The environment in the news monday, 26 May 2008
INTERVIEW-U.N. urges shorter-term G8 climate goals than 2050
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- FACTBOX-Key climate change players positions on emissions
INTERVIEW-U.N. urges shorter-term G8 climate goals than 2050By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent Reuters
Friday May 23, 2008 OSLO, May 23 (Reuters) - The Group of Eight industrial nations should set shorter-term goals for axing greenhouse gases than 2050 to help guide billions of dollars of investment, the top U.N. climate change official said. Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, also told Reuters that a policy outlined by President George W. Bush last month that would cap U.S. emissions in 2025 was "not enough" to confront global warming. "We are at a stage where we really need to see leadership from the G8," he said before flying to Kobe, Japan, for a May 24-26 meeting of G8 environment ministers that will prepare a July G8 summit. He noted there was a lot of talk about whether the G8 should set a target of halving world emissions by 2050, a goal favoured by Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Japan and Canada at a G8 summit in Germany last year. The United States and Russia, agreed to "consider seriously" such a goal. But de Boer said 2050 was too remote for investors -- for instance a firm wanting to know rules for greenhouse gases that could tip a billion-dollar decision on whether to build a coal-fired power plant or a wind farm. "My hope for the G8 is that it does not just discuss 2050 but tries to come up with intermediate ranges," he said. Many countries favour new targets for 2020 after the first period of the U.N. Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012. "I think the private sector is crying out for an investment perspective," he said of measures to slow warming that the U.N. Climate Panel says is likely to bring more food shortages, melt glaciers, spread disease and raise world sea levels. EU GOAL Bush laid out a policy last month that would let U.S. emissions keep rising to a peak in 2025. All other G8 nations are part of the Kyoto Protocol, which seeks an overall emissions cut of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12. "That's not enough," de Boer said of Bush's target. "I see the policy statement of President Bush as a first offer on the table. More talking needs to be done," he said. Bush will step down in January 2009. Candidates in the U.S. presidential election -- Republican John McCain and Democratic hopefuls Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton -- favour earlier caps. De Boer noted that Kyoto countries agreed in August last year to be guided in negotiations on a new U.N. climate pact by a range of cuts in emissions of between 25 and 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 to avert the worst of climate change. "Reading the reports (of the U.N. Climate Panel), that's certainly the direction in which things need to go," he said. Tough commitments by rich nations were also essential to ensure that poorer nations, such as China and India, would agree to more actions at least to slow their rising emissions. Almost 200 countries agreed at a U.N. conference in Bali, Indonesia, in December to negotiate a new deal by the end of 2009 to succeed the Kyoto Protocol. -- For Reuters latest environment blogs click on: blogs.reuters.com/environment/ (Editing by Alison Williams)
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSL23806566 FACTBOX-Key climate change players' positions on emissionsReuters Friday May 23, 2008 May 23 (Reuters) - Environment ministers from Group of Eight rich nations and other major greenhouse gas emitters will meet in Japan's western city of Kobe from May 24 to 26 to try to build momentum for talks on issues including long-term targets to reduce the emissions that cause global warming. The United Nations says a new climate change treaty must be in place by the end of 2009 to give countries time to ratify it before the 2012 expiry of the Kyoto Protocol, which obliges 37 developed countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions by an average of at least 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. GROUP OF EIGHT G8 leaders agreed at last year's summit in Heiligendamm, Germany, to consider seriously a target of halving global emissions by 2050; Japan, the European Union and Canada are backing that goal. CHINA China is on course to overtake the United States as the world's top emitter of carbon dioxide gas, and may have done so already, but it says it will not agree to fixed caps on emissions because on a per capita and historical basis its output is far below that of developed nations. Beijing argues that it should not have to sacrifice growth that rich countries enjoyed in the past, and wants the West to step up the transfer of technology that would make its economic rise less carbon-intensive. A significant portion of its emissions are also the result of making goods for export, and China says consumers of those products should bear some responsibility for the greenhouse gasses created during their manufacture. EUROPEAN UNION The EU says any warming of the climate should be limited to no more than an average 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels to avoid warming, which it says will be dangerous and induce irreversible changes. The bloc aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels, to obtain 20 percent of energy from renewable sources by 2020 and to derive 10 percent of liquid fuel from biofuels. INDIA India will unveil a national plan to deal with the threat of global warming in June, but it will not commit to any emission targets that risk slowing economic growth, India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and environment officials have said. India says it must use more energy to lift its population from poverty and that its per-capita emissions are a fraction of those in rich nations, which have burnt fossil fuels unhindered since the Industrial Revolution. JAPAN
Japan is debating whether to set a national target for cutting its greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, officials say, and media have reported that Tokyo would announce in June a target of cutting its emissions by 60-80 percent to boost its leadership credentials as host of the G8 summit in July. Tokyo is pushing a "sectoral approach" to emissions goals, with curbs set for particular industries such as steel or cement that could be added up to a national target. Developing countries have objected to this approach, arguing that the curbs could throttle their energy-intensive industrial growth, while the EU insists this method should not be a substitute for ambitious national targets. UNITED STATES President George W. Bush rejected the Kyoto pact in 2001, saying it would cost U.S. jobs and unfairly omitted 2012 emissions targets for developing nations such as China and India. The Bush administration has agreed to take part in talks on a long-term treaty even though many details will be agreed after Bush steps down in January 2009. The main U.S. presidential candidates say they are committed to stepping up U.S. action. In April, Bush unveiled a plan to halt the growth of U.S. emissions by 2025, toughening a previous goal of braking the growth of emissions by 2012. The United States and China are the top emitters. The proposal has drawn criticism from environmental groups for letting emissions continue to grow for 17 years, although some welcomed it as a first firm U.S. ceiling. (Reporting by Linda Sieg and Chisa Fujioka; Additional reporting by Emma Graham-Harrison in Beijing; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
http://www.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=UST171688
Study: Humpback whale population rises Study: Once hunted to the brink of extinction, population now nears 20,000 The Associated Press MSNBC
Friday May. 23, 2008 HONOLULU - Once hunted to the brink of extinction, humpback whales have made a dramatic comeback in the North Pacific Ocean over the past four decades, a new study says. The study released Thursday by SPLASH, an international organization of more than 400 whale watchers, estimates there were between 18,000 and 20,000 of the majestic mammals in the North Pacific in 2004-2006. Their population had dwindled to less than 1,500 before hunting of humpbacks was banned worldwide in 1966. "It's not a complete success, but it's definitely very encouraging in terms of the recovery of the species," said Jeff Walters, co-manager of the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary. The study, sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is the most comprehensive analysis ever of any large whale population, said David Mattila, science coordinator for the sanctuary. At least half of the humpback whales migrate between Alaska and Hawaii, and that population is the healthiest, Mattila said. But isolated populations that migrate from Japan and the Philippines to Russia are taking a longer to recover after whaling operations ceased, he said. "Whales are long-lived and give birth one at a time .... so if the population gets pushed too low, it may take quite awhile to come back. Maybe that's what's happening in the west," Mattila said. The whales are protected under federal laws that include the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act. Endangered status to change? Their resurgence could spark a debate over whether they should still be considered endangered, said Naomi McIntosh, superintendent for the humpback sanctuary. "Those discussions are bound to happen, and we knew that going into the study, we anticipated it," she said. "I think it's too early to make that call." The number of collisions between whales and boats has been increasing, probably because the population is larger, Walters said. Whale entanglements in marine debris, fishing gear and aquaculture structures also are a growing concern. The whale count was made based on data collected from Hawaii, Mexico, Asia, Central America, Russia, the Aleutians, Canada and the United States' northwest coast. The study used a system of photographing whale flukes — the lobes of a whale's tail — in six different feeding and breeding areas around the world, and then matching the pictures with whale flukes photographed in wintering areas. © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24788056/
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Thursday May. 22, 2008 FRESNO, Calif. - Consumers and farmers will soon be on their own when it comes to finding out which pesticides are being sprayed on everything from corn to apples. The U.S. Department of Agriculture said Wednesday it plans to do away with publishing its national survey tracking pesticide use, despite opposition from prominent scientists, the nation's largest farming organizations and environmental groups. "If you don't know what's being used, then you don't know what to look for," said Charles Benbrook, chief scientist at The Organic Center, a nonprofit in Enterprise, Ore. "In the absence of information, people can be lulled into thinking that there are no problems with the use of pesticides on food in this country." Since 1990, farmers and consumer advocates have relied on the agency's detailed annual report to learn which states apply the most pesticides and where bug and weed killers are most heavily sprayed to help cotton, grapes and oranges grow. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency also uses the fine-grained data when figuring out how chemicals should be regulated, and which pesticides pose the greatest risk to public health. 'Not much that we can do' Joe Reilly, an acting administrator at the National Agricultural Statistics Service, said the program was cut because the agency could no longer afford to spend the $8 million the survey sapped from its $160 million annual budget. "Unless new funds are made available there's not much that we can do," Reilly said. While the agency "hates eliminating any report that is actually needed out in the American public," he said consumers could find similar data from private sources. Still, only a handful of the major agricultural chemical companies spend the approximately $500,000 it costs to buy a full set of the privately collected data each year, according to a letter written by an advisory committee to the agency. Most farmers can't afford to pay for the information and environmental groups use it to analyze which chemicals could turn up in local water supplies or endanger critical species. Eliminating the program "will mean farmers will be subjected to conjecture and allegations about their use of chemicals and fertilizer," said Don Lipton, a spokesman for the American Farm Bureau. "Given the historic concern about chemical use by consumers, regulators, activist groups and farmers, it's probably not an area where lack of data is a good idea." Industry also used data Pesticide companies also rely on the program when they're looking to reregister agricultural chemicals, said Beth Carroll, a senior stewardship manager with Syngenta Crop Protection, Inc. Reilly said the agency would "love to reinstate the program," but said for now it will only do key surveys. Those include the monthly crop report, which influences commodity prices on the futures market, and livestock reports, which set the price for hogs and cattle. At a time when consumers are increasingly curious about what goes into their food, farmers, chemical companies and advocacy groups said the cuts would have wide-ranging affects. "What we'll end up doing is understanding pesticide use through getting accident reports," said Steve Scholl-Buckwald, managing director at the San Francisco nonprofit Pesticide Action Network. "And that's a lousy way to protect public health." Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24775125/ Directory: cpi -> briefs briefs -> The environment in the news briefs -> The environment in the news briefs -> The environment in the news briefs -> The environment in the news briefs -> The environment in the news briefs -> The environment in the news briefs -> The environment in the news briefs -> The environment in the news briefs -> The environment in the news Download 461.99 Kb. Share with your friends:
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