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The "Building Responsible Property Portfolios" report urged investors to comply with the U.N.-backed Principles for Responsible Investment or risk seeing their returns on environmentally unfriendly property assets slide sharply.

The report, which was written by Gary Pivo of the University of Arizona and supervised by the Property Working Group of the United Nations Environment Program Finance Initiative (UN EPFI), said buildings were responsible for around half of global carbon dioxide emissions, both from operations and the energy consumed by people traveling to and from them.

It said investors could exert crucial influence on property fund managers to invest in sustainable property, and reap significant financial benefits from savings on operating costs and higher rents from tenants.

"We operate in an industry where investors, occupiers, constructors, and developers each blame the other for the lack of positive action in improving the environmental footprint of new and existing buildings," said Paul McNamara, co-Chair of the UN EPFI Property Working Group.

"Our report highlights the wide range of opportunities that exist for institutional investors who want to take positive action and apply the Principles for Responsible Investment to their property assets," he said.

European members of the UN EPFI Property Working Group include AXA Investment Managers, F&C Asset Management, Hermes Real Estate, Morley Fund Management, PRUPIM and WestLB AG.

(Reporting by Sinead Cruise; Editing by Paul Bolding)

(See www.reutersrealestate.com for the global service for real estate professionals from Reuters)

 http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSL1868886420080618

Time

Gulf’s Growing ‘Dead Zone’

June 18,2008

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush on Wednesday urged Congress to end a ban on offshore oil drilling, seeking to address rising consumer angst over record-high gasoline prices with a plan sure to anger environmentalists.

"Every American who drives to work, purchases food or ships a product has felt the effect, and families across the country are looking to Washington for a response," Bush said.

As average U.S. pump prices pierced the $4-a-gallon level for the first time this month, energy policy has become a key issue in the presidential race ahead of November elections.

Bush said opening federal lands off the U.S. east and west coasts -- where oil drilling has been banned by both an executive order and a congressional moratorium since the early 1990s -- could yield about 18 billion barrels of oil.

That's enough to meet current U.S. consumption for about 2 1/2 years, but it likely would take a decade or more to find the oil and produce it.

Bush's latest drilling plan comes as lawmakers on Capitol Hill wage a war of words over who is to blame for record-high gasoline prices.

Republicans and Bush have repeatedly blamed Democrats for blocking legislation that opens offshore lands and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to drilling.

"Democrats on Capitol Hill have rejected virtually every proposal, and now Americans are paying the price at the pump for this obstruction," Bush said.

About 60 percent of Americans support government moves to encourage more oil drilling and refinery construction as a way to combat soaring energy prices -- but the same number also profess to be in favor of conservation, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday.

Republicans, including presidential candidate John McCain who announced his position this week after opposing it in the past, increasingly support lifting the ban on offshore oil drilling.

Barack Obama who is running for president, and fellow Democrats, oppose it over environmental concerns and say such action would have little immediate impact on fuel prices.

Bush's statement was the latest in a long-running blame game between Democrats and Republicans over who shoulders the blame for high fuel prices.

"I know the Democratic leaders have opposed some of these policies in the past. Now that their opposition has helped drive gas prices to record levels, I ask them to reconsider their positions," Bush said.

Environmental groups have long opposed expanded offshore oil drilling, raising concerns about the dangers to fragile ecosystems as well potential for oilspills that could mar the U.S. coastline.

"The Bush-McCain plan is a gift to the oil companies that endangers the economic and environmental health of the Jersey Shore and our entire state," said Sen. Frank Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat.

Bush also proposed an end to the ban on oil shale drilling, and said the United States needs to expand its refining capacity and proposed measures to speed up federal approval of refinery building permits.

(Additional reporting by David Alexander; Editing by David Wiessler)

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSWAT00968520080618?sp=true

Feeling thrifty, the thirsty reach for tap water

June 18, 2008

Associated Press

Tap water is making a comeback.

With a day's worth of bottled water — the recommended 64 ounces — costing hundreds to thousands of dollars a year depending on the brand, more people are opting to slurp water that comes straight from the sink.

The lousy economy may be accomplishing what environmentalists have been trying to do for years — wean people off the disposable plastic bottles of water that were sold as stylish, portable, healthier and safer than water from the tap.

Heather Kennedy, 33, an office administrator from Austin, Texas, said she used to drink a lot of bottled water but now tries to drink exclusively tap water.

"I feel that (bottled water) is a rip-off," she said in an e-mail. "It is not a better or healthier product than the water that comes out of my tap. It is absurd to pay so much extra for it."

Measured in 700-milliliter bottles of Poland Spring, a daily intake of water would cost $4.41, based on prices at a CVS drugstore in New York. Or $6.36 in 20-ounce bottles of Dasani. By half-liters of Evian, that'll be $6.76, please. Which adds up to thousands a year.

Even a 24-pack of half-liter bottles at Costco Wholesale Corp., a bargain at $6.97, would be consumed by one person in six days. That's more than $400 a year.

But water from the tap? A little more than 0.14 cent for a day's worth of water, based on averages from an American Water Works Association survey — just about 51 cents a year.

U.S. consumers spent $16.8 billion on bottled water in 2007, according to the trade publication Beverage Digest. That's up 12 percent from the year before — but it's the slowest growth rate since the early 1990s, said editor John Sicher.

Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc., the biggest bottler of Coca-Cola Co.'s Dasani, recently cut its outlook for the quarter, saying the weak North American economy is hurting sales of bottled water and soda — especially the 20-ounce single serving sizes consumers had been buying at gas stations.

"They're not walking in and spending a dollar plus for a 20-ounce bottle of water," said beverage analyst William Pecoriello at Morgan Stanley. Flavored and "enhanced" waters like vitamin drinks are also eating into plain bottled water's market share.

Pecoriello said Americans' concern about the environment was also a factor, driven by campaigns against the use of oil in making and transporting the bottles, the waste they create and the notion of paying for what is essentially free.

The Tappening Project, which promotes tap water in the U.S. as clean, safe and more eco-friendly than bottled water, launched a new ad campaign in May. The company has also sold more than 200,000 reusable hard plastic and stainless steel bottles since last November.

Linda Schiffman, 56, a recent retiree from Lexington, Mass., bought two metal bottles at $14.50 each for herself and her daughter from Corporate Accountability, a consumer advocate group, after she swore off buying cases of bottled water from Costco.

"I've been doing a lot of cost-cutting since I retired," said Schiffman, a former middle-school guidance counselor. "Additionally, I started feeling like this was a big waste environmentally."

Aware of those concerns, some bottled water makers are trying to address the issue.

Nestle says all its half-liter bottles now come in an "eco-shape" that contains 30 percent less plastic than the average bottle, and it has pared back other packaging. PepsiCo and Coca-Cola have also cut down on the amount of plastic used in their bottles.

While it is difficult to track rates of tap water use, sales of faucet accessories are booming.

Brita tap water purification products made by Clorox Co. reported double-digit volume and sales growth in May and have seen three straight quarters of strong growth.

Robin Jaeger of Needham, Mass., fills her kids' reusable bottles with water from the house's faucet. But she doesn't use water straight from the tap.

"My kids have come to the conclusion that any water that's not filtered doesn't taste good," she said.

Her reverse-osmosis filter system costs about $200 every 18 months for maintenance — still cheaper than buying by the bottle.

Kennedy, the tap convert from Texas, has a filter built into her refrigerator. She also recently bought a reusable aluminum bottle made by Sigg, a Swiss company which has stopped selling its $19.99 metal bottles from its Web site, saying demand has swamped its supply.

While Brita is the dominant player in water filtration, according to Deutsche Bank analyst Bill Schmitz, sales of P&G's Pur water filtration systems are also growing. Sales from the Pur line have increased almost every month since mid-2007, said Bruce Lux, its brand manager. He declined to give sales figures but said "the water filtration category is expanding very rapidly."

"There's a backlash against the plastic water bottle," Schmitz said.

Cities and businesses, big to small, have also gotten in on the action.

Marriott International Inc. distributed free refillable water bottles and coffee mugs to the 3,500 employees at its corporate offices in Bethesda, Md., and installed multiple water filters on every floor. The Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, Calif., got rid of bottled still water in the summer of 2006 and started sparkling its own water in early 2007.

"Does it make sense to bottle water in Italy, trek it to a port, ship it all the way over here, then trek it to our restaurant?" said Chez Panisse general manager Mike Kossa-Rienzi. "We were going through 25,000 bottles a year. ... Someone has to end up recycling them."
Many cities, including New York, have enacted pro-tap campaigns, and some have stopped providing disposable water bottles for government employees.

Chicago started a 5-cent tax on plastic water bottles in January. San Francisco has done away with deliveries of water jugs for office use, instead installing filters and bottle-less dispensers, and banned the purchase of single-serving bottles by city employees with municipal funds. The city has already cut its government water budget in half, to $250,000 a year, said Tony Winnicker, spokesman for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.

"It's becoming chic to say, 'Oh no, I don't drink bottled water, I'll have tap water,' " he said.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25211545/

Levee breach could swamp 47 square miles
June 18, 2008

MSNBC News Services

The Illinois breach flooded farmland near the hamlet of Meyer, Adams County Emergency Management Agency spokeswoman Julie Shepard said.

Meyer, a town of 40 to 50 people, had to be evacuated, and authorities patrolled the town Wednesday morning to make sure no one was left behind, she said.

Flooding at Meyer could swamp 30,000 acres — or about 47 square miles — in the largely rural area, she said.

The rising river also ran over the tops of eight levees north of St. Louis overnight, bringing the total number of compromised levees on the most important U.S. inland waterway to 19.

"They were lower level agricultural levees," said Army Corps of Engineers spokesman Alan Dooley. "We're also watching another seven levees that may overtop in the next couple of days ... all agricultural levees."

The slow-rolling disaster, the worst Midwest flooding in 15 years, has swamped vast sections of the farm belt and forced tens of thousands of people from their homes.

Flooding that began in eastern Iowa caused at least $1.5 billion in damage as it crept south toward the Mississippi. About 25,000 people in Cedar Rapids were forced from their homes, 19 buildings at the University of Iowa were flooded and water treatment plants in several cities were knocked out.

Later in the week, the Mississippi is expected to threaten a host of others communities, leading officials to consider evacuation plans and begin sandbagging.

In Clarksville — a historic artists' town of 500 between St. Louis and Hannibal, Mo. — National Guard members, inmates and students were sandbagging. Five blocks were already swamped, but volunteers were doing their best to save buildings housing the shops of artisans and craftsmen.

"We fix one thing and it breaks," Mayor Jo Anne Smiley said. "Sewers are plugged up. We have leaks in walls and people who need things. We're boating in food to people."

1993 buyouts helped
But even as the water jeopardized scores of additional homes and businesses, officials said the damage could have been worse if the federal government had not purchased low-lying land after historic floods in 1993 that caused $12 billion in damage.

Since then, the government bought out more than 9,000 homeowners, turning much of the land into parks and undeveloped areas that can be allowed to flood with less risk. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has moved or flood-proofed about 30,000 properties.

The effort required whole communities to be moved, such as Rhineland, Mo., and Valmeyer, Ill.

In Iowa, FEMA spent $1.6 million to buy out residents of Elkport, population 80, and then knock down the village's remaining buildings. Some residents moved to Garber, Elkport's twin city across the Turkey River, but others abandoned the area.

"There's nothing there in Elkport anymore," said Helen Jennings of Garber. "They built new houses in different places."

Some of those who stayed are paying a price.

The federal government bought about a quarter of the homes in Chelsea, Iowa, after the 1993 floods, but most of the 300 residents stayed. At least 10 homes are now inundated by the Iowa River to their first floors.

Residents take it in stride, said Mayor Roger Ochs.

"For the most part, it's another flood," he said. "For Chelsea, it's more of an inconvenience."

On Tuesday, people were urged to evacuate an area near Gulf Port, Ill., as floodwaters threatened about 12 square miles of farmland. Henderson County Deputy Sheriff Donald Seitz said a major highway could be under 10 feet of water by midday Wednesday.

On the Iowa side of the river, a sandbagging operation was moved south to the outskirts of Burlington after floodwaters streamed across state Highway 99.

Oakville Apostolic Church "is now an island," said Carly Wagenbach, who was taking food to levee workers.

Officials were also concerned about the integrity of a levee that protects a drainage area south of Oakville.

"It's outrageous," said Steve Poggemiller. "We're hanging on by a thread — or a sandbag."

Jeff Campbell, a farmer carrying sandbags on his four-wheeler, said he spotted pigs swimming away from a flooded hog farm near Oakville. They were climbing a levee, poking holes in the plastic that covered it, he said.

One tired pig was lying at the bottom of the levee "like a pink sandbag," Campbell said.

The rising water forced the closure of the Mississippi bridge in Burlington and stopped car traffic on the bridge in Fort Madison. The bridge's railroad tracks remained open. A bridge downriver in Keokuk also remained open.

Clean up in Cedar Rapids
To the north in Cedar Rapids, floodwaters had dropped enough that officials let hundreds of people return to their damaged homes and businesses.

"It's obviously much more shocking when you walk in the door for the first time and see what happened," said Amy Wyss, watching sullenly as a giant blower was used to dry out her upscale wine bar, Zins. "I don't think you can be prepared for this, even if you think you are."

The National Weather Service expects crests this week along some Mississippi River communities near St. Louis to come close to those of 1993. The river at Canton, Mo., could reach 27.5 feet on Thursday, just shy of the 27.88 mark of 1993 and more than 13 feet above flood stage.

Crests at Quincy, Ill., and Hannibal, Mo., are expected to climb to about 15 feet above flood stage, narrowly short of the high water from 15 years ago.

In St. Louis, the Mississippi is projected to crest Saturday at 39.8 feet, about 10 feet above flood stage but still a foot lower than in 1993.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25238987/

McCain striving for superhero status

By Howard Fineman

MSNBC

WASHINGTON - Sen. John McCain may be 71 — a quarter century older than Sen. Barack Obama — but he is trying to win the White House by portraying himself as the more action-oriented, practical and resilient man.

He wants to have some of the powers of both the Ironman and the Hulk, although the post-spinach Popeye would be more appropriate.

And he wants to portray Obama as the former professor too inexperienced and caught up in theoretical matters to be president in perilous, crisis-ridden times.

That is the sense I get of one prong of the McCain camp’s strategic thinking as their candidate junks much of his past association with environmentalism in a five-day energy tour that continues today.

McCain wants to do immediate things as gas prices continue to rise inexorably toward five dollars a gallon.

He remains in favor of a federal gas-tax moratorium, a gimmick for sure, but a politically salable one. Yesterday he announced — in Houston, of course — that he has reversed course, and now favors lifting the 27-year-old federal ban on drilling for oil and gas in the Outer Continental Shelf, or OCS (though McCain remains in favor of the ban on drilling in Alaska’s National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR).

He is coming out for an aggressive plan to build more nuclear power plants and attendant facilities; for new federal money for quick-to-market “clean coal” technology; for oil-shale development; and for other measures. He wants to pour money into currently-available car-battery technology.

In other words: Let’s drill! Let’s generate! Let’s dig! Let’s manufacture!

Whoa!

Is McCain making the right bet politically? Even some Republican leaders are dubious. The Arizona senator can’t afford to be seen as a flip-flopper, said Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, who heads the House GOP’s campaign committee. And while the McCain campaign insists that this isn’t a change of position, Cole worries that McCain is risking his most prized possession, the image of a man of conviction.

But McCain operatives think they are striking pay dirt. For one, they note it would be up to the individual states to decide whether to allow drilling in the OCS. Second, most proposals call for the feds to let the states keep most of the tax money that would result. And third, most proposals call for off shore drilling to be pretty far off shore — 50 miles or more.

More importantly, McCain is trying to turn the energy issue into an immediate security matter — and offering himself as commander-in-chief of a new era of gas-pump warfare.

This strategy is called making the best of a bad situation.

McCain trails Obama in most measures on most issues, including the question of who can best deal with rising pump prices. McCain’s candidacy is built on one rock: national security and the war on terror. Now he wants to turn energy supply and prices into an urgent national security issue. “We are talking security at every stop,” says advisor Charlie Black.

“We’re not going to get a lot of those people, regardless,” said Black. That doesn’t mean the campaign can’t try. There is a lot of potential profit for old-school corporate America in most of the measures McCain is suggesting.

The McCain campaign may also be looking at the demographics of the electorate right now and, for the most part, giving up on the youngest voters, who have been reared on concerns for the global environment, and who incorporate it in their approach to everything. McCain is losing 2-1 to Obama among under-30 voters in the latest Washington Post poll. Older voters are more inclined to the drill-dig-and-generate ethos.

So, perhaps, are voters in key industrial states such as Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylva-nian and West Virginia — all places where Obama may be weak and McCain will try to counterattack as Obama pursues his “50 state strategy” through Novem-ber.

McCain and his advisors argue that they support all the long-range solutions too; from a sweeping conservation ethic, to switch grass, to solar panels and to wind farming. McCain’s current proposals are only a “bridge” to a non-carbon-based future, Black said. “Of course we need renewable and recycling and all of the exotics,” he said. “But we can’t get there from here without being urgent about production now.”

The word exotics got my attention. It’s a rather dated technical term for innovative, over-the-horizon fuel sources.

Of course in today’s world nothing is exotic anymore, but Black — as savvy a political counterpuncher as there is — was using it in a new context, with a new, unspoken subtext: Obama is an “exotic” candidate in favor of “exotic” fuels. He likes Green Tea and Whole Foods for heaven’s sake.

McCain wants to portray his foe as a professorial man mesmerized by the big picture.

Not action-hero McCain. He’s for spinach — and oil.

Jim Rutenberg

New York Times

June 18, 2008