Scientists uncover new ocean threat from plastics

Steve Connor, The Independent 20 Aug 09;

Scientists have identified a new source of chemical pollution released by the huge amounts of plastic rubbish found floating in the oceans of the world. A study has found that as plastics break down in the sea they release potentially toxic substances not found in nature and which could affect the growth and development of marine organisms.

Until now it was thought that plastic rubbish is relatively stable chemically and, apart from being unsightly, its principle threat to living creatures came from its ability to choke or strangle any animals that either got caught in it or ingested it thinking it was food.

But the latest research suggests that plastic is also a source of dissolved substances that can easily become widely dispersed in the marine environment. Many of these chemicals are believed to toxic to humans and animals, the scientists said.

The scale of plastic pollution in the sea has only been widely recognised in recent years when sailing yachts reported vast areas of ocean, such as an area estimated to be twice the size of Texas in the North Pacific, that seem to be permanently covered in a layer of floating marine litter caught up in swirling ocean currents or gyres.

Some of the items were found to be many decades old, suggesting that the plastic took a long time to degrade. However, a study by Katsuhiko Saido at Nihon University in Chiba, Japan, has found that plastics degrade relatively quickly in the conditions and temperatures that were designed to simulate the environment of the open ocean.

“Plastics in daily use are generally assumed to be quite stable. We found that plastic in the ocean actually decomposes as it is exposed to the rain and sun and other environmental conditions, giving rise to yet another source of global contamination that will continue into the future,” Dr Saido said.

“To date, no studies have been conducted on plastic decomposition at low temperature in the environment owing to the mistaken conception that plastic does not decompose. The present study was conducted to clarify that drift plastic does indeed decompose to give rise to hazardous chemicals in the ocean,” he said.

The scientists found that when plastics decompose in the ocean they release a range of chemicals, such as bisphenol A and substances known as polystyrene-based (PS) oligomers, which are not found naturally. Bisphenol A has been implicated in disrupting the hormonal system of animals.

A common form of plastic rubbish is styrofoam, which soon gets crushed into small pieces in the sea. However, it also releases substantial quantities of a toxic substances called styrene monomer, which is known to cause cancer, as well as styrene dimers and trimer, which are suspected of being carcinogenic. The trimer also breaks down into the toxic monomer form.

Findings from the study were released yesterday at the American Chemical Society meeting in Washington. Dr Saido said that samples of seawater collected from the Pacific Ocean were found to be contaminated with up to 150 parts per million of some of these components of plastic decomposition.

“This study clearly shows new micro-pollution by compounds generated by plastic decomposition to be taking place out of sight in the ocean. Thus, marine debris plastics in the ocean will certainly give rise to new sources of global contamination that will persist long into the future,” he said.

It is estimated that there could be hundreds of millions of tons of plastic rubbish floating in the world’s oceans. In Japan alone, it is calculated that 150,000 tons of plastic is washed up on its shores each year.

Study says plastic decomposes at sea
Yahoo News 19 Aug 09;

WASHINGTON – Environmentalists have long denounced plastic as a long-lasting pollutant that doesn't break down. A new study indicates that, in the oceans, plastic does decompose, but says that's not a good thing either.

Thousands of tons of plastic debris wind up in the oceans every year, some of it washing up on coasts, some being swirled by currents into the Great Pacific Garbage Patch between California and Hawaii, said to be larger than Texas.

"Plastics in daily use are generally assumed to be quite stable," Katsuhiko Saido, a chemist at Nihon University, Chiba, Japan, said in a statement.

"We found that plastic in the ocean actually decomposes as it is exposed to the rain and sun and other environmental conditions, giving rise to yet another source of global contamination that will continue into the future," said Saido, who presented his findings at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society on Wednesday.

Saido reported that the decomposing plastics release potentially toxic chemicals such as bisphenol A and PS oligomer, which can disrupt the functioning of hormones in animals.

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On the Net:

American Chemical Society: http://portal.acs.org/portal/acs/corg/content

Plastic Breaks Down in Ocean, After All -- And Fast
Carolyn Barry, National Geographic News 20 Aug 09;

Though ocean-borne plastic trash has a reputation as an indestructible, immortal environmental villain, scientists announced yesterday that some plastics actually decompose rapidly in the ocean. And, the researchers say, that's not a good thing.

The team's new study is the first to show that degrading plastics are leaching potentially toxic chemicals such as bisphenol A into the seas, possibly threatening ocean animals, and us.

Scientists had previously thought plastics broke down only at very high temperatures and over hundreds of years.

The researchers behind a new study, however, found that plastic breaks down at cooler temperatures than expected, and within a year of the trash hitting the water.

The Japan-based team collected samples in waters from the U.S., Europe, India, Japan, and elsewhere, lead researcher Katsuhiko Saido, a chemist with the College of Pharmacy at Nihon University in Japan, said via email.

All the water samples were found to contain derivatives of polystyrene, a common plastic used in disposable cutlery, Styrofoam, and DVD cases, among other things, said Saido, who presented the findings at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in Washington, D.C., today.

Plastic, he said, should be considered a new source of chemical pollution in the ocean.

Cooking Up Plastic Soup in the Seas

The toxic compounds the team found don't occur naturally in the ocean, and the researchers thought plastic was the culprit.

The scientists later simulated the decomposition of polystyrene in the sea and found that it degraded at temperatures of 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius).

Left behind in the water were the same compounds detected in the ocean samples, such as styrene trimer, a polystyrene by-product, and bisphenol A, a chemical used in hard plastics such as reusable water bottles and the linings of aluminum cans.

Bisphenol A (BPA) has been shown to interfere with the reproductive systems of animals, while styrene monomer, a derivative of styrene trimer, is a known carcinogen.

The pollutants are likely to be more concentrated in areas heavily littered with plastic debris, such as ocean vortices, which occur where currents meet.

Plastic Breaks Down Fast

About 44 percent of all seabirds eat plastic, apparently by mistake, sometimes with fatal effects. And 267 marine species are affected by plastic garbage—animals are known to swallow plastic bags, which resemble jellyfish in mid-ocean, for example—according to a 2008 study in the journal Environmental Research by oceanographer and chemist Charles Moore, of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation.

Now, it seems, they also face the invisible threat of toxic, plastic-derived chemicals.

Once Styrofoam, for example, breaks down, the tiny polystyrene components start to sink, because they're heavier than water, Moore said. "So it's likely that this styrene pollutant is prevalent throughout the water column and not just at the surface."

Along with Moore, David Barnes, a marine ecologist from the British Antarctic Survey, doesn't think the Japanese team's lab results can be applied uniformly across the ocean, however. Water temperatures are typically much cooler than the 86 degrees Fahrenheit in the study, he said.

"We're talking about, effectively, what happens in [zones] of tropical and some subtropical coasts. And there, [the] study may be very important," Barnes said.

Ocean as "Plastic Soup"

Plastic hits marine creatures with a double whammy, Moore said. Along with the toxic chemicals released from the breakdown of plastic, animals also take in other chemicals that the plastic has accumulated from outside sources in the water.

"We knew ten years ago that plastic could be a million times more toxic than the seawater itself," because plastic items tend to accumulate a surface layer of chemicals from seawater, Moore said. "They're sponges."

Moore worries about the plastic-derived chemicals' potential damage to wildlife. The chemicals can potentially cause cancer in humans, he said, and simpler life-forms "may be more susceptible then we are."

Pollutants also become more concentrated as animals eat other contaminated animals—which could be bad news for us, the animals at the top of the food chain. (Read National Geographic magazine's "The Pollution Within.")

Moore estimates plastic debris—most of it smaller than a fifth of an inch (five millimeters)—is "dispersed over millions of square miles of ocean and miles' deep in the water column.

"The plastic soup we've made of the ocean is pretty universal—it's just a matter of degree," he said. "All these effects we're worried about are happening throughout the ocean as a unity."

Read more!

Gene experts see high-yield rice in flood zones

Reuters 19 Aug 09;

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Researchers in Japan have identified two genes that make rice plants grow longer stems and survive floods, and hope this will enable farmers to grow high-yielding rice species in flood-prone areas.

The long-stemmed deepwater rice varieties grown at present in areas of frequent flooding have very low yields.

"In southeast Asia, there are floods in the rainy season and deepwater rice is planted in these regions. But they have yields that are only one third or one quarter that of high-yielding rice. This is a big problem," said Motoyuki Ashikari at Nagoya University's Bioscience and Biotechnology Center.

"If we combine the deepwater genes with high-yielding rice, we can have the best combination," he said in a phone interview.

In their experiment, Ashikari's team analyzed the genes of a deepwater rice variety and found two genes that were unique to the plant.

"The genes Snorkel 1 and Snorkel 2 are only in the deepwater variety but not in the non-deepwater variety," he said.

They discovered that rice plants begin producing a lot of the plant hormone ethylene when grown in deep water.

"As water levels rise, accumulation of the plant hormone ethylene triggers expression of the Snorkel genes, which in turn switches on rapid stem growth," they wrote.

They later tested their findings by inserting the two genes into a non-deepwater variety of rice and found that it grew longer stems, enabling it to survive in deep water.

"It's hoped that the findings will help researchers to breed rice that can be grown in lowland areas that are frequently flooded during the rainy season," they wrote in a statement.

(Reporting by Tan Ee Lyn, editing by Tim Pearce)

Scientists develop high-yield deep water rice
Eric Talmadge, Associated Press Yahoo News 20 Aug 09;

TOKYO – A team of Japanese scientists has discovered genes that enable rice to survive high water, providing hope for better rice production in lowland areas that are affected by flooding.

The team, primarily from the University of Nagoya, reported their findings in Thursday's issue of Nature, the science magazine.

The genes, called SNORKEL genes, help rice grow longer stems to deal with higher water levels. Deep-water rice generally produces lower-yield rice plants. But the researchers report they have succeeded in introducing the genes to rice varieties that are higher-yield.

According to the report, as water levels rise, accumulation of the plant hormone ethylene activates the SNORKEL genes, making stem growth more rapid. When the researchers introduced the genes into rice that does not normally survive in deep water, they were able to rescue the plants from drowning.

Motoyuki Ashikari, who headed the project, said his team is hoping to use the gene on long grain rice widely used in Southeast Asia to help stabilize production in flood-prone areas where rice with the flood-resistant gene is low in production — about one-third to one-quarter that of regular rice.

"Scientifically, the gene that we found is rare but clear proof of a biological ability to adapt to a harsh environment," he said. "It's a genetic strategy specifically to survive flooding."

Ashikari said his team already successfully tested the gene on a Japanese "Japonica" rice, and his team now plans to create a flood-resistant long grain rice in three to four years for use in countries such as Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Cambodia.

High water levels in paddies can be a serious problem. In some areas, rains can cause water levels to rise dangerously high during the growing season and flash flooding can fully submerge plants for days or even weeks.

Rice is a staple food for billions, and while productivity has increased dramatically since the 1960s, yields must be doubled to meet projected requirements by 2050. More than 30 percent of Asian and 40 percent of African rice acreage is cultivated in either lowland paddies or deepwater paddies.

Laurentius A. C. J. Voesenek, at the Institute of Environmental Biology, Utrecht University, who was not part of the research team, said the study is significant because high-yield rice varieties cannot survive extremes of inundation.

"The introduction of (these genes) into high-yielding varieties, using advanced breeding strategies, promises to improve the quality and quantity of rice produced in marginal farmlands," he said in a review of the paper, also published in Nature.

Snorkel rice could feed millions
Sudeep Chand, BBC News 19 Aug 09;

A new rice plant has been developed which grows "snorkels" when exposed to floods.

A paper in the journal Nature, describes how the plant elongates rapidly in response to being submerged.

One of the scientists, Motoyaki Ashikari from Nagoya University in Japan, said "the impact is huge".

It could also boost the production of rice in Asia and Africa, where up to 40% of crops are subject to flash floods or deep water.

"People cannot plant any crops in the rainy season, because the crops drown and die in the floods," said Mr Ashikari.

Writing in Nature, Laurentius Voesenek describes how the Japanese scientists discovered the "snorkel" genes in flood-tolerant rice, and introduced them to more sensitive high-yield rice.

"Snorkels" grow as hollow tubes from parts of the plant called internodes, preventing it from drowning.

When the floods arrive, the super rice plants can grow up to 25cm per day.

Read more!

Deep-fried locust, anyone?

Insects may be the answer to our looming food crisis
Gaia Vince, The Guardian 19 Aug 09;

Sustainable and nutritious, it's time insects were seen as another source of protein. The problem is how to make them desirable

As with gingerbread men and gummy bears, the dilemma when served a locust is whether to begin eating it head or legs first. I choose to start with the six little legs (sometimes you need to fold them in a bit because they tend to trail out of your mouth otherwise), then the abdomen and finally (gulp) the head. Crunch, crunch, swallow. Think: bbq prawns, but unshelled.

I'll be honest, deep-fried locust is not the most delicious snack I've ever had. But on a long road trip through Cambodia, it was cheap, filling and tasty enough – more than can be said for most motorway service station food in Britain and less frightening than other menu options in the region. Goat-scrotum hotpot, anyone?

In south-east Asia, insects are an important part of the daily diet for millions of people. Crickets, cockroaches and other bugs and grubs are sold across the region by roadside vendors and in smart restaurants. They are harvested commercially and by home producers, providing vital income for struggling farmers. Often, insects are the only source of income for women earners, who rig polythene awnings above a fluorescent tube-light to trap flying insects after dark.

Insects are plentiful, multiply and grow to adulthood rapidly and require little food to sustain them. They are the perfect source of protein. As countries in the west and developing world wake up to the looming threat of food shortages, it's time that governments seriously considered an alternative source of protein. Could insects provide food security for the coming centuries?

Entomophagy (insect eating) is a growing industry with more than 1,400 insect species being gobbled in 90 countries. In terms of how much food insects require per gram of protein produced, they are twice as efficient as chickens and more than six times as efficient as cows. One reason for this is that insects are cold-blooded, so they don't need to eat food to keep warm.

Animal feed is an important consideration as agricultural costs soaring across the world, leaving millions of families unable to meet their basic rice needs. Meat is an unheard of luxury for many in the developing world, leading to protein deficiencies for populations across sub-Saharan Africa, south Asia and Latin America.

The nutritional benefits of insects and better ways of marketing them were probed during an international conference last year in Chiang Mai, Thailand, involving scientists from 15 different countries, but not enough progress has been made since then. Researchers, governments and international agencies such as the UN Food and Agriculture Organization need to look seriously at insect harvest and production to meet the world's food needs both in the poor world and the rich west. This doesn't necessarily mean a cockroach burger with grub fries, but it could mean using insect protein to replace soya bean protein in packaged foods. Insects are a far more environmentally sustainable source of protein, because they can be harvested without destruction of forests or food crops.

It's not the perfect food. People allergic to some seafood are likely also to suffer insect allergies. And insects exposed to pesticides retain high levels of toxins in their bodies.

There is a niche market for insects; there are cookbooks, websites, online recipe sites, suppliers and restaurants specialising in bug dishes. But insects need to follow the path of other exotic foods, such as sushi in the 1990s, and become desirable. As entomologist Gene DeFoliart, at UW-Madison, says: "If insects become more widely accepted as a respectable food item in the industrialised countries, the implications are obvious. They would form a whole new class of foods made to order for low-input small-business and small-farm production. International trade in edible insects would almost certainly increase."

Still grossed out by the yuck factor? It's worth realising that most of us do already eat insects. The US Food and Drug Administration allows, for example, up to 75 pieces of insect in 55mm of hot chocolate and up to 60 aphids in a portion of frozen broccoli.

• Gaia Vince is travelling around the developing world looking at the impacts of climate change

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Food supplies at risk from price speculation, warns expert

Global food markets must be regulated to avoid speculators creating panic with artificial prices rises, says the head of the International Food Policy Research Institute
Jonathan Watts, guardian.co.uk 19 Aug 09;

The world food market is still "seriously exposed" to speculators artificially driving up prices and worsening the risks of malnutrition, according to one of the world's leading agricultural researchers.

Linking the recent food and financial crises, Joachim von Braun, the head of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), warned that the world was at risk of a new panic over grain unless commodity markets were more tightly regulated and production expanded.

"The banking sector is in the process of being re-regulated worldwide, but the food market remains seriously exposed to short-term flows of indexed funds into commodity exchanges. That vulnerability needs to be addressed," he said in an interview with the Guardian.

Von Braun was one of the first to predict the sharp rise in food prices that peaked last year, when 13 nations halted cross-border trade amid fears of shortages.

The crisis, which escalated over four years, hit poor people hardest and saw pasta protests in Italy, tortilla rallies in Mexico and onion demonstrations in India.

During that period, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates the number of hungry people in the world rose from about 800 million to more than 1 billion.

At the time, most of the blame for the price spike centred on growing populations, climate change, biofuels, rising oil prices and increased demand from fast-growing economies like China and India that were running down food stocks.

But von Braum said recent research highlighted the role of commodity speculators: "What we didn't foresee two years ago is how speculation exacerbated the real market issues. It was not a primary cause but a second-round amplifier, which added seriously to the problem."

Daily trading volumes on the Chicago commodities exchange surged at the peak of the crisis between December 2007 and March 2008, boosted by the entry of non-commercial investors entering the market to speculate.

"When food supply is at risk, speculators are attracted, especially when trade barriers are put in place," he warned.

Exchanges in India and China were closed down to prevent similar speculative attacks.

The global credit crunch also hamstrung government efforts to boost food production by reducing the money available for investment in new technology and better irrigation.

With climate change expected to reduce yields by 15% by 2050 even as demand grows from a rising world population, von Braum said it was important for nations and international institutions to respond with more funds for agriculture.

China, Japan, South Korea and several Middle Eastern nations have begun buying up farmland in Africa and South America as a hedge against food shortage risks.

Global prices are down from their peak thanks partly to effective measures by the Chinese government to rebuild grain stocks, increased agricultural investment in India and a great focus on food production in the aid programmes of the UK and other donor nations.

But von Braun said prices remain high in many African countries because of trade constraints and foreign exchange rates, while an unusually dry Indian monsoon could affect harvests in Asia. A UN report published earlier this week warned that Asia faces dire food shortages unless hundreds of billions of dollars are invested in better irrigation systems to grow crops for its growing population.

"Fundamentally, the crisis of high food prices in the majority of poor countries is not over at all," said von Braun.

Read more!

Massive river water transfers lacking scrutiny

WWF 20 Aug 09;

Stockholm, Sweden - Large scale transfers of water from one river basin to another are generally occurring without adequate scrutiny of their economic, environmental and social impacts, according to an analysis released to World Water Week by WWF.

“With the number of large water transfer schemes possibly nearly tripling by 2020 and the amount of water transferred expected to double, poorly assessed mega-transfers have the potential to inflict immense harm on both the communities donating the water and the communities receiving it,” said WWF-Germany Freshwater Director, Martin Geiger.
w
Pipe dreams? looked at existing and proposed large water transfer schemes in Spain, Australia, Lesotho and South Africa, Greece, Brazil, Peru and China and found the schemes to be high cost, high risk solutions to water problems “with the benefits much less, or likely to be much less, than the sales pitch,” Geiger said.

By 2020, large scale water transfers from one river basin to another are expected to reach around 800 cubic kilometres a year - around half a Lake Ontario or more than eight Lake Genevas. With problems evident in many of the 360 schemes implemented since 1950, the total number of schemes is predicted to reach between 760 and 1240 by 2020.

Australia’s Snowy Mountains Scheme took 99 per cent of the iconic Snowy River’s flows to produce power and provide for distant irrigation, causing generations of conflict. Despite expensive re-engineering and irrigation efficiency schemes, implementation of a decision to return a forth of the Snowy River flows is well behind schedule while climate change impacts are threatening to seriously reduce power generation.

Both donating and receiving basins experienced depletion and damage as Spain’s 282 km Tagus-Segura transfer provoked a unrestrained expansion of irrigated land, much now watered illegally. Planners were wildly optimistic about the water available and while users of the transferred water were to pay for the scheme and its operations only around 30 per cent of these payments have been collected.

Greece’s proposed diversion of the Acheloos River, mainly an economically questionable US$ 3.9-5.9 billion (€ 2.9 – 4.4 billion) prop to thirsty cotton farming heavily subsidised by the EU on the Thessaly Plains, is likely to go ahead following government circumvention of a Supreme Court declaration it was illegal and would be in violation of local, European and international laws on issues including water management, environmental assessment procedures and cultural heritage protection.

The report finds that in many cases there was little examination of alternatives to massive schemes, particularly in managing demand and promoting efficient water use in the mostly water scarce regions.
“Often it is going to make much greater sense to import water in extra food grown in wetter areas than to import water to grow food in a drier area,” said Geiger. “However, non-technical solutions such as this trade in virtual water, less water intensive farming or more water efficient industries and cities tend to be neglected in planning directed at just supplying more water continually.”

Water planning in isolation is also likely to lead to unforeseen problems. The report details the numerous examples of poor integration with land use planning, particularly for agriculture and inadequate consultation on schemes leading to often severe local and regional conflict.

“Don’t venture into interbasin transfers unless you have done your homework on impacts and alternatives,” Geiger said.

“Otherwise you could face serious planning deadlocks, operational shortfalls, unforeseen economic and environmental disruption, and expensive follow-up works that will only partly remedy the damage. If trends in water tables through climate change are not properly taken into account, the water planned for transfer might not be there any more in future.”

Read more!

Green power safer for workers than fossil fuels

Ewen Callaway, New Scientist 19 Aug 09;

As if helping to save the world from the worst effects of climate change were not enough, renewable energy may also curb workplace injuries and deaths.

That's because fossil fuels – as the term suggests – have to be dug or drained from underground, and mining is one of the deadliest of industries. Oil and gas extraction account for 100 deaths each year in the US alone, coal another 30, not to mention many more non-fatal injuries.

Carbon-sparing energy sources such as solar panels and windmills, on the other hand, are unlikely to take such a toll on the workers who build and maintain them, argues Steven Sumner, a physician at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina. "Extracting the fuel, generating the power and distributing the power are more dangerous in fossil fuel energy than renewable energy."

That sounds like common sense, but there's little hard data on the health costs of producing green energy compared with extracting fossil fuels. One study, a 2005 European Union assessment of the external costs of different energies, found working with wind power was safer than working with coal or oil. And US Department of Energy researchers put solar's occupational health costs in the same ballpark as nuclear, though they ignored the potential for long-term harm from nuclear radiation and catastrophes such as meltdowns.

"We don't know very much," Sumner admits. But as green energy make up a ever-larger chunk of global power supplies, firmer data on workers' health should follow.
Beware biofuels

Vasilis Fthenakis, a photovoltaic researcher at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, agrees that greener energies are generally safer to produce than fossil fuels. Increased demand should make that difference even starker, as renewable energy manufacturing become more efficient and automated. "The picture keeps improving because the technology keeps improving," he says.

Not all green energies are inherently safer for workers than fossil fuels, though. "Rates of injury in agriculture are high, therefore we suspect that biomass energy that comes from crop production is likely to have high risks," Sumner says.

Journal reference: Journal of the American Medical Association, vol 302, p 787

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Renewable energy laws pass Australia's parliament

Rob Taylor, Reuters 19 Aug 09;

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia's government struck agreement with opponents on Wednesday for 20 percent of the country's energy to come from renewable sources by 2020, unlocking a $22 billion investment rush and reviving hopes of a later emissions trade deal.

In a peace offering in its row with the government over climate-change policy, the conservative opposition controlling the largest Senate vote bloc said it had reached agreement with Climate Minister Penny Wong after days of negotiations.

"Today's decision is a victory for common sense, it's a victory for the environment and it's a victory for renewable energy," conservative environment spokesman Greg Hunt told reporters after striking the deal.

While the Senate will not formally vote until Thursday on the deal, the agreement raised hopes of a follow-on in November when controversial emissions trade laws will return to parliament, where they were rejected by the Senate last week.

"I urge those opposite who have become supporters of renewable energy in recent times to join the bigger fight, the bigger fight against climate change, and I urge them to support when the government next presents the carbon pollution reduction scheme," Wong told senators.

The conservatives joined with Greens and independent senators to block the emissions trade scheme, which aims to cut carbon emissions by between 5 and 25 percent by 2020, warning of its impact on jobs, the economy and the environment.

Rudd could have the option of calling a snap election if the Senate rejects the emissions laws a second time..

Kim Beazley, a long-time former leader of Rudd's center-left Labor in opposition, said earlier on Wednesday that he had no doubt an early poll was in the offing if the emissions impasse continued ahead of scheduled elections late next year.

"Kevin Rudd does not want an early election. I think at the end of the day he'll have to have one," Beazley told local television.

20 PERCENT OF ENERGY

The renewable laws will come into effect on January 1 next year and target production of 45,000 gigawatt hours of clean energy, or 20 percent of Australian energy, over the next decade. Electricity retailers will have to offer renewable power.

The target matches one set by the European Union two years ago and which the European Commission hopes will create 2.8 million new jobs and boost European GDP.

Renewable wind, solar, hydro and geothermal energy currently account for only 5 percent of Australian power consumption. Clean energy firms estimated renewable target delays were costing A$2 million $1.65 million) a week due to stalled investment.

Companies with exposure to wind projects include Transfield Services Infrastructure and Viridis Clean Energy, while AGL Energy and Orgin Energy have prioritized renewable energy.

Wong announced compensation for electricity intensive exporters, such as aluminum smelters Alcoa Inc., Alumina Ltd and Hydro Aluminum, and said emissions scheme buffers would be copied to renewables.

The interim arrangements would cover industries until the more controversial carbon emissions trade laws, and associated compensation schemes, were passed or rejected by the parliament sometime after November 16.

Hunt said the conservatives agreed to the renewable laws after extracting more effective compensation promises for the aluminum, silicon and newsprint industries, as well as a lifeline for food processors previously left out of assistance.

They also convinced the government to classify coal seam methane gas -- a coal mining waste product -- as a renewable energy source in a transitional measure that Wong said would not count toward the 20 percent renewable target.

"Even the Mad Hatter could never have imagined a world in which fossil fuels are actually renewable energy sources," environment group Greenpeace said of the methane inclusion.

Green senators controlling five key swing votes failed with a bid to have the planned 20 percent target lifted to 30 percent, outnumbered by the government-opposition alliance.

"It's a sad day when what should have been a celebration for renewable energy in Australia turns into another field day for polluters," Greens Deputy Leader Christine Milne said.

($1=1.210 Australian Dollars)

(Editing by Bill Tarrant )

Australia targets 20% renewable energy by 2020
Yahoo News 20 Aug 09;

SYDNEY (AFP) – Australia on Thursday passed a clean energy law requiring the country to produce 20 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2020 in move that could draw billions of dollars of green investment.

The Australian senate passed the government-sponsored bill just days after parliament rejected further-reaching but controversial legislation aimed at slashing carbon emissions.

"This is an extremely important achievement and it is one of the key institutional changes in the battle that the government is undertaking to deal with climate change," said Greg Combet, deputy minister for climate change.

"The passage of the legislation will help unlock investment in renewable energy generation and of course in jobs associated with those industries in areas like solar and wind power, amongst others," Combet told parliament.

Electricity companies will now be forced to buy a portion of their power from renewable sources under the laws, which passed without opposition after being split from the controversial emissions trading bill on Sunday.

Origin Energy, Australia's largest green energy provider, welcomed the renewable energy laws but said they were a poor second to the tougher carbon pollution reduction scheme (CPRS) proposed under the emissions bill.

"In the longer term, the CPRS is the lowest cost way to drive investment in cleaner technologies," said Origin executive general manager Carl McCamish.

"We encourage all political parties to negotiate a workable agreement to ensure that the CPRS is passed as soon as possible."

Combet warned that without the CPRS emissions would be 20 percent higher in 2020 than they were in 2000.

"It is the principal mechanism by which we will go ahead to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in this country and play a constructive role in international negotiations over climate change," he said.

The conservative opposition joined forces with the Greens and independents in the senate earlier this week to reject the combined renewables-emissions bill, which aims to cut carbon pollution by five to 25 percent by 2020.

The Greens supported the separate renewable energy plan despite failing in a bid to have the target lifted from 20 to 30 percent.

Read more!

Germany wants a million electric cars by 2020

Aurelia End Yahoo News 19 Aug 09;

BERLIN (AFP) – The German government unveiled plans Wednesday to get one million electric cars zipping around the country by 2020, offering sweeteners to jump-start national giants like BMW and Volkswagen into action.

"It is the federal government's aim that by 2020, there will be a million electric cars on Germany's streets," said Berlin's "national electro-mobility plan" which was approved by the cabinet.

"In 2030, this could be over five million. By 2050, traffic in towns and cities could be predominantly without fossil fuels," the proposals added.

Berlin plans to spark development in electric cars by offering incentives for research in area such as batteries and recharging systems, as it battles to catch up with Asian firms which have zoomed ahead of their German rivals.

"We are very confident that we in Germany can provide enough of an impulse to compete with the United States and Asia," Transport Minister Wolfgang Tiefensee told reporters.

"The Japanese are strong in hybrid technology but ... the big markets in Europe, the United States and Asia are still open," he added.

He said the goal of the plan was to "bring electro-mobility as quickly as possible into everyday life."

The plan added that Berlin is "examining an incentive programme for the purchase of 100,000 electric cars," but it nevertheless drew fire from green groups.

Environmentalists had called for a subsidy of around 5,000 euros (7,050 dollars) for consumers to buy electric cars along the lines of Berlin's five-billion-euro "cash-for-clunkers" scheme to support the traditional auto industry rolled out in January.

"The government has introduced a subsidy to sell an old technology but has not put in place incentives to buy the new electric vehicles," Renate Kuenast, parliamentary group leader of the Green Party, told the Weser-Kurier regional daily.

The motorists club of Germany (VCD) was also sharply critical of the proposals. "Electric cars are not going to save the climate in the foreseeable future," the group said in a statement.

"The government says there could be a million electric cars on the road by 2020, but this is in comparison to 50 million petrol and diesel vehicles," said Werner Korn from the VCD.

However, the German Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media (BITKOM), welcomed the plans, describing them as a "milestone towards improving the sustainability of road traffic."

German luxury car maker BMW has already teamed up with auto parts maker Bosch and its Korean partner Samsung to supply lithium-ion batteries for a future electric city car.

Volkswagen hopes to turn out its first all-electric car in 2013, VW head Martin Winterkorn said in July.

Meanwhile, Daimler launched its first hybrid model earlier in June, almost 10 years after the market leader, Japan's Toyota.

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Toyota to raise output, buy batteries from Sanyo

Yahoo News 19 Aug 09;

TOKYO (AFP) – Toyota Motor has raised its production target for this year and plans to start buying batteries from Sanyo Electric to meet brisk demand for its hybrid vehicles, reports said Wednesday.

The world's largest automaker now aims to produce 5.95 million Toyota-brand vehicles in 2009, up from a previous goal of 5.8 million, the Nikkei business daily and other media reported without naming their sources.

Toyota is enjoying brisk demand for its remodelled Prius, which has been Japan's top-selling car in recent months as government incentives spur strong demand for fuel-efficient vehicles.

The Japanese giant will buy some 10,000 lithium-ion batteries a year from Sanyo from 2011 because its battery joint venture with Panasonic is having difficulty keeping up with strong demand, the Nikkei said.

Sanyo -- which is being bought by Panasonic -- now supplies nickel-metal hydride batteries to Honda Motor and US auto giant Ford. It also plans to supply lithium-ion batteries to Germany's Volkswagen.

A Toyota spokesman declined to comment on the reports, which sent Sanyo shares soaring more than 10 percent to 247 yen, while Toyota shares gained 0.2 percent to 4,050 yen, outperforming the wider market.

Toyota, which overtook US rival General Motors in 2008 as the world number one, has idled plants and slashed thousands of jobs as it tries to recover from its first annual loss in the year to March 2009.

Earlier this year it appointed Akio Toyoda as its new president, turning to the grandson of its founder to rescue it from its biggest ever crisis.

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Mercury-tainted fish found widely in U.S. streams

Steve Gorman, Yahoo News 19 Aug 09;

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Scientists have detected mercury contamination in every one of hundreds of fish sampled from 291 freshwater streams, according to a U.S. government study released on Wednesday.

More than a quarter of those fish contained concentrations of mercury exceeding levels set by the Environmental Protection Agency for the protection of people who eat average amounts of fish, the U.S. Geological Survey report said.

More than two-thirds exceeded the EPA-set level of concern for fish-eating mammals.

"This study shows just how widespread mercury pollution has become in our air, watersheds, and many of our fish in freshwater streams," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a statement. The USGS is part of the Interior Department.

The neurotoxin enters the environment chiefly as an air pollutant spewed into the atmosphere by industrial emissions, then falls back to the surface in precipitation and particulate matter carried over long distances.

The main source of atmospheric mercury, according to the EPA, is coal-fired power plants.

Conducted from 1998 through 2005, the USGS study is the first comprehensive survey of mercury contamination in the water, sediments and fish of rivers and creeks throughout the United States.

Most previous studies have focused on lakes, reservoirs and wetlands. Mercury contamination in ocean species such as tuna has also received widespread attention.

'BLACKWATER STREAMS'

Some of the highest levels of mercury in the latest study were found in the coastal "blackwater" streams of North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Louisiana -- relatively undeveloped areas marked by abundant pine forests and wooded wetlands.

USGS hydrologist Barbara Scudder said those characteristics somehow enhance the conversion of mercury from its inorganic form in the atmosphere to a more toxic organic form, methylmercury, which accounts for at least 95 percent of the mercury found in fish.

"Just as there are members of the human population, such as children and developing babies, that are sensitive to the mercury that they get, there are some ecosystems that are also more susceptible to producing methylmercury," she said.

High concentrations also were found in some streams in the West fed by areas where mining had taken place, Scudder said.

As with many pollutants, mercury concentrates as it moves up the food chain, from algae, to insects to small fish and larger predators. The main source of mercury poisoning in humans is from eating fish and shellfish.

Scudder said researchers typically sampled about five fish from each of the 291 streams surveyed. They focused on bigger species such as largemouth bass because they are at the top of the in-stream food chain.

She suggested that people concerned about mercury contamination in stream-caught fish should eat more of the smaller pan species, such as perch, bluegill or crappie.

The EPA said this year that it intends to issue new rules under the Clean Air Act to control air emissions of mercury from coal-fired power plants.

(Editing by Xavier Briand)

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Cyclone damage to the Great Barrier Reef 'a warning on climate'

Sydney Morning Herald 20 Aug 09;

It could take 15 years for a quarter of the Great Barrier Reef to recover from the effects of Cyclone Hamish which tracked along the Queensland coast in March, researchers say.

Cyclone Hamish was part of a "triple whammy" - stifling heat, heavy rainfall and destructive winds - to the reef and a foretaste of the possible effects of climate change, scientists say.

The severe tropical cyclone, responsible for the ship Pacific Adventurer spilling oil along southeast Queensland beaches, has caused far more widespread damage, it has emerged.

Bureau of Meteorology reef weather stations recorded wind speeds of over 200km per hour as the eye of the cyclone passed over about a quarter of the length of the reef.

Preliminary results of research by scientists from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) will be released on Thursday, a statement from the organisation said.

"Most cyclones track fairly directly from the Coral Sea to the coast and so only relatively small areas of the Great Barrier Reef are affected," the statement said.

"By running parallel to the coast for about 500km, Hamish damaged much more of the (reef) than most recent cyclones."

AIMS scientist Dr Ray Berkelmans said the damage was patchy.

"Reefs within 30km of the cyclone eye sustained most damage, with around half of the 500 reefs in this area exposed to destructive waves and suffering significant damage," he said.

Based on past experience with similar reefs, the researchers estimate that coral should recover in eight to 15 years, if there are no further major disturbances such as cyclones, coral bleaching or declines in water quality that might reduce the resilience of these reefs.

Dr David Wachenfeld of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority said the summer of extreme weather brought a triple whammy of pressures to the Great Barrier Reef and was a stark reminder of the potential impacts of climate change.

"We saw stifling heat, heavy rainfall causing significant flooding, and destructive winds from cyclone Hamish, all compounding to have a hard hitting impact on the Great Barrier Reef," Dr Wachenfeld said.

"The research results from the AIMS surveys continue to remind us of the remarkable nature of this extraordinary ecosystem and the importance of ensuring that it is as healthy as possible to withstand the impacts of more extreme weather events in the future."

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El Nino climate pattern to last into 2010

Yahoo News 19 Aug 09;

GENEVA (AFP) – The World Meteorological Organisation said on Wednesday that an El Nino current now in the Pacific Ocean would probably last into 2010, promising unpredictable disruption to weather around the globe.

In June and July, sea surface temperatures in the eastern equatorial Pacific area were about 0.5 to one degree Celsius warmer than usual at this time of the year, the WMO said in an update on the climate pattern.

"The expectation is for El Nino conditions to very likely prevail through the remainder of 2009 and into the first quarter of 2010," it added.

El Nino is an occasional seasonal warming of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean that upsets normal weather patterns from the western seaboard of Latin America to east Africa, and potentially has a global impact on climate.

"El Nino, which is established right now, is associated with weaker monsoons and also weaker cyclone (hurricane) season in the North Atlantic," WMO scientist Rupa Kumar Kolli told journalists.

"We are already aware that South Asia is under a grip of an intense drought because of the very weak monsoon actuivity," he added.

In the past, El Nino has also been associated with drought in Australia and Indonesia, storms in the western Pacific islands, and extremely heavy rainfall in East Africa, at different times of the year.

However, while its impact on winds and rainfall in the more immediate region around the Pacific coasts of Latin America and Asia is better known, scientists say its broader impact is less easy to judge.

Kolli pointed to the size of the Pacific as the largest ocean basin on the planet, where El Nino produced "large scale atmospheric patterns."

That would in turn produce "significant regional climate impacts ... around the world," he added.

However, Kolli cautioned that those more distant effects also depended on other local climatic conditions.

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