international contacts that wild-caught New Zealand seafood product from in-shore net fisheries should not be viewed as sustainable.

The Federation of Commercial Fishermen and a number of fishing companies who challenged the restrictions said they would cost jobs in areas where the dolphins were never seen.

The federation argued it did not want to harm the dolphins but only wanted secured seasonal relief where jobs were under immediate threat.

Read more!

City Bears Get Fat, Die Young

LiveScience.com Yahoo News 30 Sep 08;

As bears spend more time near cities, the animals gain weight, get pregnant at a younger age and die young, violent deaths.

A new study of black bears near the populated Lake Tahoe, Nev., area found an alarming percentage are hit by cars.

"Urban areas are becoming the ultimate bear traps," said Wildlife Conservation Society researcher Jon Beckmann, the study's lead author. "Because of an abundant food source - namely garbage - bears are being drawn in from backcountry areas into urbanized landscapes where they meet their demise."

The study, published in the Fall 2008 issue of the journal Human-Wildlife Conflicts, tracked 12 bears over a 10-year period living in urban areas around Lake Tahoe, and compared them to 10 other bears that lived in outlying wild areas.

The urbanized bears weighed an average of 30 percent more. They gave birth between the ages of 2 and 5 instead of at age 7 or 8 as is normal.

All 12 of the tracked urban bears were dead by age 10 due to vehicle collisions, while six of the wildland bears still survived. Bear cubs in urban areas also had dramatically higher mortality rates due mainly to vehicle collisions, the researchers said today.

The result: Urbanized areas are functioning as "sinks" for black bear populations, drawing in doomed bears from outlying wild areas, while bears are failing to recolonize outlying wild areas.

For now, bear populations in Nevada remain steady due to bears immigrating from neighboring California, the researchers said.

Read more!

Birds of prey slaughter provokes ugly standoff in Malta

Matthew Weaver, guardian.co.uk 30 Sep 08;

British birdwatchers trying to stop the illegal killing of some of Europe's rarest birds in Malta have become embroiled in an increasingly tense standoff with local hunters and say they have recovered unprecedented numbers of carcasses of protected birds.

Thirty British volunteers and a delegation of five staff from the RSPB have spent the last two weeks documenting the shooting of birds of prey such as osprey, honey buzzards, and marsh harriers as they fly over over the Mediterranean island on annual migratory routes. The volunteers estimate scores of rare birds protected by EU laws have been killed this year and claim the shootings have reached a new high.

The carcasses of dead raptors are not usually recovered as hunters tend to take them as prizes and are anxious to hide the evidence. But in just eight days the camp recovered 17 shot raptors this year - more than double the total number recovered by similar-sized groups of volunteers in the previous two years put together.

This year the birdwatchers, who say the hunting is threatening British conservation projects, also claim they have faced increasing verbal abuse, intimidation and sabotage. Their camps have been vandalised, tyres on their vehicles have been punctured and they are regularly told to "fuck off back to England".

The standoff threatens to escalate into a minor diplomatic incident after the hunters, who claim they are merely exercising an ancestral tradition, complained to the RSPB's patron, the Queen. They also plan to complain to the European commission about invasion of privacy.

They accuse the RSPB of "dishonest" campaigning designed to "undermine Maltese culture". And they say there is no proof that hunting on the island threatens endangered species.

Malta and the neighbouring island of Gozo are a key stopover point for hundreds of thousands of migratory birds as they make the journey from Europe to spend winter in Africa.

But Malta is also home to the highest concentration of registered hunters anywhere in Europe. And at this time of year thousands engage in the island's popular pastime of bird shooting.

They say they are only hunting turtle dove and quail, which is legal during autumn. But each year local conservationists estimate that thousands of birds, from species protected under European laws, are also shot, in many cases deliberately.

Grahame Madge, an RSPB spokesman, said: "It's like a war zone, the smell of death is everywhere."

"The scale of the slaughter is unimaginable and it's a race against hunters every moment."

Few of the hunters are ever caught for illegal killings, and if they are, they typically escape with a €100 fine.

The RSPB has recruited volunteers to attend so called Raptor Camps over the island to monitoring migration and reporting illegal hunting. The camps are organised by the RSPB sister organisation Birdlife Malta and include volunteers from all over Europe. The camp's methods, which include filming illegal killing and posting the footage to YouTube, have enraged local hunters.

The more the group has recorded illegal hunting, the uglier the standoff with the hunters has become.

"We have had regular drive-by abuse from hunters shouting 'fuck off back' to England," said Nick Unwin, a teacher from Surrey.

"Every time we get into cars we have to look for nails, and in most places we have to have security guards with us," he said. Over the last week cars have been attacked and punctured, abusive graffiti has been sprayed on nature reserve signs and used car oil was poured over an observation tower.

"Intimidation and hostility is constant here," says Steve Bentall, a wildlife management masters graduate from Hampshire.

"We were at the side of a road and hunters in cars came down the road at about 70mph and started intentionally swerving into us to scare the life out us."

But Bentall's passion for birds of prey means he won't be put off. "Two mornings ago we saw a rare Eleonora's falcon. It was a fantastic spectacle and then it got shot. It breaks your heart."

He adds: "Some of these birds are down to there last few hundred pairs in Europe. If we don't tackle illegal shooting, we are going to lose more species."

"These are legally protected species and they have been for 30 years, and yet they are still slaughtering them. I just can't get my head round it."

Steph Charlton, a zoo keeper from the Isle of Wight, witnessed a honey buzzard and osprey being shot.

"In the UK we spend thousands of pounds on high profile osprey projects. Then they fly over here and are shot down. It's crazy. I didn't realize how blatantly they do it."

Dr Andre Raine, BirdLife Malta's conservation manager said: "This is the worst season that many local birdwatchers can remember. "If we can recieve 17 birds of prey with confirmed gunshot injuries in eight days, then the actual number of protected birds being shot must be very high."

The organisation's spokesman claims the abuse from hunters over the last two years has included drive by shootings, bird watchers being spat at, and car tyres being slashed. But he claimed the attacks over the last fortnight are "worse than usual".

He claimed backlash by hunters is being whipped up by "threatening and xenophobic" statements by islands' hunting lobby the Federation for Hunting and Conservation, or FKNK.

The federation condemns illegal hunting but it has taken a combative attitude to RSPB and its volunteers.

It claims the RSPB and Birdlife Malta exaggerates the extent of illegal shooting there is no hard evidence of a bird massacre.

It accuses the RSPB of conducting a "despicable and fictitious crusades against tiny Malta" and claims their conservationists are "foreign mercenaries".

It warns the RSPB against getting involved in "social hatred campaigns" aimed at destroying hunting which it describes as a "Maltese ancestral tradition".

The federation secretary Lino Farrugia refused to speak to the Guardian. But in a press statement he denied the federation had encouraged intimidation.

He said: "The RSPB have far better things to do than organise visits to the Maltese islands solely to pester, interfere and further antagonise Maltese law-abiding nationals."

He added: "Out of the odd 260 reports of illegal hunting that BirdLife alleged to have received, the police to date have only arraigned seven persons with hunting related offences, out of which only three refer to illegal hunting."

Birdlife Malta claims convictions are rare because there are so few police dealing with the problem as the Maltese government refuses to take it seriously.

Birdlife's president, Joseph Mangion, said: "As long as the police fail to take action and the government remain silent, the situation is likely to get worse."

The government of Malta has yet to respond.

Malta: Illegal slaughter of birds of prey continues defying EU laws
Paul Eccleston, The Telegraph 1 Oct 08;

The illegal slaughter of migrating birds over Malta has brought renewed demands for tougher action against hunters.

Conservationists have watched the hunters indiscriminately blasting birds from the sky as they make their annual migration journeys to Africa.

Targets have included protected raptor species such as Honey buzzard, Merlin and Marsh harrier.

Hunters on Malta have continued to defy EU laws and the Maltese government faces legal action in the European Court of Justice over its failure to curb the Spring hunting and trapping of wild birds.

The George Cross island is an important staging point for birds as they make their long migratory flights from Europe across the Mediterranean and into north Africa.

Thousands of birds, many of them exhausted by lengthy flights, fall prey to the hunters who lie in wait. Although the hunting of some birds is permitted - such as Turtle dove and Quail - may other species fall victim to the guns.

Over the past two weeks, birdwatchers from all over Europe have made their way to the island to assess the population of migrating birds and to witness and record the slaughter for themselves.

The two-week programme, known as the 'Raptor Camp', was organised by BirdLife Malta - the RSPB's partner in the Maltese islands.

Dr Andre Raine, BirdLife Malta's conservation manager, said: "Many observers have commented this is the worst season in recent years."

The RSPB's Grahame Madge, who attended the Raptor Camp, said: "To anyone who hasn't seen it for themselves, the scale of the slaughter beggars belief.

"A rogue element of the island's 12,000 hunters will blast at anything that flies, and casualties from the two weeks included a black stork, herons, bee-eaters and many birds of prey.

"Lying on a major migration route across the Mediterranean, birds pass over the islands in extremely large numbers. On good days for migration, when several hundred birds of prey pass through, the hunters are stirred into a frenzy - desperate to shoot as many as possible, even within protected areas.

"On one day, I witnessed a large movement of honey buzzards and other birds of prey. The hunters could clearly be seen identifying the best vantage points in a bid to shoot them. Sadly, I also watched the death throes of a mortally wounded honey buzzard that had to be put down by a vet.

"Visiting Malta this month has been the only occasion in my three decades of watching birds when I've not wanted to see great views of birds of prey; when I saw a marsh harrier or a honey buzzard flying low, I was just praying that it climbed higher to soar beyond the reach of the hunters' guns."

Seventeen birds of prey with gunshot injuries were taken in by BirdLife Malta during the Raptor Camp. On two separate days, four were received each day.

Dr Andre Raine, added: "If BirdLife Malta can receive 17 birds of prey with confirmed gunshot injuries in eight days, then the actual number of protected birds that are being shot throughout the country must be very high.

"The chances of a shot bird being brought to the BirdLife Malta offices are low since the birds we receive have to escape the hunter who shot them and then be found by someone willing to hand them over to us. Therefore, this really is only the tip of the iceberg."

Dr Raine said the hunters were a law unto themselves and added: "The government must crack down on illegal hunters, otherwise the slaughter will continue over the coming weeks."

Earlier this year the EU won a court order compelling the Maltese government to impose a ban on Spring hunting as an interim measure until a full hearing can take place. It is likely that a similar ban will be imposed next Spring.

Geoffrey Saliba, BirdLife Malta's campaign co-ordinator, said: "If our government does not stop seeing the hunting issue as an argument between two sides, the slaughter will continue. Illegal hunting across Malta is a national and international problem and a criminal act that defies national and international law and it must be stopped now."

"The only way to put a stop to the killing is to make sure that those who are found guilty of these crimes are punished to the fullest extent of the law.

"The fines for those caught hunting illegally must be increased and the hunting licenses of repeat offenders must be cancelled. If the government is serious about curbing illegal hunting, the police should be given the resources needed to counter the unacceptable level of hunting."

Read more!

Study Eases Fear About Wind Farm Threat to Birds

PlanetArk 1 Oct 08;

LONDON - Wind turbines do not drive birds from surrounding areas, British researchers said on Wednesday, in findings which could make it easier to build more wind farms.

Conservation groups have raised fears that large birds could get caught in the turbines and that the structures could disturb other species.

But scientists found only one of the 23 species studied, the pheasant, was affected during their survey of two wind farms in eastern England.

The findings published in the Journal of Applied Ecology could help government and business efforts to boost the number of wind farms as a way to increase production of renewable energy.

"This is the first evidence suggesting that the present and future location of large numbers of wind turbines on European farmland is unlikely to have detrimental effects on farmland birds," Mark Whittingham, whose team from Newcastle University carried out the research, said in a statement.

"This should be welcome news for nature conservationists, wind energy companies and policy makers."

The survey studied the impact of two wind farms on about 3,000 birds in the area, including five species of conservation concern -- the yellowhammer, the Eurasian tree sparrow, the corn bunting, the Eurasian skylark and the common reed bunting.

The researchers recorded the density of birds at different distances from the turbines and found that aside from the pheasant, the structures posed no problems.

The new findings are important because the European Union is committed to generating 20 percent of its energy from renewable resources by 2020 and is also seeking to boost biodiversity.

The study did not look at the danger of the birds colliding with the turbines, which has been a worry of conservationists, Whittingham said.

Spanish utility Iberdrola, Germany's E.ON and Scottish & Southern Energy all operate wind farms.

In August, Czech power group CEZ announced plans to build the biggest onshore wind park in Europe. (Reporting by Michael Kahn; Editing by Avril Ormsby)

Farmland birds not bothered by wind turbines, study finds
Paul Eccleston, The Telegraph 1 Oct 08

Farmland birds aren't bothered by wind turbines being built in the countryside, a new study has found.

The sight and sound of ranks of whirling 100-metre high turbines had little effect on the numbers of birds in the area, scientists found.

The results will disappoint conservation groups, who claim turbines pose a threat to birds but will provide a boost for wind energy groups who want to erect hundreds of wind farms around Britain.

The study, published in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Applied Ecology, concludes that wind farms can help meet tough sustainable energy targets without threatening biodiversity on European farmland.

A study by a team from Newcastle University conducted bird surveys on arable farmland around two wind farms in the East Anglian fens during the winter time.

They recorded almost 3,000 birds from 33 different species, including five red-listed species of high conservation concern - the yellowhammer, the Eurasian tree sparrow, the corn bunting, Eurasian skylark and the common reed bunting.

They found the wind turbines had no effect on the distribution of seed-eating birds, corvids (the crow family), gamebirds and Eurasian skylarks. Common pheasants - the largest and least manoeuvrable species - were the only birds whose distribution was affected by the turbines.

Dr Mark Whittingham, who led the team, said: "This is the first evidence suggesting that the present and future location of large numbers of wind turbines on European farmland is unlikely to have detrimental effects on farmland birds.

"This should be welcome news for nature conservationists, wind energy companies and policy makers. With large numbers of wind farms needing to be built on lowland areas, the cumulative impacts on farmland bird species has the potential to be a significant constraint to development."

The study didn't look at the risk of birds colliding with the turbines but whether birds might be disturbed by their size and the noise they produce and erect 'no fly zones' around them.

But even when they looked at areas within 0-75 m of the turbines they found no evidence of farmland birds avoiding them.

Wind power is being increasingly used across Europe as a key component in meeting the EU's target of getting 20 per cent of energy from renewable sources by 2020 to help reduce the threats from global warming.

In the UK it is predicted that approximately 10 per cent of electricity production will come from onshore wind power sites by 2020 which will mean approximately 4,400 new turbines.

But this has to be balanced against a dramatic fall in farmland bird populations - a 40 per cent decline between 1980 and 2005 across 20 EU countries - caused by more intensive farming methods.

The study seems to suggest that there is no conflict between Agri Environment Schemes (AES), where farmers receive subsidies for environmentally friendly farming schemes to protect wildlife, and the siting of wind turbines on lowland farmland in the UK.

Dr Whittingham said previous studies had concentrated on the impact of wind turbines on waterbirds and birds of prey rather than birds in the countryside.

He added: "Much terrestrial research into the effects of wind turbines on birds has focused on geese, waders and raptors, whose populations are highest in upland and coastal areas.

"There is increasing conservation concern about the impact of wind farms on these species in these areas, so applications to build new turbines are increasingly focusing on other sites, especially lowland farmland in central and eastern England."

Read more!

Soil Association urges ban on pesticides to halt bee deaths

Alison Benjamin, The Guardian 29 Sep 08;

The Soil Association has urged the government to ban pesticides linked to honeybee deaths around the world.

The chemicals are widely used in UK agriculture but have been banned as a precaution in four other European countries. Last week the Italian government issued an immediate suspension after it accepted that the pesticides were implicated in killing honeybees, joining France, Germany and Slovenia.

Peter Melchett, the Soil Association's policy director, said: "It is typical of the lax approach to pesticide regulation in the UK that we look like being one of the last of the major farming countries in the EU to wake up to the threat to our honeybees."

The pesticides, known as neonicotinoids, are approved to kill insects on a range of crops in the UK including oilseed rape, barley and sugar beet. Their use on oilseed rape is of particular concern to beekeepers as the crop's yellow flower is very attractive to honeybees.

Germany suspended sales of the pesticides in May after 700 beekeepers along the Rhine reported that two-thirds of their bees had died following the application of clothianidin. In France, imidacloprid has been banned on sunflowers since 1999 and as a sweetcorn treatment since 2003, after a third of honeybees were wiped out. The Soil Association is calling on the environment secretary, Hilary Benn, to ban the pesticides in a letter sent today.

Imidacloprid and clothianidin are produced by a division of the chemical manufacturer Bayer. Imidacloprid is its bestselling pesticide and is used in 120 countries. Bayer has always maintained that neonicotinoids are safe for bees if correctly applied. "Extensive internal and international scientific studies have confirmed that neonicotinoids do not present a hazard to bees," Utz Klages, a spokesman for Bayer CropScience, said recently.

The National Farmers' Union said it was opposed to any ban on pesticides. Paul Chambers, NFU plant health adviser, said: "Banning pesticides using the precautionary principle is not based on good science. Pests and disease are the problems facing honeybees in the UK. The government needs to put more money into researching honeybee health."

The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs also attributed the decline in honeybee populations to a variety of factors. A Defra spokesman said: "There are no plans to ban pesticides."

Beekeepers worldwide have reported catastrophic losses of from 30% to 90% of their honeybee colonies during the last two years. Two-thirds of all major crops rely on pollination, mainly by honeybees.

Read more!

To what climate are we adapting?

Mike Hulme, BBC Green Room 30 Sep 08;

Moves to adapt our society for a changing climate may have focused rather too much on long-term scenarios and not enough on how to cope with weather and short-term variability, argues Mike Hulme. He says the past two British summers show the dangers of this overemphasis on laudable long-sightedness.

This year's British summer has again failed to meet many of our expectations.

As reported by the Daily Telegraph at the end of August: "Summer is all but over. We are entitled to ask: what summer? For the second year running we have been denied anything worthy of the name."

Rainfall was more than 50 percent above average; sunshine levels were well below average, with August being particularly gloomy.

The average temperature was a fraction above the 1961-90 mean, although this was disguised by cooler days offsetting warmer nights.

Is this the British summer climate to which we are being told we need to adapt?

The Mayor of London's office has just published its first ever climate change adaptation strategy in which the risks of increasing summer heatwaves and droughts compete with those of more frequent winter flooding. Both scenarios demand the attention of Boris Johnson and his urban planners.

In a couple of months time, the government - through the UK Climate Impacts Programme - will launch (with much publicity and scientific acclaim) a new set of climate scenarios called UKCIP08 for the nation until the year 2100.

They will be the first national scenarios that offer probabilities about how future climate may change.

'Eye off the storm'

As we think more carefully about how we live with our climate and how we can improve our preparedness for future weather, are we over-emphasising long-term prospects over shorter-term realities?

Are we paying too much attention to uncertain long-term climate predictions - dominated by greenhouse gas-driven global warming - whilst taking our eye off the more immediate weather futures which will determine the significance of climate for society over the next years and decades?

Using the jargon of climate science, are we giving too much weight to the anthropogenic "signal" of global warming whilst ignoring the natural "noise" of climate?

Individuals, communities and societies have always wanted to know what the future weather will be; whether for managing the cultivation of land or the building of homes through to preparing for social rituals or communal celebrations.

Since the middle of the 19th Century, scientific weather forecasting has been evolving. Current forecasts are able to predict weather three days ahead. These forecasts are as skilful, and contain more detail, as next-day forecasts 40 years ago.

We are better prepared and better adapted to avoid weather risks, such as storms at sea, and to grasp opportunities (eg transport management) than any previous generation.

Paralleling these developments, we have in the last 10 to 15 years also been urged to start bringing long-term climate predictions - scenarios for 2050 and 2100 linked to global warming and derived from climate models - into our adaptation planning.

This is particularly needed for infrastructure projects which have a long life-span.

Balancing act

But are these long-term climate scenarios alone what we most urgently need to improve society's adaptation to weather and climate - to avoid risks and to grasp opportunities?

Weather forecasts offer easily demonstrable and quantified skill. But climate scenarios for the year 2050 cannot be tested against observations; we have to rely on our faith in the underlying climate models.

This faith is tested when we endure summers like those of 2007 and 2008. All long-term climate scenarios suggest British summers will become drier; if we now start adapting for drier summers what happens to farmers, businesses and tourists when we have two successive very wet summers?

All long-term scenarios also suggest heatwaves, such as the one in August 2003, will become more frequent, even the norm, by 2050. How does adapting to this prospect improve our ability to survive cool, gloomy weeks like those we had in 2008?

We will never know empirically on any useful timescale whether or not we have accurate climate predictions for 2050. Yet even if they do prove accurate, if our shorter-term forewarning of daily weather to decadal climate is poor, we may end up just as maladapted and just as exposed to weather risks as if we had ignored global warming entirely.

Two extremes

Scientists have recently begun to tackle seasonal to decadal climate forecasting, time-scales in which natural variability ("noise") is more important than global warming ("signal"). Yet for now, these forecasts remain primitive and of limited skill.

So we remain caught between the two extremes of what science can foretell of future weather: daily forecasts with known skill and value, and centennial scenarios of unknown skill based on (good) faith.

We do need to consider the latter in guiding long-term infrastructure design, but an over-reliance on such scenarios to dominate our adaptation thinking and planning carries three dangers.

Long-term climate scenarios may prove to be inaccurate (we have poor means of knowing for sure).

Second, even if they do prove accurate on the time-scale of 50 to 100 years, they may be all but useless for foretelling the climate of the next one to 10 years.

This is linked to the third danger, which is about the social psychology of weather expectations.

Constant public talk of presaged late-century climate will alter public expectations of near-term climate, which - as we have seen these last two years - will continue to yield weather of very different character to that offered by our 2050s scenarios.

To use a specific example: how do we prepare the 2012 London Olympics to be well adapted to British summer climate?

Do we take a 2050 climate change scenario - heatwaves, droughts and all - and assume this will best describe the summer of 2012?

Do we use one of the new experimental decadal forecasts that suggests we may see little warming and maybe wetter summers over the next decade?

Or do we make sure that the Olympics are prepared to cope with whatever the summer of 2012 turns out like - whether the blazing heat of 1995 or the gloom of 2008?

There is an irony here. At the same time as the new national UKCIP08 scenarios offer us more detailed information than ever before about the climate of 2050 - for example, probabilities of hourly rainfall at 1km resolution - so climate science is increasingly emphasising that our weather from months to a decade or two ahead will be dominated by natural variability which we poorly understand and struggle to predict.

The coming decade will yield the familiar mixture of British weather: heat, cold, wind, rain and drought.

Yes, let us use such foresight as science can offer us about the longer term; but effective adaptation to weather and climate variability and management of public expectations of future weather demand more than merely this.

Premature locking of our infrastructure and our social psychology into the dimly presaged but overly precise climate of the late 21st Century maybe as risky as pretending we are still living with the climate of the 20th Century.

Mike Hulme is a professor in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia (UEA), and was the founding director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research

The Green Room is a series of opinion article on environmental topics running weekly on the BBC News website

Read more!

Failure on climate change will 'haunt humanity': Australian expert

Yahoo News 30 Sep 08;

Failure to curb global warming would "haunt humanity" forever, Australia's top climate adviser said Tuesday as he urged the country to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 60 percent by 2050.

Ross Garnaut, presenting his long-awaited report on climate change, said Australia was more vulnerable to rising temperatures than any other developed country because of its hot, dry climate and faced environmental destruction and a major decline in farming in nothing was done.

"If we fail, on a balance of probabilities, the failure of our generation will haunt humanity until the end of time," Garnaut told reporters in Canberra.

The economist and former diplomat said there would be no solution to the problem of man-made global warming, caused by the build-up of greenhouse gases created by burning fossil fuels, unless it was a global solution.

He said under the best case scenario, an international agreement bringing in developing countries such as China and India would cap global greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at a concentration of 450 parts per million (ppm).

"Its (Australia's) fair share of a 450 ppm agreement would be to reduce emissions by 25 percent from 2000 levels by 2020 and by 90 percent by 2050," the professor said.

Garnaut said Australia should aim for this ambitious target but acknowledged that forging such an agreement would be difficult.

A global pact on keeping carbon pollution to 550 ppm had a "reasonable chance" of succeeding and "Australia should offer to play its full part in such an agreement", he said.

Under such an deal, Australia's contribution would be to reduce emissions by 10 percent from 2000 levels by 2020 and by 80 percent by 2050.

Garnaut said Australia should cut its emissions regardless of an international agreement.

"In the absence of a comprehensive global agreement that adds up and in the context of another limited, Kyoto-style agreement, the report recommends that Australia's first step between 2013-2020 should be along the linear path to a 60 percent cut in emissions by 2050," he said.

"This would be a five percent reduction by 2020."

Read more!

Prince Charles: World is not acting quickly enough over climate change

Paul Eccleston, The Telegraph 30 Sep 08;

Prince Charles has warned that the world is not reacting quickly enough to combat climate change.

He said the clock of climate change was ticking faster towards midnight."We are simply not reacting quickly enough and we cannot be anything less than courageous and revolutionary in our approach to tackling climate change.

"If we are not, the result will be catastrophic for all of us, but with the poorest in our world hit the hardest," he said in an interview in Weather, the magazine of the Royal Meteorological Society of which he is the patron.

"There are some difficult questions that we must ask ourselves. Do we really understand the dynamics of a world in which energy and food security will become real issues for everyone?

"Can we say, hand on heart, that we are really doing enough to improve energy efficiency?

"Can we possibly allow 20 years of business-as-usual before coal power generation becomes clean, especially with the rapid increase in the number of coal power plants being built in China alone?

"Are we truly investing enough in renewable energy technologies? How can we build a really effective dialogue with China and India, and indeed the United States, which recognizes the real security implications of climate change?

"How do we maximise the role of the private sector in achieving a low carbon economy"?

The Prince said the most urgent, but neglected, cause of climate change was the appalling loss of the world's tropical rainforests where emissions through burning were comparable to those generated by the production of electricity and heat.

The world had to accept that the forests were a giant global public utility which helped clean the atmosphere of pollutants, fed it with moisture and acted as a natural thermostat in helping regulate the climate.

"Everyone accepts the necessity of paying for water, gas or electricity - so now we must start to pay for the ecosystem services these great forests provide to us. It is by no means easy to sort out exactly how this can be done, but it is absolutely essential that we do it," he said.

The Prince has established his own Rainforest Project supported by 12 major companies, NGOs as well as international institutions and organisations, such as the World Bank, to campaign for the preservation of the rainforests.

"My objective is to create the largest ever public-private-NGO partnership - and if by working together we can make forests more alive than dead and stop their global destruction, then perhaps we can use this same approach to tackle the other global climate challenges," he said.

The Prince also spoke of the aftermath of extreme weather events that he had witnessed for himself including Hurricane Katrina which devastated New Orleans and the Boscastle flood in Cornwall four years ago.

"Like many people Hurricane Katrina will stay in my mind for a long time. I saw the aftermath myself when I visited the area shortly after it had happened and the sheer scale of the devastation and the immense human suffering it caused were almost unimaginable," he said.

"And then in this country, I will never forget the flood at Boscastle in Cornwall four years ago. It was such a freak event. A normal summer's day turned into a disaster. How no-one was killed, I will never know."

Prince Charles praised the work of the IPCC and said it had helped to galvanize public opinion. He singled out former US Vice President Al Gore and said in his opinion he had made the single most important contribution to the climate debate with his film An Inconvenient Truth.

Read more!

Hunger Fight Must Protect Animals Too - Campaigners

PlanetArk 1 Oct 08;

ROME - Assuring farm animals are reared in humane conditions must be an integral part of efforts to fight world hunger, animal welfare campaigners said this week.

"It's often seen as a luxury, Western-driven concept, but increased and improved animal welfare can lead to more productive animals," Justine Holmes, of the World Society for the Protection of Animals, said.

The society is one of the groups attending a four-day Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) conference on animal welfare.

A coalition of animal campaigners handed the FAO a 10-point plan for protecting animals as the United Nations agency tries to help the developing world meet a surging demand for meat.

The groups want the UN agency -- which has an annual budget of some US$500 million to promote food production -- to make the protection of farm animals an integral part of its work. They also want it to stop encouraging intensive agriculture such as factory farming of chickens and pigs.

The campaigners want World Trade Organisation rules to explicitly allow subsidies to improve animal welfare.

Simon Mack of the FAO's animal production section said on Tuesday the agency takes animal welfare seriously, as it had proven by hosting this week's meeting, but that intensive farming was likely to increase to supply global demand.

"I would hope everything we do throughout the livestock sector is pro-welfare," Mack told Reuters.

"Prevention of diseases, improving animal feed, housing, the use of indigenous breeds, it's all pro-welfare."

"There is a growing demand for animal products and the livestock sector is having to respond to that demand and some sort of intensification of livestock production is inevitable," he said.

That did not necessarily mean animal welfare standards would decline, he said, adding that small-scale farming did not necessarily guarantee better conditions for animals. (Reporting by Robin Pomeroy; editing by Michael Roddy)

Read more!

Meat must be rationed to four portions a week, says report on climate change

Juliette Jowit, The Guardian 30 Sep 08;

People will have to be rationed to four modest portions of meat and one litre of milk a week if the world is to avoid run-away climate change, a major new report warns.

The report, by the Food Climate Research Network, based at the University of Surrey, also says total food consumption should be reduced, especially "low nutritional value" treats such as alcohol, sweets and chocolates.

It urges people to return to habits their mothers or grandmothers would have been familiar with: buying locally in-season products, cooking in bulk and in pots with lids or pressure cookers, avoiding waste and walking to the shops - alongside more modern tips such as using the microwave and internet shopping.

The report goes much further than any previous advice after mounting concern about the impact of the livestock industry on greenhouse gases and rising food prices. It follows a four-year study of the impact of food on climate change and is thought to be the most thorough study of its kind.

Tara Garnett, the report's author, warned that campaigns encouraging people to change their habits voluntarily were doomed to fail and urged the government to use caps on greenhouse gas emissions and carbon pricing to ensure changes were made. "Food is important to us in a great many cultural and symbolic ways, and our food choices are affected by cost, time, habit and other influences," the report says. "Study upon study has shown that awareness-raising campaigns alone are unlikely to work, particularly when it comes to more difficult changes."

The report's findings are in line with an investigation by the October edition of the Ecologist magazine, which found that arguments for people to go vegetarian or vegan to stop climate change and reduce pressure on rising food prices were exaggerated and would damage the developing world in particular, where many people depend on animals for essential food, other products such as leather and wool, and for manure and help in tilling fields to grow other crops.

Instead, it recommended cutting meat consumption by at least half and making sure animals were fed as much as possible on grass and food waste which could not be eaten by humans.

"The notion that cows and sheep are four-legged weapons of mass destruction has become something of a distraction from the real issues in both climate change and food production," said Pat Thomas, the Ecologist's editor.

The head of the United Nations intergovernmental panel on climate change, Rajendra Pachauri, also sparked global debate this month when he urged people to have at least one meat-free day a week.

The Food Climate Research Network found that measured by production, the UK food sector produces greenhouse gases equivalent to 33m tonnes of carbon. Measured by consumption - including imports - the total rises to 43.3m tonnes. Both figures work out at under one fifth of UK emissions, but they exclude the indirect impacts of actions such as clearing rainforest for cattle and crops, which other studies estimate would add up to 5% to 20% of global emissions.

The report found the meat and dairy sectors together accounted for just over half of those emissions; potatoes, fruit and vegetables for 15%; drinks and other products with sugar for another 15%; and bread, pastry and flour for 13%.

It also revealed which parts of the food chain were the most polluting. Although packaging has had a lot of media and political attention, it only ranked fifth in importance behind agriculture - especially the methane produced by livestock burping - manufacturing, transport, and cooking and refrigeration at home.

The report calls for meat and dairy consumption to be cut in developed countries so that global production remains stable as the population grows to an estimated 9bn by 2050.

At the same time emissions from farms, transport, manufacturing and retail could be cut, with improvements including more efficient use of fertilisers, feed and energy, changed diets for livestock, and more renewable fuels - leading to a total reduction in emissions from the sector of 50% to 67%, it says.

The UN and other bodies recommend that developed countries should reduce total emissions by 80% by 2050.

However, the National Farmers' Union warned that its own study, with other industry players, published last year, found net emissions from agriculture could only be cut by up to 50% if the carbon savings from building renewable energy sources on farms were taken into account.

The NFU also called for government incentives to help farmers make the changes. "Farmers aren't going to do this out of the goodness of their hearts, because farmers don't have that luxury; many of our members are very hard pressed at the moment," said Jonathan Scurlock, the NFU's chief adviser on renewable energy and climate change.

Read more!

UK's renewable energy efforts 'ineffective'

Terry Macalister, The Guardian 30 Sep 08;

The government's renewable power strategy is "ineffective and very expensive", according to a damning review by the International Energy Agency.

A study of 35 countries, including all the major industrial nations such as the US, Germany and China, puts the UK near the bottom of the class on green energy.

While ministers like to boast that the Britain leads the field, Paolo Frankl, author of the IEA report and head of renewables, believes its overall record is poor.

"We estimate that, in 2005 terms, it [British green power] costs around 13.5 US cents per kilowatt hour over 20 years and registers 3% on our effectiveness indicator. This compares with costs below 10 cents and effectiveness of almost 12% in Germany," said Frankl, author of Deploying Renewables: Principles for Effective Policies.

Frankl said the UK had not improved in relative terms since then. "Things may have changed but I would not say drastically, especially compared with countries which have changed and become very efficient such as Spain and Portugal."

In overall terms, the renewable power sector in the UK was "ineffective and very expensive". That could be attributed to administrative problems such as getting connections to the National Grid and winning over communities to support windfarms and other schemes.

Britain ranked 31st in the cost league of 35 countries, prompting criticism from environmental group Greenpeace.

"Our renewables industry has been left to wither on the vine while our European neighbours have raced ahead, creating new jobs as well as fighting climate change and securing their energy supplies," said Jim Footner, senior climate campaigner at Greenpeace. "The Department for Business must urgently ditch its obsession with coal and nuclear, and focus properly on the true technologies of the 21st century."

The Department for Business said it had not seen the report but could take comfort at not being the only one singled out for criticism. Too few countries had implemented effective support policies for green energy to be in a position to meet G8 goals of providing 50% of global energy supplies and helping halve carbon output by 2050, said Nobuo Tanaka, executive director of the IEA.

"Governments need to take urgent action ... Setting a carbon price is not enough. To foster a smooth and efficient transition of renewables towards mass market integration, renewable energy policies should be designed around a set of fundamental policies, inserted into predictable, transparent and stable policy frameworks and implemented in an integrated approach."

Frankl's report argues that there are "significant barriers" to swift expansion and which increase the costs of accelerating renewables into the mainstream.

Read more!

Best of our wild blogs: 30 Sep 08

Going M.A.D. with Cicada Tree
for the Nightlife! and about butterflies and moths on the Cicada Tree Eco-Place blog

More Hantu Dive photos
on a sunny Sunday on the Hantu Blog with more about about nudis and acoel flatworms

Tuas Power is building Singapore’s first ‘clean coal’ power plant
on the AsiaIsGreen blog

Full text of parliamentary discussion on rising sea levels and impact on Singapore on the wild shores of singapore blog

Read more!