The environment in the news tuesday, 20 May 2008
The Australian: Farmers 'in denial' on climate change
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The Australian: Farmers 'in denial' on climate change
May 20, 2008 NEARLY 40 per cent of rural people are uncertain about whether climate change is happening and are pinning their hopes on the weather returning to normal after the drought. Most people who live on the land question the link between the 11-year drought and climate change, a study by the Government's Bureau of Rural Sciences finds. "There is some denial that climate change is happening ... in order to maintain hope," the study said. It also found a high level of uncertainty - rather than rejection - around the notion of human-induced climate change. The study - called Climate and Industry Adaptation - interviewed 148 people from four rural communities, along with community representatives and business managers. Of those, 35.5 per cent said climate change was happening while 38.5 per cent thought climate change was probably happening, but felt unsure, or thought it was not affecting their area. Nearly 15 per cent said they didn't know and 11 per cent said climate change was not happening. "Nearly 40 per cent of the interviewees expressed some degree of uncertainty about whether or not climate change is happening," the study said. "There was a tendency for this group of people to attribute the current drought to a natural cycle and to express the belief that there would be a return to normal or good years once the drought broke." There was general consensus among the scientific community that human-induced climate change was taking place, the study said. This would lead to warmer weather, changed rainfall patterns and more extreme weather events in rural Australia. The bureau says many scientists believe climate change is a key factor in the drought. But some rural people were yet to be convinced of this, which posed a problem for adaptation, bureau executive director Colin Grant said. "A longer-term risk management approach to climate change assumes a level of understanding and acceptance of climate change that was generally not demonstrated in this study," the study found The bureau is an independent scientific group within the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry.
Mon May 19, 2008 12:21pm EDT By Michael Szabo LONDON (Reuters) - For the domestic energy consumer facing ever higher bills, one of the most efficient ways to stay warm and keep the lights on has been a pipe dream so far, but record high fuel prices have focused minds on making it reality. Large-scale combined heat and power plants are widely used across Europe to supply residential areas with warmth, hot water and electricity. Now, a scaled-down version of the technology is becoming more attractive for use in individual households as gas and power costs soar in line with record oil prices. Although micro combined heat and power (mCHP) mean homeowners have to invest new boilers, it allows them to sell any extra power they make back to the national grid and eventually make a profit. At the same time, the increased efficiency cuts carbon emissions and could enable households to become entirely energy independent. The technology has been commercially available in Britain since 2006 but is gaining popularity as oil prices drive up energy bills and public concern over global warming intensifies. "It's part of a whole suite of solutions, which we should be developing," said Robin Oakley of environmental group Greenpeace. "The underlying principle of getting more energy out of the same fuel is a very good one ... Realistically, at the domestic level people make a decision about a boiler when the old one breaks, but high prices are focusing everyone's minds." mCHP appliances work like a conventional household boiler in that they provide heat and hot water, but they also produce electricity for use in the home. "It walks like a boiler and it talks like a boiler, but it's an improvement over a conventional boiler," said Brian Longpre, a director at British-based Disenco Energy plc, one of the pioneers in the development of mCHP technology. "One of our mCHP appliances can cut an average British home's carbon footprint by up to two-thirds while making homeowners a bit of money on the side." The electricity generated from an mCHP boiler can cut household bills by up to 80 percent, mCHP developers say. Taking less power from the national network also means homes cut their carbon footprints by between 2.5 and five tonnes annually, since much of Britain's energy comes from power plants that emit climate-warming carbon dioxide. Excess electricity generated through mCHP boilers during off-peak hours can also be sold back to the power grid, under so-called 'feed-in tariffs'. Germany has Europe's highest feed-in tariffs, allowing consumers to earn around 40 euro cents ($0.62) per kWh compared to paying retail rates of 18 euro cents per kWh after taxes and support fees. In Britain, renewable energy feed-in tariffs range from four to six pence ($0.08-0.12) per kilowatt hour (kWh), roughly double the utility's wholesale rates. Retail rates are around 10 pence per kWh, so households can sell power back to the grid for half of the cost of buying it. ENERGY NIRVANA The ultimate is to become entirely independent of the national grid. "Coupled with other energy saving initiatives, including a reduced use in home appliances, our (mCHP boiler) can help you reach Energy Nirvana," Longpre said. Another company developing mCHP is Ceres Power, which signed a major distribution deal in January with Centrica, the parent company of British Gas. Centrica paid 20 million pounds ($39.28 million) for a 10 percent stake in Ceres Power, giving it exclusive rights to Ceres' boilers in Britain. Centrica has bought some 40,000 units in advance for distribution starting in 2011. mCHP boilers cost around 500-1,000 pounds more than a conventional boiler but consumers should still start generating a profit after five years, said Bob Flint, commercial director for Ceres Power. "Our mCHP boilers will save the average household around 250 pounds ($489) a year," he said. (Reporting by Michael Szabo; Editing by Barbara Lewis/Daniel Fineren)
2: A/C is OK 3: Organics Are Not The Answer 4: Farm The Forests 5: China Is The Solution 6: Accept Genetic Engineering 7: Carbon Trading Doesn't Work 8: Embrace Nuclear Power 9: Used Cars Not Hybrids 10: Prepare For The Worst No one with any scientific sense now disagrees about the severity of the climate crisis. But some people — and some magazines — believe that climate change trumps every other problem. If we take this argument to its extreme, we should ignore any environmental concern that gets in the way of reducing emissions. And that's just plain wrong. Make no mistake: Tackling climate change is vital. But to see everything through the lens of short-term CO2 reductions, letting our obsession with carbon blind us to the bigger picture, is to court catastrophe. Climate change is not a discrete issue; it's a symptom of larger problems. Fundamentally, our society as currently designed has no future. We're chewing up the planet so fast, in so many different ways, that we could solve the climate problem tomorrow and still find that environmental collapse is imminent. Myopic responses will only hasten its arrival. Take the proposal that we cut down old trees in favor of new ones. First, I don't buy the carbon accounting presented to advance this procrustean plan: Older trees can absorb CO2 for centuries after reaching maturity, while replanted forests can emit more CO2 than they sequester until the new trees are as much as 20 years old. But even if wired's math were correct, this would still be a crap fix for climate change. Chopping down forests causes massive soil erosion and leads to desertification, making repeated tree plantings a dodgy prospect. As monocultures, tree farms are far more vulnerable to pest infestations. And batches of trees planted at the same time are more susceptible to wildfires, causing the carbon they're supposed to be sequestering to go up in smoke. Old-growth forests, coupled with a broad program of woodlands restoration and sustainable forestry, can provide not only climate relief and ecologically responsible wood and biomass harvests but a slew of other essential ecological services, from salmon habitats to flood prevention. It's a heck of a lot more costly — in both money and emissions — to build massive dams and fish farms than to simply protect the forests we already have. Another example of how carbon blindness leads to counterproductive policies: embracing nuclear power as a clean energy source. This argument assumes that other clean alternatives will not improve in efficiency or affordability during the 10 years it would take to implement a nuclear program. That's short-term thinking. If we invested the money that we would spend on new nuclear facilities more wisely (and eliminated subsidies on fossil fuels), alternatives like wind, solar, hydroelectric, and wave power could deliver a clean-energy future more cheaply and probably sooner, without any of the security or health risks of nuclear plants. Nuclear power may have a role to play, but it would be far better to create a flexible energy system that draws on many clean sources, instead of on a single panacea. Again, a cut-carbon-at-all-costs approach blinds us to more-sustainable, and ultimately more-promising, solutions. To have any hope of staving off collapse, we need to move forward with measures that address many interrelated problems at once. We're not going to persuade people in the developing world to go without, but neither can we afford a planet on which everyone lives like an American. Billions more people living in suburbs and driving SUVs to shopping malls is a recipe for planetary suicide. We can't even afford to continue that way of life ourselves. We don't need a War on Carbon. We need a new prosperity that can be shared by all while still respecting a multitude of real ecological limits — not just atmospheric gas concentrations, but topsoil depth, water supplies, toxic chemical concentrations, and the health of ecosystems, including the diversity of life they depend upon. We can build a future in which technology, design, smart incentives, and wise policies make it possible to deliver a high quality of life at lower ecological cost. But that brighter, greener future is attainable only if we embrace the problems we face in all their complexity. To do otherwise is tantamount to clear-cutting the very future we're trying to secure. Alex Steffen (editor@worldchanging.com) is the editor of the green futurism site Worldchanging.com and of the book Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century. Back to Menu ________________________________________________________________________ =============================================================== ROA MEDIA UPDATE THE ENVIRONMENT IN THE NEWS Tuesday, 20 May, 2008 General Environment News Angola: Bio-Fuels Production is No Harm to Crops - Deputy Minister Angola Press Agency (Luanda): Production of bio-fuels in Angola is not harmful to the cultivation and harvesting of crops. This was said Thursday in New York by Angolan deputy minister of Urbanisation and Environment, Mota Liz, when addressing the 16th session of the UN Commission for Sustainable Development. The Angolan government official explained that a total of 500,000 hectares can be designated for the production of bio-fuels in Angola. This represents less than two percent of about 35 million hectares of arable land, with no hazard to the areas that are to be used for growing crops. After stressing that he was aware of the current controversy about the production of bio-fuels, Mota Liz explained that the Angolan government understands that this activity can significantly contribute to the reduction of unemployment, since thousands of direct and indirect jobs can be created, which will also cause the improvement of income of people in rural areas. http://allafrica.com/stories/200805190291.html Nigeria: Whirlwind Wreaks Havoc in Niger, Kills 2 Leadership (Abuja): A whirlwind has destroyed Baha village in Malale district of Borgu local government area of Niger State, leading to the death of two persons. The whirlwind, which is said to have been accompanied by fire, razed 48 houses, 150 rams, five bulls and farm produce. Vice chairman of Borgu local government area, Alhaji Baba Aliyu, who disclosed this to journalists yesterday in New Bussa, said only three houses were spared by the disaster in the village. Aliyu explained that the mysterious wind, which emanated from the River Niger, was first thought to be a volcanic eruption going by the ferocious fire that accompanied it. He said since the ugly incident occurred about two weeks ago, the people of Baha village have been reduced to refugee status, with no shelter or food to eat, as all their belongings were lost to the disaster. According to him, the council had spent about N500, 000 in the provision of relief materials such as clothing, beddings, foodstuff and plastic buckets, among others. The vice chairman disclosed that when the incident was reported to the state government, it mandated the council to source for funds and provide relief materials to alleviate the sufferings of the people. Aliyu appealed to the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) and other donor agencies to come to the aid of the affected community. http://allafrica.com/stories/200805190433.html Nigeria: Govt Distributes Seedlings to Indigenes This Day (Lagos): Yobe State Government has concluded plans to give out free tree seedlings to residents of the state who are interested in planting trees to ward off the threat of desert encroachment. Speaking to THISDAY, on the plan put in place to draw back the desert which have nearly ate up the state, the Commissioner for Environment, Alhaji Musa Maina Dumburi, said all that is awaited was the commencement of the rainy season for the tree seedlings to be distributed to interested planters. He disclosed that five nurseries were established in Damaturu, Garin Alkali, Nguru and Potiskum to germinate and maintain tree seedlings which the state government plan to distribute freely to every interested member of the public. Dumburi said also to check the menace of desert encroachment, the state government undertook an enlightenment campaign throughout the nooks and crannies of the state to sensitize the residents on the dangers of indiscriminate felling of trees. He further disclosed that the government apart from all these went ahead to arrest those involved in the indiscriminate felling of trees, stressing that recently four lorries were intercepted fully loading with log of woods. http://allafrica.com/stories/200805190676.html South Africa: Public to Comment on Hartbeespoort Dam's Resource Plan Gabi Khumalo (Thwane): The Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (DWAF) has called for public comment on the development of a Resource Management Plan (RMP) for Hartbeespoort Dam. The RMP is a future based plan that will regulate the use of the dam in accordance with Chapter 2 of the National Water Act of 1998. The department started a process with stakeholders to develop a RMP for Hartbeespoort Dam in November 2007 and this process is now nearing completion. The RMP will set out strategies, objectives, plans, guidelines and institutional arrangements relating to the protection, use, development, conservation, management and control of the water resource within the existing relevant government policy. The plan which is part of the Harties, Metsi a me (My water) biological remediation of Hartbeespoort Dam, will guide the use and management of the dam. Deputy Regional Director for DWAF at Hartbeespoort and Project Manager of Harties Metsi a me, Petrus Venter said that a few key meetings with stakeholders are to take place in the next month and the draft RMP will then be available for public comment from 26 June to 17 July 2008. http://allafrica.com/stories/200805190852.html Namibia: Green Skyscraper for Capital New Era (Windhoek): Windhoek will have its first 'green' and tallest skyscraper by mid-2010. Currently under construction along Werner List Street, the building will house the headquarters of Old Mutual Namibia, Nedbank Namibia, and Mutual and Federal Namibia. With 21 storeys, of which four would be underground, the N$265-million building will have retail space and a courtyard with water features. The height of the building is not what is of interest, however. The interest is in the green concept design, a first for Namibia and, most likely, one of very few green buildings in southern Africa. The skyscraper would feature 40 percent less energy consumption, utilize 50 percent of Windhoek' underground water - thus reducing half of its reliance on water supply from the City of Windhoek - and use an evaporation cooling system that reduces usage of electricity by another 40 percent, and reduces carbon emissions significantly. To an ordinary person, these figures and architectural jargon may sound meaningless. Nevertheless, behind the jargon are many features that would present the occupiers with health benefits besides the long-term savings on maintenance costs. Consider the energy consumption, for instance. Instead of only using electricity for lighting, the building will rely much on natural sunlight. http://allafrica.com/stories/200805191238.html Namibia: Tsumkwe Conservancy Makes History New Era (Windhoek): Na-Jaqna in Tsumkwe west has become the first conservancy to become a community forest. The community there recently voted overwhelmingly for the integrated management of the animals and forest resources in their area. New Era understands that many more will follow this model. Conservancies need to hold AGMs for their members to decide. The decision was made at the recent Na-Jaqna conservancy annual general meeting where a vast majority of community representatives opted for the joint management of the conservancy and the community forest. Communal area conservancies and community forests are core components of the Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) programme but the two components are managed in isolation from each other. Conservancies concentrate on the promotion of wildlife and tourism, while community forests focus on the protection and sustainable use of natural resources. A statement from the German Development Service (DED) said that this week a regional working group consisting of support organisations and members of the already existing management committees would draft a joint constitution that unites the formerly separated projects and lay the foundation for co-management. http://allafrica.com/stories/200805191294.html Kenya: Plastic Ban Delay Angers Ugandans The East African (Nairobi): The business community in Uganda is accusing the Kenyan and Tanzanian governments of inconsistency in implementing regional trade pacts at their expense, the latest being the prohibition on plastics that was agreed on by the three countries to protect the environment. During last year's budget reading, the three countries announced a ban on polythene bags and plastic containers of 30 microns and below, and imposed a prohibitive tax of 120 per cent on those above 30 microns. However, whereas the Ugandan government has ensured strict adherence to the pact since last July to the point that it is planning to ban bags over 30 microns as well and establish an environment police the Nairobi City Council announced this month that it would only begin enforcing the ban in June. Nairobi also conceded that it had not implemented the ban earlier because of several institutional and logistical constraints. This is not the first time Uganda's business community is crying foul- over regional trade policies not being uniformly implemented in each state. Earlier incidents involved fisheries in 2000, and trade in 2005 soon after the establishment of the East African Customs Union. The Uganda business community - the Uganda Manufacturers Association (UMA), the Kampala City Traders Association and the Private Sector Foundation of Uganda - have complained of lack of uniformity on regional initiatives, with Uganda emerging as the biggest loser. Some players in the affected sectors have reported losses as a result. They further say the government has "insensitively" opened itself to international co-operation. http://allafrica.com/stories/200805190493.html Nigeria: 'Sabotage Accounts for 59 Percent of Oil Spills' This Day (Lagos): Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) has expressed concern over the spate of sabotage on its facilities, saying its impact on the environment accounted for 59 per cent of oil spills in the area. Shell's Pipeline Assets Manager, Mr Chidi Izunwa, told newsmen in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, that sabotage, despite accounting for about 59 per cent of the oil spills noted that some of the spills were perpetrated by those who do not wish the country well. Izuwa said the destruction of SPDC's facilities was purely the handiwork of "an organised criminal gang", which was enjoying the support of some highly-placed individuals. "The environment is on daily basis being affected, aquatic lives and farmlands are being destroyed by a few persons for no genuine reasons. This cannot be allowed to continue, we are calling on everybody to join in the fight to stop this criminal activity," he added. Izuwa said besides the direct sabotage of its facilities, another act that was also contributing to the growing level of oil spill was bunkering with its accompanying negative impact on the environment. http://allafrica.com/stories/200805190686.html Back to Menu _______________________________________________________________________ ROAP MEDIA UPDATE THE ENVIRONMENT IN THE NEWS Tuesday, 18 March, 2008 Back to Menu _________________________________________________________________________ RONA MEDIA UPDATE THE ENVIRONMENT IN THE NEWS Monday 19 May 2008 
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