Enviro Valley: January 2012

Tuesday 31 January 2012

Climate change a fundamental health risk: academic

January 31, 2012

A leading Australian disease expert says prompt action on climate change is paramount to our survival on earth.
Epidemiologist Tony McMichael has conducted a historical study that suggests natural climate change over thousands of years has destabilised civilisations via food shortages, disease and unrest.
"We haven't really grasped the fact that a change in climate presents a quite fundamental threat to the foundations of population health," Professor McMichael, from the Australian National University, said.
"These things have happened before in response to fairly modest changes to climate.
"Let's be aware that we really must take early action if we are going to maintain this planet as a liveable habitat for humans."
In a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Professor McMichael argued the world faced extreme climate change "without precedent" over the past 10,000 years.
"With the exception of a few downward spikes of acute cooling due to massive volcanic eruptions, most of the changes have been within a band of about plus or minus three-quarters of a degree centigrade," he said yesterday.
"Yet we are talking about the likelihood this century of going beyond 2 degrees centigrade and quite probably, on current trajectory, reaching a global average increase of 3 to 4 degrees."
Professor McMichael's paper states that the greatest recurring health risk over past millennia has been from food shortages, mostly caused by drying and drought.
Warming also leads to an increase in infectious diseases as a result of better growth conditions for bacteria and the proliferation of mosquitoes.
Drought can also result in greater contact with rodents searching for scarce food supplies.
He said that, while societies today are better equipped to defend themselves physically and technologically, they lack the flexibility smaller groups had in the past.
He said that was partly because the world was now "over populated", so there are fewer areas available to retreat to.
Populations are also increasingly packed into large cities on coastlines, which are particularly vulnerable to extreme weather events.
Professor McMichael has been examining the impact of climate change on population health for 20 years and said it was not easy to raise awareness of the risk.
"Most of the attention has been of a more limited shorter-term kind relating to things around us like the economy, our property, infrastructure and risks to iconic ecosystems and species."

Sea cucumbers may save Great Barrier Reef

January 30, 2012

Tropical sea cucumbers and their faeces could save coral reefs from the harmful impacts of climate change, scientists have found.
Scientists at One Tree Island, the University of Sydney’s research station on the Great Barrier Reef, say sea cucumbers reduce the impact of ocean acidification on coral growth.
"When they ingest sand, the natural digestive processes in the sea cucumber's gut increases the pH levels of the water on the reef where they defecate," Tree Island director professor Maria Byrne said.
This works to counter the negative effects of ocean acidification.
One of the by-products when sea cucumbers digest sand is also calcium carbonate (CaCO3), which is a key component of coral.
"To survive, coral reefs must accumulate CaCO3 at a rate greater than or equal to the CaCO3 that is eroded from the reef," Professor Byrne said.
"The research at One Tree Island showed that, in a healthy reef, dissolution of calcium carbonate sediment by sea cucumbers and other bioeroders appears to be an important component of the natural calcium carbonate turnover."
The ammonia waste produced when sea cucumbers digest sand also serves to fertilise the surrounding area, providing nutrients for coral growth.
Sea cucumbers are among the largest invertebrates found on tropical reefs.
About 30 species are commercially harvested by the fishery industry along the Great Barrier Reef and throughout the tropics.
"We urgently need to understand the impact of removing sea cucumbers and other invertebrates on reef health and resilience at a time when reefs face an uncertain future," Professor Byrne said.

Killing the Great Barrier Reef for short-term profit

If it comes to pass, will the Great Barrier Reef with all its beauty, tourism and fishing, be exchanged for short-term fossil-fuel profits, royalties and the temporary balancing of budgets?
Gladstone is the world's fourth largest coal exporting port; a gas exporting facility is being developed on adjacent Curtis Island. Circumstantial evidence suggests that the increased dredging is disturbing toxic substances which cause human illness, fish deformity and deaths.
In the Gladstone Fish Health Advisory Panel's view "there is an issue of concern around the health of some species of fish in Gladstone Harbour and this is possibly caused by environmental factors".
The regulatory processes of the Queensland and Federal governments for the development, production and export of fossil fuels must be questioned once more in view of the Gladstone Port Corporation's request to remove Gladstone Harbour from the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area; presumably the proponents recognise that the two are incompatible. If incompatible, then protecting the World Heritage Area needs to be the first priority for Federal and State governments. This would appear not be the case.
Doctors for the Environment Australia has written to Minister Burke expressing health and environmental concerns
The Federal Government was obliged to inform the World Heritage Committee in advance about the planned port expansion, and its potential to impact on the World Heritage Area. It did not, and the Committee notes "with extreme concern the approval of Liquefied Natural Gas processing and port facilities on Curtis Island".
The committee also proposes to visit to assess the impact on the World Heritage Area of Gladstone as well as six other proposed major port developments. It is a sad indictment that we needed a distinguished body from afar to draw attention to the fact that the Emperor's regulatory clothes have big holes and to recognise the importance of cumulative impacts.
The estuaries and the ports are the sewer end of the pollutions of vast onshore fossil fuel developments within the river catchments and it is the cumulative impact that is most likely to decide the future of the Reef already under stress from sediment, nutrient and pesticide run-off and a rise in sea temperature.
There are hundreds of proposals for coal and coal seam gas mining and related infrastructure which receive approval.
In 2009-10 Queensland produced about 250Mt of coal and 6 new mega mines which will be mined for 30 years will more than double this output. The use of water is prodigious and, despite precautions, some run-off which may contain heavy metals is inevitable.
This is most obvious when existing mines flood periodically; these events have government 'special discharge conditions' for discharge into rivers, but some mines remain flooded for months accumulating toxic metals before eventually being discharged into rivers
Each of the new mega mines is subject to a separate approval. Concerns are apparent which may contribute to a cumulative impact.

Mine dewatering will affect the local groundwater regime and may cause a decline in groundwater levels, alter flow patterns, and impact on discharge mechanisms beyond the limits of the site..... This groundwater has metals and metalloids (arsenic, aluminium, iron and manganese). (Waratah)
Although it is acknowledged in isolation, each of the project's elements may impact on local groundwater resources it is unlikely that a significant cumulative impact will occur when considered as a complete project. (Kevin's Corner)

The Coal Seam Gas(CSG) mining boom has raised many questions over the use and contamination of ground water. The Senate Committee in its interim report recommended:

...that it be a requirement of all exploration or production approvals that the fluids extracted from wells after fraccing are kept isolated in secure separate storages and prior to disposal are treated to the highest standards.
..that all future CSG development approvals should be preceded by the development of... a regional-scale, multi-state and multi-layer model of the cumulative effects of multiple developments" of ground and surface water as recommended by Geoscience Australia.

Long-term concerns of some chemicals used in, or generated from, coal seams by CSG mining include hormonal system disruption and development of cancer. Such effects may not be immediately obvious, but can nevertheless occur with very low chemical exposures and have far reaching consequences.
So it must be asked, what is the cumulative flow into coastal waters over 30 years from all coal and CSG mining? Flow not only from the mining described in each EIS, but from inevitable spills, from emptying flooded mines - each flood removal approved in isolation. What is the impact on the Reef of the operation and dredging of not just one new port but of several?
This is the independent scientific impact assessment that has not been done. Deep concerns over existing regulatory processes have been expressed by Colin Hunt.
In addition we note that the scientific criticisms of an EIS are not published; there is no transparency. It is not apparent whether a human health impact assessment has been adequate. The Federal Government relies on the State process and does not provide additional independent scientific assessment.
What are the explanations for the lack of action? It would require ignorance of the World Heritage requirements, of the documented impacts of fossil fuel mining on water, of the possibility of cumulative impacts. Ominously it seems more likely that governments are going to have these developments come what may.
Some evidence for this is provided in two recent happenings. The booklet on CSG produced by the Queensland government and sent to households, contains scientific misinformation and could be seen as industry propaganda. Its 16 pages do not use the words 'health' or "illness".
The surveillance of groups concerned about fossil fuel mining requested by Resources and Energy Minister Martin Ferguson, at the behest of energy company lobbying, is some indication of tightened industry control over government on this issue.
How would an independent jury decide on this issue if presented with the science and economics? Would they favour royalties and the rescue of mismanaged budgets? Or sustainable tourism and agriculture? No doubt they would have a picture of West Virginia in mind and would want to bequeath a living Reef and a sustainable future to their children.
David Shearman is a medical doctor, E/Professor of Medicine (Adelaide University) and was previously on Faculty at Edinburgh and Yale Universities. See his full profile here.

Source: http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3776784.html

Saturday 14 January 2012

Thai rescues hundreds of smuggled dogs

Friday, January 13, 2012

The Thai navy has rescued hundreds of dogs destined for Vietnamese dinner tables.

The Thai navy has rescued hundreds of dogs destined for Vietnamese dinner tables in an operation to tackle border smuggling.
Following a tip-off, they found about 750 dogs packed into cages on a truck, which were about to be loaded onto a ferry on the Mekong river in Nakhon Phanom province.
One man has been arrested but several others ran away.
And official says dogs are the third-biggest smuggling problem along the river after timber and drugs.

Source: http://bigpondnews.com/articles/Environment/2012/01/13/Thai_rescues_hundreds_of_smuggled_dogs_706791.html

Fourteen steps to reduce global warming

Nicky Phillips, SCIENCE

January 13, 2012

REDUCING the amount of soot and methane released into the atmosphere could slow the world's warming by half a degree, save millions of lives, and dramatically improve global air quality, a study has found.
A group of international scientists claim 14 practical methods could reduce the pollutants, which not only contribute to global warming but also kill or debilitate millions of people each year, and increase global crop yields at the same time.
While much focus has been placed on reducing carbon dioxide emissions, methane – a powerful greenhouse gas – and black soot play a role in man-made global warming and are a significant source of air pollution.
By screening more than 400 tried-and-tested soot and methane pollution reduction processes being used on a small scale around the world, the team, led by NASA scientist Drew Shindell, came up with a list of approaches to improve air quality and reduce global warming that could be implemented on a regional and global scale.
Changes to coal mining and natural gas extraction combined with better landfill and livestock management would reduce global methane, while improvements to diesel engines, replacing wood and dung fires with modern stoves and banning agricultural burning would lower soot emissions.
To measure the impact these pollution reduction methods could have on global warming, the team added the controls to computer models using two future emissions scenarios – one based on business as usual, where carbon emissions were not constrained, and one based on a low-carbon world.
The results show global temperature could be decreased by half a degree by 2050.
And, in a low-carbon world, the soot and methane reductions would keep the world's thermostat below the danger level of 2 degrees warming.
Lower methane levels would avoid annual crop losses of between 30 million and 137 million tonnes in 2030, while soot reductions would prevent between 700,000 and 4.7 million premature deaths a year.
The cost benefits to reducing the pollutants were also significant, said the scientists, who published their findings in the journal Science.
"Methane emission reductions are valued at $700 to $5000 per metric tonne, which is well above the typical marginal abatement costs, [of about] $250," they said.
An atmospheric chemist at the CSIRO said that, scientifically, the research was "a very strong piece of work".
Melita Keywood, a principal research scientist at CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, said: "The measures are the sort of things that can be done now, and can have a short-term consequence which will really appeal to policymakers."

Europe’s Largest EV Fast-Charging Network Gets Green Light

By Gavin Hudson

Europe’s biggest network of fast-charge stations for electric cars will be built in Estonia by the end of 2012. The charging station model chosen for the project, the Terra 51 DC fast charger, can fill up an electric vehicle in 15-30 minutes. Estonia’s plan is to space these fast chargers a maximum of 50 kilometers apart along main roads to eliminate drivers’ concerns about the maximum range of their electric cars.

The growing number of electric vehicles is driving a global market opportunity for charging solutions, including sophisticated monitoring systems and software to support the electric grid. Earlier in the year, the Estonian government started its push for a better EV charging network, providing 507 Mitsubishi i-MiEV electric cars to social workers around the country. In addition, Estonia offers subsidies of up to 50 percent for private EV purchases.

“The Estonian government would like to ensure that driving an EV in Estonia is as comfortable and safe as driving any other car,” said Jarmo Tuisk, director of the Innovation and Technology Division at the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications, which offers more information about the Electric Mobility Programme for Estonia.

Investments in Estonia’s electric mobility are financed by the Green Investment Scheme, funded by the export credit agency KredEx as part of the national government’s plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Source: http://cleantechnica.com/2012/01/13/europe%E2%80%99s-largest-ev-fast-charging-network-gets-green-light/

Obama’s Commerce Secretary Wants Higher Energy Prices

by David Bier on January 13, 2012

In theory, environmentalism is about protecting the poor and middle class from the careless capitalists. In reality, it amounts to persistent attacks on all those groups—capitalists on down. The Clean Water Act is commonly used to deprive families of their property without due process. The Endangered Species Act is similarly abused to violate property rights with little benefit to wildlife. Cities fine residents millions for violating their mandatory recycling programs. Energy taxes, renewable energy mandates, ethanol tariffs, cap-and-trade schemes, energy rationing, and a host of other programs raise the price of electricity and fuel, which primarily hurts the poor.
In an opinion article in today’s Washington Examiner, Iain Murray and I document how the current Commerce Secretary has repeatedly advocated not just the policies that lead to higher energy prices, but the higher prices themselves.

From 1979-1982, Bryson chaired California’s Public Utilities Commission where he used fixed-rate contracts to drive up electricity prices for consumers, and Bryson isn’t shy about admitting the effect of his policies. “What California has done is knowingly incur higher cents per-kilowatt-hour costs,” he boasted. “They’re substantially higher than the U.S. average in order to invest in the kind of systems we have in California …. that’s been part of the regulatory environment for the investor owned utilities as long as I’ve been close to it.” ….
Today, Bryson is still working for higher prices. In a 2008 panel discussion with author Tom Friedman and Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, Bryson said, “Take global warming. It’s going to cost something to deal effectively with this. Energy prices are going to have to go up.” His comments had an effect on Breyer. “We better get away from oil. That’ll help us. I hear Tom Friedman and Bryson — they are giving five reasons why. …. They said the world ‘price’ — raise the price of oil. Raise the price of oil! Raise it through the roof, and then people will look for substitutes, so I cheer,” he said smiling…
“What I hear is,” Breyer continued, “’It’s just because you make these huge salaries in the judiciary. You haven’t thought about the average person.’ But I am thinking about the average person. Isn’t that the problem, that the average person is going to have to pay too, and quite a lot? You hear these ‘terrible’ words: tax. But remember Alfred Kahn? Kahn was told by Jimmy Carter don’t refer to the word recession, so he said, ‘OK, we’re about to have a banana.’ Fine, let’s put a banana on oil,” he said laughing.

These two liberal elites laugh as they conspire against the American consumer, the middle class, and the poor. Bryson is no stranger to the “hidden tax” idea—he’s actually an advocate of doing exactly that. While speaking at UC Berkley in 2010, Bryson spoke in favor of President Obama’s cap and trade energy scheme. He said that the bill has “the advantage politically of sort of hiding the fact that you have a tax, but that’s what you’re trying to do, trying to raise prices of carbon.”
This backdoor attack on the poor was fortunately defeated, but it’s not an anomalous case for environmental policy—it’s the norm. Other environmental policies—bans on cheap light bulbs, air emission regulations, water use regulations, and others—already inflate the prices of goods and services, which hurt the poor the most. It’s unfortunate that the people who claim to care the most about the poor are the least likely to see it.

Source:http://www.globalwarming.org/2012/01/13/obamas-commerce-secretary-wants-higher-energy-prices/

Saturday 7 January 2012

Canada: Climate Criminal

Blogpost by Rex Weyler - January 4, 2012 at 20:09 13 comments

At the dawn of the 21st century a new political regime has transformed Canada from global hero – once standing up for peace, people, and nature – to global criminal, plunging into war, eroding civil rights, and destroying environments.
What happened to Canada? Oil. And not just any oil, but the world’s dirtiest, most destructive oil. Canada’s betrayal at the Durban climate talks – abandoning its Kyoto Accord commitments – is the direct effect of becoming a petro-state.
By the late 20th century, oil companies knew that the world’s conventional oil fields were in decline and oil production would soon peak, which it did in 2005. These companies, including sovereign oil powers such as PetroChina, turned their attention to low-grade hydrocarbon deposits in shale gas, deep offshore fields, and Canada’s Alberta tar sands. Simultaneously, inside Canada, oil companies began promoting the political career of the son of an Alberta oil executive, the conservative ideologue Stephen Harper.
Shell Oil opened operations in the tar sands in 2003. In 2004, the same year Canada signed the Kyoto Accord, committing to reduce carbon emissions, oil companies began to form “think tanks” and astroturf groups in Canada to establish the oil agenda and promote Harper as Conservative Party leader. Two years later, in 2006, Harper’s Conservatives formed a minority government with 36% of the popular vote and launched Canada’s petro-state era, slashing environmental regulations, joining US Middle East wars, and launching a tar sands campaign, one of the most ecologically destructive industrial projects in human history.
In Durban, in December 2011, after mocking climate science and common decency, Canada’s Environment Minister, Peter Kent announced that Canada would abandon the Kyoto deal, abrogating a legally binding international agreement, which Canada had signed seven years earlier.
The Canadian government has become the policy arm and public relations voice of the international oil industry, discarding its reputation as an ethical country. Millions of Canadians have expressed outrage at the government that abandoned them and shamed Canada on the world stage. These voices are rarely heard in Canada’s corporate media. Meanwhile, Canadians witness an erosion of free press and civil rights within their own nation. They should not be surprised.
Life as an oil resource colony
“Oil and democracy do not generally mix,” explains Terry Karl in The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petro-States. Oil is a “resource
curse” for local populations, as experienced by Nigeria, Indonesia, Venezuela, Iran, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, and other nations. Oil rich nations attract oil industry patrons, who tend to support dictators. Petro-states often lose local economic sovereignty, suffer human rights atrocities, and see their environments devastated.
In the 1970s, the UK and Dutch economies experienced the oil curse as the North Sea oil and gas boom gave the illusion of prosperity while eroding sovereign economic capacity. Britain’s petro-state leader Margaret Thatcher used oil revenues to wage war, create banking empires, and subsidize elite society, while plundering the environment and leaving common citizens dispossessed of their own national heritage.
In 1977 The Economist magazine coined the term “Dutch disease” to describe the social and manufacturing decline caused by extreme resource exploitation. Oil revenues make a nation's currency appear stronger for a while, but this makes their exports more expensive and undermines manufacturing and local economy.
In 2011, the Montreal Macro Research Board warned that the “petrolization” of Canada had created “A severe case of Dutch Disease,” weakening Canadian business sovereignty, “hollowing out manufactured goods exporters” and making Canada “increasingly reliant” on oil and coal exports.
Like Thatcher's England Canada launched a scheme to privatise profits and socialize the costs of oil development. In the last decade, Canada has handed out over $14 billion in tax subsidies to oil, coal, and gas companies, while losing over 340,000 industrial jobs. A University of Ottawa study shows that oil colony economics is the largest factor in these job losses.
“Petro-states,” writes Terry Karl, become “unaccountable to the general population.” To impose the oil company agenda on their citizens, petro-regimes tend to centralize power, avoid transparency, and create a politics of lies and deceit.
Politics as war
Twice, in 2008 and 2009, Harper shut down the Canadian Parliament to avoid inquiries into his international deals, finances, and scandals including abusive treatment of Afghanistan detainees. Canada now ranks last among industrial nations in honouring freedom of information requests.
Harper’s perverse secrecy is typical of oil politics. “This is how petro states are made,” writes Andrew Nikiforuk in one of Canada’s best news sources, The Tyee; “with a quiet infection that eats away a nation's entire soul.”
In March 2011, as Harper ran Canada from secret cabinet meetings, 156 members of the government found Harper and his minority regime in contempt of Parliament for its refusal to share legislative information with other elected members.
In April 2011, Canadians learned that Harper’s liaison to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers had previously been convicted of defrauding two Canadian banks, a car dealer, and his own law clients, and had lobbied the Canadian government on behalf of his ex-hooker girlfriend.
The convicted felon, Bruce Carson, served as chief tar sands promoter, claiming “The economic and security value of oil sands expansion will likely outweigh the climate damage that oil sands create.” Carson also opposed “clean energy efforts in the U.S.” Canadian lobbyists undermined US low-carbon fuel standards by lobbying the US government.
In June 2011, on national television, another Harper henchman, Tom Flanagan, advocated assassinating WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange: “I think Assange should be assassinated,” he told Canada’s CBC. Flanagan has been one of the lead architects of Harper’s war on his own people. Before the 2011 election, in Canada’s Globe and Mail, Flanagan wrote, “An election is war by other means.” He compared an election campaign to Rome’s destruction of Carthage, whereby they “razed the city to the ground and sowed salt in the fields so nothing would grow there again.”
Alan Whitehorn of the Royal Military College of Canada wrote, “This suggests a paradigm not of civil rivalry between fellow citizens, but all-out extended war to destroy and obliterate the opponent. This kind of malevolent vision and hostile tone seems antithetical to the democratic spirit.” Harper’s government is now constructing barricades around the Parliament buildings, erecting more jails, and passing tougher criminal codes. The Canadian people, who once felt proud of their democratic institutions, now feel like the “enemy” of their own government.
Canada against the world
Outside Canada, the Harper regime has dismissed the United Nations and international opinion. Canadian government officials called the UN a “corrupt organization.” Former Canadian senior UN official Carolyn McAskie wrote in Canada and Multilateralism: Missing In Action that Canada, once respected as a UN leader, is now “spurning a whole system of organizations critical to world peace, security and development.”
Economic analyst Jim Willie wrote that Canada has “followed the Goldman Sachs path to the fields of corruption and fealty… Canada followed the Bush Doctrine of fascism, embracing the war footing … and tightening the security vice. Next they will become a Chinese commercial colony.”
When citizens around the world objected to the climate impact of the tar sands, Harper’s government attempted to rebrand the notorious carbon bomb as “ethical oil,” shamelessly ignoring the facts. The tar sands crimes against humanity and nature begin with obliterating boreal forests and soils, creating massive open-pit mines, and removing two tons of sand and soil for every barrel of oil. The thick bitumen is melted with natural gas, which requires one-third of the energy in tar sands oil to remove it. The project uses about 150-million gallons of water each day from the Athabasca river and aquifers, and the black waste turns boreal lakes into sludge pits, kills birds and other wild life, and contaminates the local ground water. Pollutants from tar sands smoke stacks have caused lung disease throughout the region and a 30% increase in cancers over the last decade. Mike Mercredi from the indigenous Fort Chipewyan Cree Nation calls the impact “slow industrial genocide.”
The crime continues with pipeline oil spills and oil tankers that threaten the entire coast of North America. Meanwhile, the tar sands project emits more that 45-million tons of greenhouse gases each year. NASA climatologist James Hansen has warned that if the tar sands are fully exploited, “it is game over for the climate.”
The French Foreign Ministry called Canada’s decision to renege on its Kyoto climate commitments, “bad news for the fight against climate change.”
Representative Ian Fry from the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu called Canada’s reversal “an act of sabotage ... a reckless and totally irresponsible act.”
The China news agency, Xinhua, called Canada’s decision “preposterous,” and China's Foreign Ministry urged Canada to “face up to its due responsibilities and duties... and take a positive, constructive attitude towards participating in international cooperation to respond to climate change.”
UN climate chief Christiana Figueres warned that Canada “has a legal obligation under the convention to reduce its emissions, and a moral obligation to itself and future generations to lead in the global effort.” UN Advisor on Water, Maude Barlow, called the tar sands “Canada’s Mordor.”
After Canada’s shameful showing in Durban, a Canadian businessman wrote to national newspaper, The Globe & Mail: “The pride of wearing the maple leaf on the lapel or backpack is gone. It's best hidden now. .. not one person in any country I have visited has been complimentary. Harper and his sheep will deny or ignore such facts while people like me lose business.”
Inside Canada, people are rising up, lead by The Wilderness Committee, Greenpeace, Council of Canadians, the Indigenous Environmental Network, the Yinka-Dene Alliance, and others. These groups need international support to halt the tar sands crime and help Canada recover its lost reputation.

Source: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/canada-climate-criminal/blog/38567/

Climate change castaways consider move to Australia

Ben Doherty in Male, Maldives

January 7, 2012

Threat ... much of the Maldives could be lost to climate change.

THE President of what could be the first country in the world lost to climate change has urged Australia to prepare for a mass wave of climate refugees seeking a new place to live.
The Maldivian President, Mohamed Nasheed, said his government was considering Australia as a possible new home if the tiny archipelago disappears beneath rising seas.
''It is increasingly becoming difficult to sustain the islands, in the natural manner that these islands have been,'' he told the Herald in an interview in Male, the Maldives capital.
''So … if everyone else around Australia is so poor and unable to fend for themselves and have a decent life, would that necessarily make life in Australia any better? Would that be the castle that you can defend?''
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts a sea-level rise of up to 59 centimetres over the next century, a level that would inundate most of the Maldives' inhabited atolls. Low-lying Pacific island nations, such as Kirabati and Tuvalu, would also face being flooded.
''If nations won't do good for themselves, they really must do good for everyone around, simply in your self-interest as well,'' Mr Nasheed said.
''Not necessarily because you're so nice, and so benevolent and good that you want to provide others with things.
''But I think it's really quite necessary for Australians and for every rich country to understand that this is unlike any other thing that's happened before.''
The country has established a sovereign wealth fund, drawn from its tourist revenue, to be used to buy land overseas and finance the relocation of the country's population of 350,000.
Australia, for its climate and abundance of space, along with Sri Lanka and India, for their proximity and cultural similarities, are the three countries the President has identified as possible destinations.
''They are the talked about countries, though we haven't necessarily had official conversations with these governments,'' Mr Nasheed said.
Eighty per cent of the Maldivian land mass - a string of more than 1200 islands, 200 inhabited, running 750 kilometres north-south in the Indian Ocean - is less than a metre above sea level. The highest point in the entire country is 2.4 metres above sea level, and already, 14 islands have had to be abandoned because of massive erosion by the sea.
Mr Nasheed said Maldivians want to stay but moving was an eventuality his government had to plan for. He said he did not want his people ''living in tents'' for years, or decades, as refugees.
The Maldives is not the first nation to look to Australia as a destination for its climate change refugees. A decade ago, the government of Tuvalu, north of New Zealand in the Pacific Ocean, requested immigration assistance for its population of 12,000 to move to Australia. The Australian government said its humanitarian obligations were to people who require ''assistance urgently''.
Mr Nasheed praised Australia's decision to adopt a carbon tax, describing it as a ''brave move forward''.
''That is the kind of progressive legislation we want to see from other countries,'' he said.
But other Maldivian government officials told the Herald Australia was ''destructive'' at the just-completed round of climate change talks in Durban.
Under the last-minute agreement reached in Durban, countries have agreed to begin work on a new global treaty to cut carbon emissions, to be signed in 2015, but not to come into force until 2020.

Maldives faces tides of change

Ben Doherty, Maldives

January 7, 2012

Mohamed Nasheed: 'If the West stopped their emissions and China, South Africa and Brazil carried on emitting ... we would still die. The Maldives would disappear.'

MOHAMED Nasheed carries the air of a man without much time. ''How did it go? Did we win?'' he asks an aide as he sweeps, almost at a run, down the marbled corridors of the presidential office. Told yes, the vote on the reappointment of his Minister of Islamic Affairs succeeded in his country's fractious parliament, he is pleased: ''That's good, our minister keeps his job. Now, what's next?''
The West Wing Bartlet-esque manner is no mere affection. Mohamed Nasheed is a man running out of time. As President of the Maldives, the string of paradisiacal Indian Ocean islands that could become the first nation ever lost to climate change, there are not too many minutes to waste for Nasheed.
''We've already lost it in so many senses,'' he tells The Saturday Age during a rare moment of peace in a meeting room. His country is losing three inhabited islands a year, swallowed by the ocean, he says. ''People are saying, 'we can't live there any more'. For us, it is difficult not to be worried about the climate.''

Government supporters rally against religious extremism in Male, Maldives. Photo: AP

Mohamed Nasheed is compact: 155 centimetres and leanly built, with square shoulders and a narrow waist. Maldivian humidity means jackets are usually eschewed, but the 44-year-old favours formality with silver cufflinks and ties with broad knots.
As he speaks, the clipped tones of his British public school education fight for space through the lyrical lilt of Maldivian English. As a man who lives with the consequences of climate change, and looks out his window at a rising sea every day, Nasheed brooks no argument from sceptics.
Even Male - the Maldivian capital and the most densely populated island in the world, with more than 110,000 people crammed onto 1.77 square kilometres - has needed tens of millions of dollars spent on a three-metre seawall to keep the ocean from it. ''The science here is very sorted. They say there is a window of opportunity of about seven or eight years.''

Mohamed Nasheed: 'For us, it is difficult not to be worried about the climate.' Photo: AFP

For some in this archipelago, that window is already closed. Fourteen of the country's 200 inhabited islands are already gone, massive coastal erosion making their seaside villages unliveable. A further 70 islands rely on desalinated drinking water because groundwater aquifers have been overcome by seawater.
About 80 per cent of the Maldivian landmass is less than a metre above sea level. The highest point in the entire archipelago is just 2.4 metres. A sea-level rise of 59 centimetres over the next century, the upper limit forecast by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, would make most of the Maldives uninhabitable.
The government is already saving money, squirrelled away from its $600 million tourism industry, to buy land in another country if theirs is lost to the ocean. Sri Lanka and India, for their proximity, and Australia, for its space, are the names that have been publicly considered.
But it's a last resort.
Maldivians whose families have spent countless generations living on 'their' island, can't bear the thought of moving to the next atoll, Nasheed says. They can't fathom abandoning the whole country.
''I said to one lady, 'Ma'am you have to move, we have to take you to another island. And at the end of this whole thing we might have to go elsewhere, all of us.' She told me, 'You can take the island people away but you can't take the sounds away, you can't take the butterflies, you can't take the colours'.
''You can migrate a people,'' Nasheed says, ''but you cannot take a culture, you cannot take a nation, you cannot take a history.''
If the Maldives moves, the Maldives is lost.
For a man whose country needs the world's co-operation to survive, Nasheed can be undiplomatic. French newspaper Le Monde recently quoted him as saying of the UN's Framework Convention on Climate Change: ''The current negotiation process is stupid, useless and endless.''
To The Saturday Age, he doesn't precisely own up to the incendiary language, but nor does he shy from its sentiment. ''I think this UN FCCC is silly … It's built in a form where if two countries agree and a third country comes around and says 'I don't', and then you dilute your positions to accommodate the third country. And countries take so long even to say 'I don't' … at the end of the day the process might actually come out with an agreement that means nothing.''
He wants the framework convention process - bureaucratic, leaden, and immobile without consensus - abandoned, but suggests only in replacement ''a more imaginative way of dealing with it''.
Nasheed believes developed countries, although the largest emitters, are not the only ones that must bear the burden of emissions cuts. The right of developing countries to lift their citizens' standard of living does not absolve them from their obligation to the planet.
''If the West stopped their emissions and China, South Africa and Brazil carried on emitting on the basis of business as usual, we would still die. The Maldives would disappear,'' he said during a recent European visit.
Nasheed appreciates the complexities of trying to engineer a global climate deal that has so far eluded 17 major climate change congresses over as many years. He understands his bargaining position, and the domestic pressures guiding the hands of other nations.
He realises, too, his is a nation without economic, military or diplomatic clout. Nasheed is not above a media stunt to draw attention to the plight of his country, or to the Alliance of Small Island States, of which he is totemic leader.
In 2009 Nasheed and his ministers dressed in scuba gear for the world's first ever underwater cabinet meeting. The same year he allowed a documentary crew to follow him through his negotiations at the Copenhagen climate talks. The film that emerged, The Island President, has won acclaim at film festivals around the globe.
The week The Saturday Age was in Male, Nasheed invited the country's media to watch him install a solar panel on the roof of the president's office building, part of his pledge to make the Maldives carbon neutral by 2020.
Nasheed leans forward in conversation, and speaks quickly, a man perpetually short of hours in his day. But there was a period, his recent history, when Nasheed had nothing but time.
Returning to the Maldives from Britain in the late '80s, Nasheed became an outspoken critic of the despotic, one-party rule of his predecessor, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom. Nasheed was jailed in 1991, the first of more than a dozen times he would be arrested and imprisoned. He was tortured by the Gayoom regime, and spent 18 months in solitary confinement in a metal shack barely 90 by 150 centimetres.
Released, he was elected to parliament in 2000, but jailed again on trumped-up charges of stealing ''unidentified government property''. His daughter Zaya was born during his second stint of solitary confinement.
Nasheed was banished to the tiny island of Angolhitheem, population 30, for six months, before being placed under house arrest. On his final release in 2003 he fled the Maldives for Sri Lanka, where he established the Maldivian Democratic Party in exile.
But he returned to his homeland, to a hero's welcome, in 2005 and in 2008, in the first ever multi-party elections held in the Maldives, beat the sitting president in a run-off vote, securing 54 per cent of the vote.
Remarkably, Nasheed has allowed the man who imprisoned him to stay in the Maldives, free from sanction or punishment.
''I have forgiven my jailers, the torturers. They were following orders … I ask people to follow my example and leave Gayoom to grow old here,'' he said upon taking office.
The elderly Maumoon remains on Male, more actively involved in the vituperative world of Maldives politics than the President's supporters would like.
Once prisoner, now President, Nasheed finds himself leading a country facing significant problems beyond the slowly rising seas. None are unique to a developing Muslim country or an island state, but they are especially acute in his tiny, diffuse homeland.
The Maldives has a massive youth bulge: 44 per cent of the country is under 14, and 62 per cent under 25, but jobs for any, especially beyond working on a tourist resort, are hard to find. In the atolls, a quarter of all young men are unemployed, half of all young women.
The country also has a serious drug problem. An epidemic of cheap heroin has swept through the archipelago, but taken root in Male in particular. The UN has estimated 40 per cent of the country's youth use hard drugs.
Nasheed, a Muslim as the Maldives constitution obliges all Maldivians to be, also faces a rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism. Wahhabist Islamic scholars, most schooled in madrassas in Pakistan, are radicalising Islam in the Maldives. Female circumcision is practised, and is reportedly on the increase, across the archipelago. There are calls for the return of amputation for crimes and for the banning of music and dancing. Women are flogged for having extra-marital sex.
Every effort to resist this gathering radicalisation is painted by Nasheed's political opponents as an attack on Islam. After Islamist protesters threatened on a website to ''slaughter anybody against Islam'', Nasheed was forced into confrontation: ''Kill me before you kill a fellow Maldivian.''
Financially, too, the Maldives' dependence on wealthy Western tourists has left it vulnerable to the vicissitudes of the global economy. The IMF this year withheld loans, declaring the Maldives at moderate risk of debt distress, and forced the country to introduce an income tax and a GST, as well as massively reduce government spending, largely through cutting the country's bloated public service.
Everywhere in the Maldives, the government's new eye for the frugal is apparent. The former Presidential Palace has become the Supreme Court (Nasheed lives in his own house), even the ornate leather thrones that were once in the meeting room where he meets with The Saturday Age have been replaced by bottom-of-the-line blue-cloth office chairs.
But climate change dominates the President's agenda. While the course of global climate action is largely in the hands of others, Mohamed Nasheed says he feels a sense of responsibility to do what he can to save his country.
''Any responsible Maldives government should be mindful of what might happen in the future, and save for that rainy day.''
His government talks of climate contingencies, of floating islands, desalination and of making a new homeland in other countries, but he believes the Maldives' only chance lies with holding back the tide. And time is running out.
''If we start seeing disasters one after the other, I think that would be … when countries would suddenly start acting. Now that might be very late in the day, but perhaps it is already very late … it's getting very, very late.''

Thursday 5 January 2012

China scathing of Canada's Kyoto withdrawal

Canada's historic decision to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol has provoked heavy criticism from China, with Beijing saying the move went against international efforts to combat climate change.Canada on Monday became the first country to formally withdraw from the protocol, saying the pact on cutting carbon emissions was preventing the world from effectively tackling climate change.
The move is "against the efforts of the international community and is regrettable," Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Liu Weimin told a regular media briefing.
"We hope Canada will face up to its responsibilities and obligations, honour its commitments and actively participate in relevant international cooperation against climate change."
China is the world's biggest emitter of carbon but has always insisted that as a developing country it should be exempt from binding obligations on emissions.
But Australia's Climate Change Minister, Greg Combet, has defended Canada's withdrawal, insisting the country is still committed to reducing pollution.
"The Canadian decision to withdraw from the protocol should not be used to suggest Canada does not intend to play its part in global efforts to tackle climate change," a spokesman said in a statement.
"In Durban, Canada made clear it supports a new international climate change agreement that includes commitments from all major emitters."

Video: Combet sheds light on climate talks (7.30)

The landmark Kyoto pact, reached in 1997, is the only global treaty that sets down targeted curbs in global emissions.
But those curbs apply only to rich countries, excluding the United States - which has refused to ratify the accord.
Beijing believes that developed nations, with their long history of industrialisation, should take responsibility for climate change and has called for more funding to help poorer nations cope with its impact on them.
But the lack of binding constraints over giants like China and India and Washington's refusal to join the protocol have gravely weakened efforts to address climate change, especially after the near-collapse of talks in Copenhagen in 2009.
Canada agreed under the Kyoto Protocol to reduce CO2 emissions to 6 per cent below 1990 levels by 2012, but its emissions of the gases blamed for damaging Earth's fragile climate system have instead increased sharply.
Participants in the UN climate conference in Durban, South Africa, last week reached an accord that for the first time will bring all major greenhouse-gas emitters under a single legal roof.
If approved as scheduled in 2015, the pact will be operational from 2020 and become the prime weapon in the fight against climate change.
Environmentalists have called it porous, but Mr Combet says the new accord is a very significant breakthrough.
"There's a lot of work to do, but it also means that the implementation of the Government's carbon price mechanism is very timely indeed, because by 2020 we'll be part of a legally binding deal to cut emissions, and we need to get ready for that," he said.

Source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-12-13/china-hits-out-at-canada27s-kyoto-withdrawal/3729740

2011 - a 'horrible year' for elephants

Friday, December 30, 2011 » 12:30pm

Large seizures of elephant tusks make this year the worst on record since ivory sales were banned in 1989, with recent estimates suggesting as many as 3000 elephants were killed by poachers, experts say.
'2011 has truly been a horrible year for elephants,' said Tom Milliken, elephant and rhino expert for the wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC.
In one case earlier this month, Malaysian authorities seized hundreds of African elephant tusks worth $1.3 million that were being shipped to Cambodia. The ivory was hidden in containers of Kenyan handicrafts.
'In 23 years of compiling ivory seizure data ... this is the worst year ever for large ivory seizures,' said Milliken.
Most cases involve ivory being smuggled from Africa into Asia, where growing wealth has fed the desire for ivory ornaments and for rhino horn that is used in traditional medicine, though scientists have proved it has no medicinal value.
TRAFFIC said Asian crime syndicates are increasingly involved in poaching and the illegal ivory trade across Africa, a trend that coincides with growing Asian investment on the continent.
'The escalation in ivory trade and elephant and rhino killing is being driven by the Asian syndicates that are now firmly enmeshed within African societies,' Milliken said in a telephone interview from his base in Zimbabwe on Thursday.
'There are more Asians than ever before in the history of the continent, and this is one of the repercussions.'
Some of the seized tusks came from old stockpiles, the elephants having been killed years ago.
But the International Fund for Animal Welfare said recent estimates suggest more than 3000 elephants have been killed for their ivory in the past year alone.
'Reports from Central Africa are particularly alarming and suggest that if current levels of poaching are sustained, some countries, such as Chad, could potentially lose their elephant populations in the very near future,' said Jason Bell, director of the elephant program for the fund based in Yarmouth Port, Massachusetts.
He said poaching had also reached 'alarming levels' in Congo, northern Kenya, southern Tanzania and northern Mozambique.
Milliken thinks criminals may have the upper hand in the war to save rare and endangered animals.
'As most large-scale ivory seizures fail to result in any arrests, I fear the criminals are winning,' Milliken said.
In Tanzania's Selous Game Reserve alone, some 50 elephants a month are being killed and their tusks hacked off, according to the Washington-based Environmental Investigation Agency.
With shipments so large, criminals have taken to shipping them by sea instead of by air, falsifying documents with the help of corrupt officials, monitors said.
In another sign of corruption, Milliken said some of the seized ivory has been identified as coming from government-owned stockpiles - made up of both confiscated tusks and those from dead elephants.
Rhinos also have suffered: A record 443 rhino were killed this year in South Africa, according to National Geographic News Watch.
That surpassed last year's figure of 333 dead rhino, despite the government deploying soldiers to protect the endangered animals this year in its flagship Kruger National Park.
National Geographic reported this week that 244 of the rhino killed this year were poached in Kruger, and that figure is expected to rise before the end of the month.
South Africa is home to 90 per cent of the rhinos left on the continent, and Kruger has more than 10,000 white rhinos and about 500 black rhinos.
Africa's elephant population was estimated at between 5 million and 10 million before European hunters came to the continent with colonisation. Massive poaching for the ivory trade in the 1980s halved the remaining number of African elephants to about 600,000.
Following the 1989 ban on ivory trade and concerted international efforts to protect the animals, elephant herds in east and southern Africa were thriving before the new threat arrived from Asia.
A report from Kenya's Amboseli National Park highlighted the dangers. There had been almost no poaching for 30 years in the park, which lies in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro, until a Chinese company was awarded the contract to build a highway nearby two years ago.
Amboseli has lost at least four of its 'big tuskers' since then.

Source: http://bigpondnews.com/articles/Environment/2011/12/30/2011_-_a_horrible_year_for_elephants_701990.html

Death of Splits the roo upsets locals

Wednesday, January 04, 2012 » 02:08pm

The death of furry friend, Splits the kangaroo, has devastated the southeast Queensland community.

George and Carmel Watson are devastated their mate Splits the kangaroo will no longer be dropping by for afternoon tea.
Announcing her presence with a knock on the back door, Splits would regularly visit the Watsons looking for her favourite treat - a slice of bread.
Splits and more than 20 kangaroos were found dead by a group of horse riders on a property near Booral, in southeast Queensland last month.
No charges have been laid over the killing but a police officer has been questioned.
The Watsons told AAP that Splits was a popular character in the region and had been visiting people for five years.
'She was quite happy around people,' Ms Watson said.
'She used to let us pat the little joey in her pouch,' Mr Watson added.
Mrs Watson said Splits was not the first kangaroo to come knocking.
'There was another one, Maxi, many many years ago,' she said.
'Splits could have been a joey from the original quiet one (Maxi).'
Kangaroos are a protected species and it is an offence to shoot one without a permit, which can be granted if there is damage being done by a kangaroo population.
But Mr Watson said the kangaroos weren't posing any problems to the community.
'There's that much feed here, the roos weren't taking it off the cattle,' he said.
A police officer is one of a number of people questioned over the shooting, which involved the point-blank slaughter of several joeys.
Queensland Police say the police officer concerned told investigators he had 'the long-term permission from an owner of the property to be on the property and use firearms there'.
Three joeys rescued from the scene were taken to wildlife refuges but all have since died.
If found guilty, the culprit could face more than $200,000 in fines for killing a protected species.

Source: http://bigpondnews.com/articles/Environment/2012/01/04/Death_of_Splits_the_roo_upsets_locals_703625.html

Monday 2 January 2012

Siberia Melting and releasing Methane Gas

Climate Change – Ten Easy Ways To Make A Difference

We can all make a difference for the better when it comes to our treatment of the environment. Ideally we should stop using fossil fuel. Not only would that prevent emissions but it would cut down our consumption of things quite drastically. The global warming crisis would then end in about thirty years and global temperatures would be at safe levels. That would be good but…
if I urged that we give up fossil fuel (and give up wood burning while we are being environmentally friendly) no one would listen. It is behaviour that runs counter intuitive to our expectations. Today every nation, every politician, every news media pundit is talking about economic growth as a panacea to our economic woes. Stop using fossil fuel and you would reverse economic growth, the mantra goes. Telling people that we should reverse economic growth in order to provide somewhere to live for our descendants is a tale to which no one will listen, whether the tale is true or not.
So if we cannot solve the problem of global warming quickly because we do not want to solve that problem and regard other problems as more pressing, then I must suggest some ways to make a difference which do not affect lifestyles, do not threatened to worry people with fears of economic Armageddon. The easy ways to make a difference will not reverse global warming but would slow it down.
I am not expressing these as New Year’s resolutions; they are more important that that.
1. Drive moderately, avoiding heavy braking and acceleration
2. Lower the thermostat in your home by three or four degrees. You will soon get used to it and feel more comfortable when you do. If you are very old and need to keep warm for medical reasons ignore this advice.
3. Plant a tree a month. Plant a tree that is native to where you live. If you have nowhere to plant a tree, subscribe to a tree planting scheme that plants local trees.
4. Buy a washing line and some wooden pegs. Stop using the tumble dryer. Drying your clothes outside is free and you will soon recover the cost of the washing line and pegs.
5. I know it is a pain, but recycle assiduously.
6. Instead of throwing them in the bin, give your old serviceable stuff to charity shops or Goodwill.
7. Walk around town for short journeys. It is often quicker. If you can, use the cycle schemes that are in many cities.
8. Buy locally produced food wherever you can. As a rule of thumb, the closer it was produced to the shop in which you bought it, the fewer emissions have been created.
9. Buy less stuff. When you do buy stuff buy quality which will last instead of cheap stuff that will soon fall apart.
10. Turn off the lights when you walk out of a room.
Now, these things will not “save the planet” but they do not involve any sacrifice and will make a difference and help juts a little in the fight against climate change..

Source: http://robertkyriakides.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/climate-change-ten-easy-ways-to-make-a-difference/

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