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New Money Is Last Hope in Battle to Save Rainforests |
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By Nick Mathiason
The Observer UK
Sunday 14 October 2007
Nick Mathiason on misplaced optimism over climate change initiatives.
Industrial
clearance of rainforests accounts for 20 per cent of greenhouse gases.
Every second of each day a portion of jungle the size of a football
pitch is destroyed. As timber is carted off for export, giant
agribusinesses often move in. And so spins the nightmare cycle: a
growing release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere which in turn
alters weather patterns and destroys delicate ecosystems.
Climate-change
economists believe that slowing the speed of rainforest destruction is
the most cost-effective way to fight global warming. In his Treasury
report into the economics of climate change last year, Sir Nicholas
Stern said $5bn a year was needed to provide rainforest nations with
funds to ensure what remained was kept intact. But many people say
Stern is unduly optimistic and put the real price at $15bn.
Even
so, that seems a small cost for what appears to be a solid proposal to
fight climate change. But the issue facing countries such as Brazil,
Indonesia and Sudan is how to replace the huge cash windfalls they get
from the 13 million hectares of jungle destroyed every year. For
instance, logging in the Congo, which has the second largest rainforest
after the Amazon, rose significantly after relative stability returned
to the region five years ago. It was encouraged by the World Bank,
which saw deforestation as a route to economic stability.
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Gore and UN Panel Win Peace Prize |
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The Associated Press
Friday 12 October 2007
Oslo, Norway - Former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize Friday for their efforts
to spread awareness of man-made climate change and lay the foundations for counteracting
it.
"I am deeply honored to receive the Nobel Peace Prize," Gore said. "We face
a true planetary emergency. The climate crisis is not a political issue, it
is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity."
Gore's film "An Inconvenient Truth," a documentary on global warming, won
an Academy Award this year and he had been widely expected to win the prize.
He said he would donate his share of the $1.5 million that accompanies the
prize to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan non-profit organization
devoted to conveying the urgency of solving the climate crisis.
"His strong commitment, reflected in political activity, lectures, films and
books, has strengthened the struggle against climate change," the Nobel citation
said. "He is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater
worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted."
It cited Gore's awareness at an early stage "of the climatic challenges the
world is facing.
Gore, 59, has said he does not plan to run for president next year, despite
a national movement to draft him, and Peace Prize committee chairman Ole Danbolt
Mjoes said a possible run was not his concern.
"I want this prize to have everyone ... every human being, asking what they
should do," Mjoes said. "What he (Gore) decides to do from here is his personal
decision."
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Scientist: Greenhouse Gas Levels Grave |
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The Associated Press
Tuesday 09 October 2007
Sydney, Australia - Strong worldwide economic growth has accelerated the level
of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere to a dangerous threshold scientists
had not expected for another decade, according to a leading Australian climate
change expert.
Scientist Tim Flannery told Australian Broadcasting Corp. that an upcoming
report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will contain new
data showing that the level of climate-changing gases in the atmosphere has
already reached critical levels.
Flannery is not a member of the IPCC, but said he based his comments on a thorough
review of the technical data included in the panel's three working group reports
published earlier this year. The IPCC is due to release its final report synthesizing
the data in November.
"What the report establishes is that the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere
is already above the threshold that can potentially cause dangerous climate
change," Flannery told the broadcaster late Monday. "We are already at great
risk of dangerous climate change, that's what these figures say. It's not next
year or next decade, it's now."
Flannery, whose recent book "The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate
and What It Means for Life on Earth," made best-seller lists worldwide, said
the data showed that the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions
had reached about 455 parts per million by mid-2005, well ahead of scientists'
previous calculations.
"We thought we'd be at that threshold within about a decade, that we had that
much time," Flannery said. "I mean, that's beyond the limits of projection,
beyond the worst-case scenario as we thought of it in 2001," when the last
major IPCC report was issued.
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Ice Caps Melting Fast: Say Goodbye to the Big Apple? |
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By Paul Brown
AlterNet.org
Wednesday 10 October 2007
The talk of sea level rise should not be in centuries, it should be
decades or perhaps even single years. And coastal regions like New York
and Florida are in the front line for devastation.
It is hard to shock journalists and at the same time leave them in awe of the
power of nature. A group returning from a helicopter trip flying over, then
landing on, the Greenland ice cap at the time of maximum ice melt last month
were shaken. One shrugged and said:"It is too late already."
What they were all talking about was the moulins, not one moulin but hundreds,
possibly thousands. "Moulin" is a word I had only just become familiar
with. It is the name for a giant hole in a glacier through which millions of
gallons of melt water cascade through to the rock below. The water has the effect
of lubricating the glaciers so they move at three times the rate that they did
previously.
Some of these moulins in Greenland are so big that they run on the scale of
Niagra Falls. The scientists who accompanied these journalists on the trip were
almost as alarmed. That is pretty significant because they are world experts
on ice and Greenland in particular. We were visiting Ilulissat, Greenland, once
a stronghold of Innuit hunters but now with so little ice that the dog sleds
are in danger of falling through even in the depth of winter. But it is not
the lack of sea ice that worries scientists and should be of serious concern
to the inhabitants of coastal zones across the world. Cities like New York and
states like Florida are in the front line.
Scientists know this already, but just to give you some idea of the problem,
the Greenland ice cap is melting at such a fast rate it is triggering earthquakes
as pieces of ice several cubic kilometres in size break up.
Scientists say the acceleration of melting and subsequent speeding up of giant
glaciers could be catastrophic in terms of sea level rise and make previous
predictions published this year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) far too low. The glacier at Ilulissat, which it is believed spawned the
iceberg which sank the Titantic, is now flowing three times faster into the
sea than it was 10 years ago.
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Our Drinkable Water Supply Is Vanishing |
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By Tara Lohan
AlterNet.org
Thursday 11 October 2007
Thanks to global warming, pollution, population growth, and privatization, we are teetering on the edge of a global crisis.
Albert
Szent-Gyorgyi, the Hungarian biochemist and Nobel Prize winner for
medicine once said, "Water is life's matter and matrix, mother and
medium. There is no life without water."
We
depend on water for survival. It circulates through our bodies and the
land, replenishing nutrients and carrying away waste. It is passed down
like stories over generations - from ice-capped mountains to rivers to
oceans.
Historically water has been a facet of ritual, a place of gathering and the backbone of community.
But
times have changed. "In an age when man has forgotten his origins and
is blind even to his most essential needs for survival, water has
become the victim of his indifference," Rachel Carson wrote.
As a result, today, 35 years since the passage of the Clean Water Act,
we find ourselves are teetering on the edge of a global crisis that is
being exacerbated by climate change, which is shrinking glaciers and
raising sea levels.
We
are faced with thoughtless development that paves flood plains and
destroys wetlands; dams that displace native people and scar
watersheds; unchecked industrial growth that pollutes water sources;
and rising rates of consumption that nature can't match. Increasingly,
we are also threatened by the wave of privatization that is sweeping
across the world, turning water from a precious public resource into a
commodity for economic gain.
The
problems extend from the global north to the south and are as pervasive
as water itself. Equally encompassing are the politics of water.
Discussions about our water crisis include issues like poverty, trade,
community and privatization. In talking about water, we must also talk
about indigenous rights, environmental justice, education, corporate
accountability, and democracy. In this mix of terms are not only the
causes of our crisis but also the solutions.
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Big Banks Are Selling Us Out on Climate Change |
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By Tara Lohan
AlterNet.org
Saturday 06 October 2007
Whether we avert catastrophe with climate change may actually be decided by Citibank and Bank of America.
We're
nearing the end of the window of opportunity we have to avert the
catastrophic effects predicted from the earth's changing climate. We're
either going to sink or swim. Our best hope at this time is to
drastically reduce our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, like carbon
dioxide.
Global
leaders are putting their heads together to come up with solutions.
Across the world, countries and municipalities are passing legislation
to limit GHG emissions; people are cutting consumption; new
technologies are being developed to further alternative energy sources.
And yet, in the United States, the coal industry has us poised to move
in the absolute wrong direction. Right now, there are about 150 new
coal-fired power plants on the drawing board. The amount of polluting
emissions they will release is staggering - between 600 million and 1.1
billion tons of CO2 emissions every year, for the next 50 years. And
this, according to Rainforest Action Network (RAN), will basically negate every other effort currently being considered to fight climate change.
Over the last 20 years since Bill McKibben wrote the first global warming book
for a general audience, only a few things have changed: Scientists have
realized the problem is worse than they thought, and the crisis is
coming on faster than predicted.
"The
final question as to whether we can address it in serious fashion is
whether the coal that is in the ground stays in the ground," said
McKibben. "We already know that we are going to burn all the oil we can
get our hands on because we have gotten our hands on most of it and it
is intensely valuable. Coal, on the other hand, is the question. If the
150 power plants get built, there is no use talking about compact
fluorescent light bulbs or mass transit or any of those other things
... we'll have no hope of averting climate change short of catastrophic
proportions."
And what's the quickest way to halt those plants? Follow the money.
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Shipping Emissions Are Vastly Underestimated |
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By Lewis Smith
The Times UK
Thursday 04 October 2007
Climate-change
emissions from the shipping industry have been significantly
underestimated and are racing ahead of those of aviation, a study has
found.
The
quantity of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere by tankers and
container ships is 50 per cent higher than was previously believed.
The
findings, part of an investigation by the International Maritime
Organization (IMO), come amid rising concern that the industry's impact
on global warming is being ignored. Aircraft and cars have borne the
brunt of criticism by environmentalists who are concerned about the
impact of emissions from the transport sector, but the new calculations
are likely to focus more attention on ships.
The
findings, seen by The Times, suggest that shipping is dirtier than was
previously assumed and is causing significantly higher levels of damage
to the environment.
The
reputation of shipping as an efficient means of transporting 90 per
cent of the world's goods is unlikely to be lost, but the sector will
be under pressure to reduce emissions.
Previous
calculations have put global shipping emissions at about 800 million
tonnes per year, compared with about 650 million tonnes for aviation. A
new method of calculation, based on a reassessment of the quantity of
marine bunker fuel used by vessels over 400 gross tonnes, puts shipping
at 1.2 billion tonnes.
The figure is almost twice that of the emissions most commonly attributed to the aviation industry.
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EPA Urged to Limit CO2 Pollution From Cargo and Cruise Ships |
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Environmental News Network
Wednesday 03 October 2007
Washington,
DC - A US supreme court decision has cleared the way for the
Environmental Protection Agency to order shipping companies to lower
the pollution caused by ships.
Today
a coalition of environmental advocates filed a petition today with the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), asking the agency to set
pollution rules for large, ocean-going marine vessels. These vessels
include cargo and cruise ships. Earthjustice, the leading U.S. public
interest environmental law firm, filed this first ever petition on
behalf of Oceana, Friends of the Earth and the Center for Biological
Diversity.
California
Attorney General Edmund G. "Jerry" Brown, Jr. also filed a petition to
U.S. EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson on behalf of the state of
California today, with a similar request.
The
petitions would require the EPA to assess ships' contributions to
global warming, seek public comment and issue rules to reduce this
pollution or explain why it will not act.
The
April 2007 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court clearly established that
the Clean Air Act gives the EPA authority to address global warming.
The EPA must act immediately and issue regulations to limit pollution
that contributes to global warming. The petitions filed today begin the
process of imposing mandatory regulations on the marine transportation
sector. The petitioners asked the EPA to respond within 180 days.
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That's about how much time is left for us to get our act together. |
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