Environmental Graffiti

Liberal Democrat party published a groundbreaking blueprint for climate change reform yesterday, to the relief of environmentalists who finally see a mainstream political party giving green issues the attention they deserve.

Party Leader Sir Menzies Campbell explained that climate change needed to move up the political agenda, pointing to extreme weather in Australia, the New Orleans hurricane, and this summer’s floods in the UK. The document is a vision of a zero-carbon Britain by 2050, including the total replacement of petrol-powered cars by 2040 and an end to nuclear power stations.

Other details include Labour’s climate change levy on industry being replaced with a formal carbon tax; the EU’s “cap and trade” system of emissions trading made more ambitious by EU-wide agreement; and a campaign to push Europe towards collective taxation of aviation fuel, regardless of whether America and other countries comply.

The document goes significantly further than anything proposed by the Conservative leader, David Cameron, despite his self-professed green sympathies. If anything, the Lib Dem blueprint may be overambitious, leading to criticism that it is untenable and idealistic. It envisages international post-Kyoto agreements designed to prevent global temperatures from rising above the 2°celsius level which is thought to make alterations to the environment irreversible. Post-Kyoto target agreements are often hampered by debate about the role of developing countries in emissions, and the Lib Dems want tighter carbon emission targets for developed countries (calculated per capita) which would gradually be extended to developing states in a multi-stage approach. Green technologies would be given to poor and industrialising nations to assist them in reducing emissions.

Sir Menzies attacked the Prime Minister for his repeated anti-green policies, and proposed a “tax pollution not people” approach: cutting income tax, and reverse the decline in green taxation - which has dropped to Thatcherite levels under Labour, Sir Menzies said.

The Party Leader stated that “This time it’s different”: “Climate change is a global problem that requires an international solution. Under our proposals the UK would set the green standard for others to reach.”

Hopefully such a bold statement of action on climate change from a major political party will raise the bar for all parties to start taking green issues seriously as parties compete for votes ahead of the general election expected in 2009.

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As you may have read recently, the use of palm oil for the production of biofuels has come under criticism for bad farming practices in Indonesia, endangering orangutans and destroying ecosystems. Now an Arizona company claims they’ve developed a better and cheaper way to manufacture biofuel – using algae.

The company, Diversified Energy Corporation, has developed a “breakthrough algae production system”, called Simgae, for simple algae. Using common agriculture components to produce algae, the system is substantially cheaper than other biofuel production systems, at $0.08 - $0.12 per pound. The algae produces oils and starches which can then be used for the production of biodiesel and ethanol.

The use of algae for biofuels has received attention recently as a promising source of biofuel oils, in contrast with the high prices of traditional sources. It has been shown to require 1/100th of the water per acre compared to other crops, and the carbohydrate and protein elements can be used for other purposes including feed and fertiliser. It is low maintenance and its ability to ingest carbon dioxide and excrete oxygen is attractive because it reduces carbon emissions.

However, the main obstacle preventing widespread mass production of algae for biofuel production has been the equipment and structures needed to begin growing algae in large quantities. Diversified Energy Corp have avoided this problem by taking a different approach, and growing the algae in thin walled polyethylene tubing called Algae Biotape^(R), similar to conventional drip irrigation tubing, which can be incorporated into a normal agricultural environment.

The Vice President of Business Development for Diversified Energy, Jeff Hassannia, commented, “The renewable fuels industry is in dire need of feedstock oils that are low priced and readily available. Algae is the perfect solution to this challenge, while at the same time helping to clean up the environment. Simgae will finally offer a simple, yet elegant means of bringing algae to the market at very reasonable costs.”

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Something seems rotten in the state of Maryland.

Somewhere in Maryland is box containing a $120 million satellite called the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR). It is ready to go and has the potential to answer some of the big questions around the science of climate change.

But, in January, 2006, NASA quietly cancelled the project altogether in January 2006 citing “competing priorities”.

What happened? How could the US government possibly justify killing DSCOVR given the importance of climate change and after over 90% of the project expenses had already been incurred? What role did petty partisan politics play in this? Did the oil lobby have any influence on this decision?

Over the next few months DeSmogBlog.com will be digging into the history of DSCOVR, the reasons why it was cancelled, and why NASA refuses to release any internal documents on the decision to kill the mission.

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There comes a time in every girl’s life when she has to say good-bye to her well loved appliances. But now, there is a way to ease the pain and loss – recycle!

Oh Yes! All defunct and damaged sex toys, especially vibrators, can (neigh must) now be recycled as part of the new recycling regulations. These stipulate that all electrical goods must be disposed of at a designated electrical waste collection centre, of which there are over 1000 around the country.

But if you feel more than a little embarrassed handing over a well used sex toy to your recycling agent. LoveHoney have launched a Rabbit Amnesty, where they kindly recycle your mechanical mate for you, give you a new one at half the price, and donate £1 for each vibrator recycled to a green charity.

And if all this saving the planet gets you in the mood, LoveHoney also allows you to make a pledge to spread the eco-ethics of your lovemaking.

“Rabbit Amnesty is a unique way for rabbit lovers to enjoy cleaner, greener orgasms,” says LoveHoney head buyer Bonny Hall. Hoorah!

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In accordance with Gordon Brown’s recent affordable housing promise and the Government’s Housing Green Paper, Living Space 21 have designed a house which can be built anywhere your heart desires for under £60K, or under £20K if you fancy doing it yourself, minus the price of the land that is.

In the wake of the recent, and reoccurring, floods in the Midlands, this house seems ideal. Built on stilts to overcome the milder floods, and it’s easy and cheap to erect a new one if yours suddenly disappears into the local ‘stream’.

The time has come for the average Briton to realise his/her Bangladeshi dream – a waterfront house, a boat, a suntan, It’s all very exciting, I feel the Buddhist inside me stirring.

Fabulously the Co-Operative Bank is sponsoring this venture, easing the way to your Bollywood paradise. And if you’re flash enough to have a spare bit of garden, field, lawn, Living Space 21 will happily buy that land from you to sell in conjunction with the stilted houses.

Luckily for the happy house buyer your stilted paradise is also an eco-friendly haven, built from timber frames sourced from sustainable forests, rainwater capture facilities and sloped roofs to maximise solar efficiency – not only is a cheap alternative to a two-up two-down in the centre of town, it’s also more energy efficient and sustainable to run – yippee!

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The world’s peatlands are believed to store at least 42 billion tonnes of soil carbon. This would usually remain in the soil. However, human activity can result in it being released. Dutch research institute Wetlands International estimates that nearly half of Southeast Asian peatlands have been drained, causing them to decompose and releasing the carbon. This is aggravated by fires that can rage for months and add to a choking smog or haze that is a health menace to millions of people in the region.

This process known as severe peat soil degradation, is currently responsible for about 2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, close to 8% of global CO₂ emissions, despite the fact that degraded peatlands in Southeast Asia cover less than 0.1% of the global land surface.

Emissions from peat account for 85% of total emissions from Southeast Asia, and environmentalists say the problem is most acute in Indonesia, home to 60% of the world’s threatened peatlands. As we reported recently, Indonesia’s habitats are being destroyed rapidly to make way for palm oil plantations to feed global demand for biofuel.

Indonesia has also lost a large area of peat under a Government project to convert about 1 million hectares of peat swamp forests into rice fields in the mid 90s. Former President Suharto’s “Mega Rice Project” deforested and drained massive amounts of peatland in Central Kalimantan, only to find the acidic soil underneath was unsuitable for rice farming.

The area has become a giant wasteland, with the dry peat releasing enormous amounts of carbon dioxide into the air. The highly combustible material catches fire in the dry season, choking the area in thick haze for a couple of months a year, and releasing “carbon-dioxide, methane and a cocktail of other gases, some of them toxic,” according to Professor Jack Rieley, a peat expert at the University of Nottingham.

Following decades of mismanagement of the peatlands, resulting in rapid environmental damage, Indonesia is pushing to capitalise on the area. At the UN climate talks in Bali in December, Indonesia will be pitching an idea enabling them to use peatlands to make a profit through carbon trading. They want to make emission cuts from preserving peatlands eligible for trade for companies seeking to offset business-related carbon emissions with emission reductions achieved elsewhere.

Whilst obviously any attempts to “clean up” the area and reduce carbon emissions from peatlands are welcomed, it seems dangerous to reward countries for such unscrupulous destruction of their environment. Additionally, carbon trading schemes have been criticised as enabling industry to buy impunity by financing reductions elsewhere in the world, rather than researching ways to make their activities less damaging altogether.

In an attempt to boost its economy, the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific has decided to resume the export of live bottlenose dolphins. Export was banned in 2003 after an outcry about the capture of dozens of the animals, but now fisheries minister Nollen Leni has announced that up to 100 can be legally exported each year, if the move is approved by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. Buyers are likely to be marine parks who train dolphins to perform in shows.

Director of WWF New Zealand, Chris Howe, said the development was inhumane and appalling. “It’s just bizarre to move dolphins from one side of the planet to the other. There are much more sustainable ways of developing your economy than doing that.”

Live dolphins fetch a few hundred dollars each for the fishermen who capture them, but once shipped abroad and trained they are bought and sold for about $30,000.

The Solomon Islands is to resume the export of live bottlenose dolphins, with local fishermen being encouraged to sell the mammals as a way to earn money.

In June, after rumours that the trade was to resume, the US-based animal rights group Earth Island Institute wrote to the Soloman Islands prime minister, Manasseh Sogavare, to say that such a mover would be cruel and damaging to the environment. In response, the minister challenged groups to provide evidence that dolphins were endangered in the area, and claimed that US fishing vessels killed more than 50,000 dolphins ever year. Bottlenosed dolphins are not listed as an endangered species.

A study by the Marine Mammal Inventory Report (MMIR) estimated recently that as many as 40% per cent of dolphins in shows at marine parks came from the wild. Humane Society International says that wild-caught dolphins suffer stress and often refuse to eat following capture. Their spokesperson urged tourists to stop patronising dolphin shows at marine parks in protest at the move.

Delegates from over 150 countries are currently meeting in Vienna to discuss how to move on from the 1997 Kyoto protocol. The UN targets on carbon emissions set at Kyoto will expire in 2012, and this week’s convention is seen as a key opportunity for an agreement to be thrashed out before the official UN climate summit in Bali in December.

The talks began yesterday with an appeal from a group of the 48 least-developed nations present. In the past this group has focused its criticism on the failure of the rich industrial nations to take climate change seriously, but this time they asked rapidly developing countries including China and India to do more to cut their emissions. A Friends of the Earth representative commented that “They are putting proposals not just to industrial countries but also some large emitters that are developing countries to do something about their emissions.”

In previous years, developing countries have presented a united front against the industrial nations, so this appeal from poorer developing countries to those developing more rapidly could be a crucial step towards a world order that prioritises environmental protection over industrial growth. However, the discussion did not go so far as to request mandatory targets for reducing emissions for developing countries.

As we reported recently, China has overtaken the US as the largest single emitter of CO2, and its rapid growth has resulted in polluted cities and contaminated produce. However, we should not forget that the US, solely responsible for roughly 25% of greenhouse gas emissions, refused to sign up to the Kyoto targets at all.

The US will be hosting its own meeting in Washington for “major economies on energy security and climate change”. The White House claims this will help to contribute to “a global agreement under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change by 2009” but critics view it as an attempt to derail the Bali summit. Austrian environment minister Josef Pröll pointed out that climate change “is a huge challenge that can only be dealt with at a global level. We do not have much time.”

It is vital that both the US and the developing nations are included in any targets that replace the Kyoto protocol, as otherwise the efforts of those countries who signed up to Kyoto will have been rendered hopeless. In-fighting and competition between countries is no good when the situation is so critical. This was highlighted by the foreign minister from Lesotho, who spoke about the effects of climate change on agriculture in his country: “The farmers are suffering because nothing happens when it is supposed to - the traditional rainy seasons are no longer predictable. The numbers of droughts have doubled since the late 1970s and when the rains come, they come in torrents.”

Joseph Zacune of Friends of the Earth said that the onus for reducing emissions remained on industrialised countries - with 13% of global population but 45% of carbon emissions - to solve the problem and that a 90% cut in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 was necessary to avoid dangerous climate change.

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Although your TV screen may look dormant, it could be using energy at an alarming rate behind that innocent-looking façade. Recent studies have shown that gadgets left on standby squander electricity worth £740m per annum and are responsible for 4m tonnes of excess carbon dioxide each year.

The good news is that recent government legislation has meant that standby buttons are beginning to be phased out, making energy efficiency within your home much easier to achieve. However, rather than waiting for these changes to begin, why not get a head start by switching off your appliances now? You’ll be saving around 155kg of carbon and £36 every year; not bad for such a tiny change to your lifestyle.

Are you already committed to stopping standby? Click here to show your green colours with the Big Green Switch

Who would have thought it. In Darwin’s 1859 classic, The Origin of the Species, we were told that humans were descended from primates. People were shocked. Now however, with the exception of the hardcore evangelical Christian, we are understanding just how similar we are to primates. So much so, that recent research has revealed that female rhesus monkeys from Puerto Rico also “gaga” over their offspring.

The way in which humans and rhesus monkeys communicate with their offspring does differ however. With human speech, baby talk is practiced all over the world by every single culture in every single country. The pitch of the voice changes and develops a sing-song style. Babies respond to this more easily and scientists have associated the practice with advanced development of speech.With rhesus monkeys on the other hand, a particular sound known as the “girney” is used to talk to their young.

Co-author of the study and associate professor in comparative human development at the University of Chicago, Dario Maestripieri said ” When infants are around they use [the girney] a lot more, and they also do other things like wag their tails to the babies—which they don’t do in other circumstances.”

Maestripieri and colleagues published their findings in the current issue of the journal Ethology.

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