Trees please
Arbor Month have started and the focus are yet again on the importance of trees. Trees are a key tool in the fight against global warming in the world. The national theme for Arbor Month 2010 is “Plant for the plant – grow green “. This theme wants to bring the following greening messages across to the nation :
Source: Simply Green
The provincial government plans to have 15 percent of all electricity used in the Western Cape generated from renewable energy sources – like wind, wave and solar – by 2014.
It also aims to reduce electricity use in selected schools and hospitals by between 5 and 10 percent, and to reduce the provincial product-to-carbon emission ratio by 10 percent, also by this date, as part of its climate-change mitigation efforts.
Source: IOL
Thousands of people participating in Earth Hour will switch of their lights.
Tomorrow, at 8.30pm, thousands of people across the UK and maybe a billion across the world will take part in Earth Hour.
It’ll look impressive, no doubt. The big switch-off will make the news. But so what? We know that just one hour, even on this global scale, won’t in itself save energy or reduce emissions in any significant way. This is a giant photo opportunity – eye-catching and symbolic, yes – but how can it really make a difference? More importantly, why would a science-based organisation like WWF believe this is worth the effort?
I think there are many reasons, but there are three worth focusing on.
Firstly, climate change is a threat truly global in its nature. It demands global attention, commitment and action. In December last year, as the climate talks in Copenhagen came to a stuttering finish, many in the UK felt disappointed and disillusioned. But talking to my colleagues working in areas of the world already feeling the effects of climate change, emotions ran much higher. Anger and disbelief best describes what nations like the Maldives, Bangladesh and Tanzania felt on seeing the failure of world leaders to take collective responsibility. They are seeing the effects of climate change now. It is, for countries in their position, no theory for debate or distant possibility.
As I write, more than 125 countries have confirmed their participation in Earth Hour, almost 40 more than in 2009, including 56 national capitals and eight of the 10 most populated metropolises on the planet. “Earth Hour” has appeared more than 30m times online in the past 24 hours and is currently one of the top 10 trending topics on Twitter. While the UK and the US (two major global emitters) may have seen an increase in sceptical noise on climate change in recent months, I feel confident that globally, this is no waning movement.
Secondly, politicians here in the UK need a mandate to act. Unlike elsewhere in the world, our main political parties all understand the threat of climate change and say that they are committed, albeit with different policies and approaches, to dealing with the problem. However, Copenhagen largely failed and leaders need us, the voters, to keep up a demand for action.
This close to a general election, there’s no better time to make a big, bold, collective statement that as a public, we expect leadership from our next government, whatever its hue. Schools, cathedrals, large companies, small businesses, pubs, clubs, councils all add up to a pretty comprehensive slice of our population and just this week, under pressure from Earth Hour participants, supporters and many committed MPs, the Palace of Westminster and 10 Downing Street joined the Senedd in Cardiff and the Scottish parliament in Holyrood and signed up to switch off. In the US, 31 state governors are supporting Earth Hour. The people who matter do notice.
Lastly, Earth Hour is for me a brilliant analogy for how we can get to a solution. Climate change will demand big, global ambition from world leaders – the “landmarks” of our political landscape. Just as lights go off at Christ the Redeemer, the Empire State Building and the Forbidden City, we need Presidents Lula da Silva, Obama and Hu Jintao and many others to work together in order to get a binding commitment to reduce emissions.
A low-carbon future will demand small changes from all of us at home, like the families taking part in Earth Hour, perhaps eating their dinner by candlelight. Better insulation, more efficient heating, using public transport and the products we choose to consume can all have impact on the energy we use and reduce our personal impact on our environment.
Earth Hour is not about a world without light, power and the great human achievements that keep us warm and safe. It is absolutely a celebration of their positive role; we want a bright future in which the lights stay on, drawing on forms of energy and innovative technologies that have a lesser impact on people and nature around the world. As the 10:10 campaign has shown alongside Earth Hour, collective action can have an impact.
We know that a single hour, once a year is not enough. But also we know that there is no greater, global call to action available at the flick of a switch. We firmly believe Earth hour is worth it.
Source: Guardian
What will you do by candle-light during Earth Hour?
This Saturday night, hundreds of millions of people will turn their lights off in a symbolic gesture for WWF’s Earth Hour. Setting aside the question of why they’re at home on Saturday night, I wonder if those millions have actually considered what they’re going to do while the lights off, aside from firing up another light in the shape of the telly or another screen?
Some participants, like Malcolm Handoll in Orkney, clearly have commendable ideas already, such as “games, candlelit dinners, chatting with friends around a fire, a walk in the park”. But as a public service for anyone who’s signed up without a plan, here are some suggestions on things to do in the dark.
One bright suggestion from the environmentguardian.co.uk team is making shadow puppets on the wall with a torch. I recommend a cracking book I received at Christmas on this art, Hand shadows to be thrown upon a wall, a Ronseal slither of a title written by a chap called Henry Bursill in 1860 to entertain his kids. Hours of fun – or ten minutes, at least.
Other ideas from Guardian towers included looking at the stars – hopefully easier with Earth Hour’s temporary drop in light pollution – meditating, going for a run, doing press-ups or, like Malcolm, having a candlelit dinner. My own suggestions are heading to the high ground in a city to watch the lights go out in a kind of inverse Fireworks night, getting a boardgame out (Scrabble on a table still beats the iPhone version), or going to bed early for sleep and sex (Care2 suggests tantric, but is an hour really long enough for that?).
You could also be very retro and go in for a bout of storytelling, as some people recall doing during the 1970′s power cuts, or take WWF up on its idea of a candlelit quiz on animals, green living and other topics. Elsewhere on the web, Suitably Desparing’s blogger is weighing up listening to a wind-up radio against seeing Edinburgh’s landmarks, while Vancouver’s magazine Granville has a good roundup of ideas from last year, including the obvious one I’ve missed so far – making music.
That’s the limit of my imagination, social circle and web trawling; what are your, probably better, ideas for things to do in the dark this weekend?
Source: Guardian
$100 Billion Opportunity
Here’s an opportunity to wisely spend some of the $100 billion that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promised at Copenhagen to cut the greenhouse gases of developing nations by aiding in the development of renewable energy infrastructure to by-pass fossil fuel dependence. (Previous story.)
Apparently one in four Chinese cities and seven out of 10 counties are without sewage-treatment plants, according to the People’s Daily. While there are many ways to treat sewage or municipal waste; one of the newest is the use of municipal solid waste to make renewable energy.
Converting waste to energy is done in several ways. One is making bio-gas from sewage (human or animal) to run gas-turbine driven electric power plants.
Another is to create a biofuel, such as that used by nearly every vehicle in Sweden’s fifth largest city Linköping. Greenhouse gas emissions there were reduced as much as 90% with the technology. It helped Sweden achieve a 9% below-Kyoto emissions cut with simultaneous 44% economic growth.
This presents an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone; by building the infrastructure in the developing world that uses municipal solid waste to make renewable energy. This would cut the greatest source of the rise expected in greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel use in the next decades: from fast-developing nations like India and China.
The developed world evolved water treatment technologies well before our knowledge of climate change drove us to invent uses for municipal solid waste as a source of renewable energy with no greenhouse gas emissions.
But now, nations that do not already have any sewage treatment infrastructure in place are well placed to leapfrog the developed world, which is only just starting to tap into waste-to-energy from municipal solid waste, or sewage.
For all kinds of municipal waste-to-energy companies, this presents a huge opportunity. The developed world has pledged $100 billion to develop renewable energy in the developing world. As I noted here, that money is not charity – as it is incorrectly framed in most media reports (previous story), but it will go to the renewable energy companies from those nations that get there first. This waste-to-energy plant pictured is from a New Zealand company that has apparently already built numerous large facilities throughout Asia.
Source: Simplygreen
Al Gore
I am a fan of Al Gore. I do not doubt global warming. But the wrong arguments have been made on renewables all along. The current Climate Bill is, in fact, a jobs bill.
Whatever you think of climate change the fact is we’re subsidizing a market sector in hydrocarbons that is not growing, and not producing jobs.
Our Department of Energy still pays for oil and gas research. Corporate taxes are kept low in states with heavy concentrations of hydrocarbons. Energy companies still enjoy accelerated depreciation.
This despite decades of enormous profit, and increased efficiencies which mean that oil, gas and coal don’t really create many jobs. And the cost of using hydrocarbons, pollution and habitat damage, are never accounted for at all.
In contrast, our economic rivals are passing all sorts of incentives for renewable development. China now leads in solar cell production. Germans have used market incentives to construct nearly 24,000 megawatts of wind power.
Energy for the Sun, from the wind, and from the tides is a growth industry. It increases the self-sufficiency of any country that uses these resources. It creates thousands of new jobs. So Germany’s economy is recovering and China’s is back to rocketing along, while we deal with unemployment over 10%.
Source: Smart Planet
Powerful ideas, practical actions
Rebecca Adamson offers Native American views on scarcity, Wall Street, and how to thrive in hard times.
Indigenous peoples have known hard times. There are signs of drought, crop failure, and forced migration over the millennia, and of course these peoples survived centuries of colonialism. When we were looking for some wisdom on building a new economy, I immediately thought of Rebecca Adamson. Native peoples have developed societies that function within ecological limits and counter the tendency of societies to polarize between rich and poor, powerful and excluded. Adamson, a Cherokee, is founder of First Nations Development Institute and First Peoples Worldwide. She works globally with grassroots tribal communities, sits on the boards of the Corporation for Enterprise Development and the Calvert Social Investment Fund, and is an advisor to the United Nations on rural development.
Sarah: When you look ahead at the coming months, perhaps years, of economic downturn, what do you see coming, and what does indigenous experience teach us about what we should be doing?
Rebecca: I’ve gotta say, it’s about time the bubbles burst. I don’t want to see anybody without a home or a job, but Wall Street had to come to reality sooner or later. I just wish they were taking the brunt of it instead of Main Street.
President Obama assumes that through more spending we can stimulate the financial sector. But why would we want to save something that had no productivity for human life? Until we move away from that paradigm, I don’t hold out too much optimism for the next months, or the next years, or even the next seven generations.
What indigenous experience tells us is that an economy is about fairness and equity. It should be for the well-being of your people and the sacredness of creation. You take care of your place because it provides for you. And the place provides for you because you’re protecting it. We have to begin to rethink our economic system so that it’s accountable for our place.
Sarah: So what is an economy for?
Rebecca: The economy used to be about livelihoods and the provision of a household, but we’ve lost that purpose. We have created an economic system with a goal of material wealth, rather than human development.
We need an economy that provides for people. It has to be fundamentally, radically brought back into control and harnessed for the well-being of society. Not for making money, but for making dignified livelihoods and for the betterment of community.
Sarah: It seems to me that there’s a tendency in any society for wealth to concentrate—if you have a little bit more than someone else, you can use that little bit of additional power to get even more than others. How do indigenous societies counter that?
Rebecca: An indigenous system is based on prosperity, creation, kinship, and a sense of enough-ness. It is designed for sharing. Potlatches, give-aways—these involve deliberately accumulating wealth as a person or as a family or as a clan for the sole purpose of giving it away. The potlatch or the give-away takes place at very specific times of life—birth, naming ceremonies, puberty. Often, if you receive a gift during a potlatch, you are then obligated, at some point in the future, to give a gift. That puts in motion a continual, ongoing requirement for redistribution.
Sarah: So someone with very high status can’t accumulate too much wealth?
Rebecca: You can’t get high status unless you give gifts. Here’s an example. We just got back from a visit with the James Bay Cree. I learned there that the very first ceremony that a baby undertakes is called a walk-away ceremony. James Bay is very cold and so the baby’s first days of life are spent inside the lodge.
Once the baby takes his first steps, they prepare for a walk-away ceremony. A hide is tanned, and an elaborate outfit is made for the baby to wear as he takes his first steps away from the lodge. The baby’s family and the clan gather outside. The baby walks away from the lodge as far as he can. Then everybody calls the baby back in. The child is carrying a bundle filled with food. He comes back into the circle of the family and the clan, and then goes from person to person sharing the food. By doing this, a child has learned to both become his own person and to come back to share.
Source: The New Green Economy
Antarctic Peninsula Region south of the South Orkney Islands
Fishing and refuse disposal are to be banned in the 1st high seas Marine Protected Area (MPA) in the Southern Ocean, an area of the ocean that contains more species than the Galapagos Islands.
This will allow scientists to monitor the effects of climate change in this region. This is only the first of possibly twelve such areas.
This new MPA is in the Antarctic Peninsula Region south of the South Orkney Islands and was approved by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) at its recent meeting. It is slightly larger than Portugal, about 94,000 square km, and is the result of 4 years of development work. The ban starts in May 2010.
Source: Simply Green