Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), the international wing of the Japan Finance Corporation (JFC), a policy-based financing institution, is planning to pick up stake in Indian infrastructure projectsBesides providing export finance to Indian companies to source goods and services from Japan, JBIC is engaged in a phased programme for equity investments in infrastructure and environment projects.
There is a proposal for investment in an Indian power project, said Hiromichi Miyamato, representative (India, Nepal, Sri Lanka & Bhutan) on the sidelines of a seminar on emerging markets here On Thursday.
He, however, did not elaborate on the investment size and the name of the company behind the project. For any project to become eligible for investment from JBIC, a Japanese company must put in money (equity) into the project.
The Indian government has estimated that it would require $500 billion for infrastructure projects across various segments such as power, telecom, roads until 2012.
So far, JBIC has made equity investments in China Eco fund and a power project in Singapore, a company official said.
JBIC’s current exposure to India is in the form of loans and guarantees. The value of its outstanding loan portfolio was $1.1 billion, while it has extended guarantees of about $380 million, he said.
Meanwhile, senior officials from state-owned National Thermal Power Generation company, met Hiroshi Watanabe, president and chief executive of JBIC, for semi-commercial loan for capital expenditure under Leading Investment to Future Environment (LIFE).
The Japanese funding agency has set a target of lending $5 billion in two years under LIFE for projects involving clean power generation, energy efficiency improvement, water and urban transportation.
On the level of scope for investment flow from Japan, the JBIC official said interest has picked up from April. Investments had slowed down in the past six months as the global financial crisis intensified after Lehman Brothers’ collapse in September 2008.
JBIC is providing guarantees for Samurai Bonds, a yen-denominated bond issued by a non-Japanese firm or institution in order to encourage the use of Asian funds for regional needs, tap global markets and vitalise Samurai bond markets.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Poll Finds Support for Action on Global Warming
With major legislation pending in the House, most Americans support government action on climate change – but with an eye on how it works and what it costs
In principle, support is there: Three-quarters in this ABC News/Washington Post poll favor government regulation of greenhouse gases, and 62 percent feel that way even if it raises prices. But fewer support a so-called "cap-and-trade" system – central to current efforts – especially as cost impacts rise.
Click here for PDF with charts and questionnaire.
Overall, 52 percent support cap and trade, down 7 points from a year ago, led by a 14-point drop among political independents, the crucial center of political consensus. Forty-six percent of independents now favor cap and trade, on par with Republicans.
Asked another way, support's at 56 percent overall if cap and trade significantly lowered greenhouse gases while raising electric bills by $10 a month. But at $25 a month, it drops to 44 percent, with 54 percent opposed. Specifically among independents, 58 percent favor cap and trade at $10 – but just 43 percent at $25.
A cap and trade system would have the government issue permits limiting the amount of greenhouse gases companies could emit; they could buy and sell these permits depending on their emission needs. A vote on the measure could come as early as Friday.
The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the proposed bill would cost an average of $175 annually per household (about $15 a month); the Environmental Protection Agency puts it at $80-$111 per year (averaging $8 monthly). But congressional Republicans have warned of $3,100 in annual price increases.
President Obama, who urged passage of the legislation at a news conference Tuesday, holds majority approval on handling global warming, 54 percent. But that's down from 61 percent in April, amid some slippage for the president on several issues.
The change, again, occurred chiefly among independents, from 62 percent approval for Obama on global warming in late April to 52 percent now
Likely cognizant of cost concerns, Obama focused Tuesday not on cap and trade but rather on what he said would be cost savings and other gains produced by the legislation, saying it would "spur new energy savings," "reduce our dependence on foreign oil" and reduce pollution, all positive attributes in public opinion.
G8 – Obama is scheduled to take the issue to the international stage at a meeting of world leaders on climate change to be held next month in Italy immediately after the G8 economic summit there. On this, too, there's persuasion ahead: While most Americans support U.S. action, even if unilateral, this also has declined in the past year.
In a July 2008 poll, 68 percent said the United States should take action on global warming, regardless of whether other industrial countries, such as China and India, take similar steps. Today, 59 percent still hold that view – a majority, but less of one. (The decline was led by a 13-point drop in this view among Democrats, 12 points among women.)
Of the rest, 20 percent say the United States should act only if other countries do as well; 18 percent say it should not act at all.
GROUPS – There is strong partisanship on all these measures; for example, 69 percent of Democrats say the United States should act unilaterally, if necessary, on global warming; that drops to 59 percent of independents and 45 percent of Republicans.
Among other groups, there's a notable difference by age: Seniors are 10 points less apt than adults under 65 to favor government regulation of greenhouse gases overall; 10 points less apt to support it if it raises prices; and again 10 points less apt to back cap and trade. Support for cap and trade peaks, at 65 percent, of under-30s.
Costs, meanwhile, are particularly important to less well-off Americans. Among those making less than $50,000 a year, support for regulating greenhouse gas emissions drops by 17 points (from 75 percent to a still-majority 58 percent) if it raises prices; support if it costs $10 a month is 49 percent; and at $25, just 35 percent.
METHODOLOGY -- This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by telephone June 18-21, 2009, among a random national sample of 1,001 adults, including landline and cell-phone-only respondents. Results for the full sample have a 3.5-point error margin; click here for a detailed description of sampling error. Sampling, data collection and tabulation by TNS of Horsham, Pa.
In principle, support is there: Three-quarters in this ABC News/Washington Post poll favor government regulation of greenhouse gases, and 62 percent feel that way even if it raises prices. But fewer support a so-called "cap-and-trade" system – central to current efforts – especially as cost impacts rise.
Click here for PDF with charts and questionnaire.
Overall, 52 percent support cap and trade, down 7 points from a year ago, led by a 14-point drop among political independents, the crucial center of political consensus. Forty-six percent of independents now favor cap and trade, on par with Republicans.
Asked another way, support's at 56 percent overall if cap and trade significantly lowered greenhouse gases while raising electric bills by $10 a month. But at $25 a month, it drops to 44 percent, with 54 percent opposed. Specifically among independents, 58 percent favor cap and trade at $10 – but just 43 percent at $25.
A cap and trade system would have the government issue permits limiting the amount of greenhouse gases companies could emit; they could buy and sell these permits depending on their emission needs. A vote on the measure could come as early as Friday.
The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the proposed bill would cost an average of $175 annually per household (about $15 a month); the Environmental Protection Agency puts it at $80-$111 per year (averaging $8 monthly). But congressional Republicans have warned of $3,100 in annual price increases.
President Obama, who urged passage of the legislation at a news conference Tuesday, holds majority approval on handling global warming, 54 percent. But that's down from 61 percent in April, amid some slippage for the president on several issues.
The change, again, occurred chiefly among independents, from 62 percent approval for Obama on global warming in late April to 52 percent now
Likely cognizant of cost concerns, Obama focused Tuesday not on cap and trade but rather on what he said would be cost savings and other gains produced by the legislation, saying it would "spur new energy savings," "reduce our dependence on foreign oil" and reduce pollution, all positive attributes in public opinion.
G8 – Obama is scheduled to take the issue to the international stage at a meeting of world leaders on climate change to be held next month in Italy immediately after the G8 economic summit there. On this, too, there's persuasion ahead: While most Americans support U.S. action, even if unilateral, this also has declined in the past year.
In a July 2008 poll, 68 percent said the United States should take action on global warming, regardless of whether other industrial countries, such as China and India, take similar steps. Today, 59 percent still hold that view – a majority, but less of one. (The decline was led by a 13-point drop in this view among Democrats, 12 points among women.)
Of the rest, 20 percent say the United States should act only if other countries do as well; 18 percent say it should not act at all.
GROUPS – There is strong partisanship on all these measures; for example, 69 percent of Democrats say the United States should act unilaterally, if necessary, on global warming; that drops to 59 percent of independents and 45 percent of Republicans.
Among other groups, there's a notable difference by age: Seniors are 10 points less apt than adults under 65 to favor government regulation of greenhouse gases overall; 10 points less apt to support it if it raises prices; and again 10 points less apt to back cap and trade. Support for cap and trade peaks, at 65 percent, of under-30s.
Costs, meanwhile, are particularly important to less well-off Americans. Among those making less than $50,000 a year, support for regulating greenhouse gas emissions drops by 17 points (from 75 percent to a still-majority 58 percent) if it raises prices; support if it costs $10 a month is 49 percent; and at $25, just 35 percent.
METHODOLOGY -- This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by telephone June 18-21, 2009, among a random national sample of 1,001 adults, including landline and cell-phone-only respondents. Results for the full sample have a 3.5-point error margin; click here for a detailed description of sampling error. Sampling, data collection and tabulation by TNS of Horsham, Pa.
Putting a financial spin on global warming
Promoting responses to global warming as an economic opportunity — rather than as a pollution problem that needs to be solved through regulation — has long been championed by a tiny think tank in Oakland, California.
Climate change is a potential environmental disaster — but it's also potentially an economic opportunity. President Obama spoke of it in economic terms Tuesday when he urged the House of Representatives to pass legislation that wo"The nation that leads in the creation of a clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the 21st century global economy," he said. "That is what this legislation seeks to achieve. It is a bill that will open the door to a better future for this nation. And that is why I urge members of Congress to come together and pass it."
Promoting responses to global warming as an economic opportunity — rather than as a pollution problem that needs to be solved through regulation — has long been championed by a tiny think tank in Oakland, Calif.
The Breakthrough Institute
The Breakthrough Institute doesn't look like much — just a few offices in a shared suite in downtown Oakland.
There are only five people on staff. On a recent day, they were outnumbered by an incoming crop of seven freshly minted college graduates, who showed up for their summer internships.
Michael Shellenberger, 37, and Ted Nordhaus, 43, founded the Breakthrough Institute in 2002.
Shellenberger tells the interns that environmental groups — like the ones he used to work for — are going about it all wrong. By urging Congress to cast carbon dioxide as a pollutant that needs to be controlled, he says, they will constantly swim against the tide of public opinion.
"We're stuck in this kind of poor paradigm for dealing with climate change, this pollution paradigm," he says, "not because environmentalists are failures, but actually because they were so successful. The Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the cap and trade on acid rain — these things worked really well."
Pushing Innovation, Not Regulation
But reducing carbon dioxide is a different story. It's not just a nuisance byproduct, like the sulfur in coal that contributes to acid rain. Carbon dioxide is unavoidable when we burn coal, oil and natural gas. So getting rid of it means either capturing it at great expense, or regulating fossil fuels into oblivion.
In theory, regulation will force companies to develop cleaner alternatives as the price of carbon pollution grows. But Shellenberger says that'll never work.
"When was the last time human beings modernized our energy sources by making older power sources more expensive?" he asks the interns. "And, of course, by now you probably know that the answer is never."
Personal computers didn't take off because there was a tax on typewriters, he says. And the Internet didn't sprout up because the government made telegraphs more expensive.
"So is there a better way to do this? Well, we think that there is. It's very simple: It's that we need to make clean energy cheap worldwide."
China will never stop burning its massive reserves of coal unless there's something cheap to replace them, he argues. And the United States isn't likely to stop burning coal, either, he says.
Shellenberger and Nordhaus argue that the best way to develop those clean technologies is to increase federal energy research tenfold, and to create a project akin to the Apollo mission to the moon. But a massive increase in federal energy research spending is not a popular idea at the moment.
"There's this idea that the government shouldn't be involved in technology, the government shouldn't be picking winners and losers," Shellenberger says. "Which is sort of a funny thing to say. It's kind of like, well, why not? And when hasn't the United States government been involved in picking technology winners and losers?"
He points to the computer industry as just one example of something that came into being because of deliberate federal investments.
Tapping Into Americans' Love Of Invention
Nordhaus and Shellenberger weren't always technology advocates. They met as young adults, trying to save redwood trees on the California coast. Working as pollsters and strategists, they spent a lot of time figuring out what motivates people. That led them to rethink how to frame global warming as an issue.
"The things that will drive or not drive action have nothing to do with how well you understand how fast the polar ice caps are melting," Nordhaus says.
A sense of doom or shame only motivates a small segment of the public — and puts off the rest, he says. Instead, their research shows that people are motivated when the issue is presented as an opportunity to revolutionize energy technology.
"In fact, not only is it popular, but voters get excited about it," Shellenberger says. "If you go and talk to folks in the Rust Belt, in Ohio, or you talk to people in Silicon Valley, you talk to people in New York, Americans love that. And they love that, I think, for reasons that are really specific to the national character, which is: That's what Americans do; we invent stuff. That is so much part of who we are. It just seems crazy that we wouldn't put that at the center of our policy agenda."
Critics Say There Isn't Time
The downside of this is that global warming is a looming crisis, and critics say their solution offers no timetable for action and no assurances that technologies will be ready before the world tips into a dangerous new state. So they often hear that their approach is a distraction.
"Well, I say, look in the mirror here," Nordhaus says. He says the pollution paradigm isn't succeeding either. Most countries aren't keeping the lofty promises they made in international climate talks. And the 1,200 page climate legislation now before Congress is so full of escape clauses and giveaways, it's not clear what exactly it will achieve. One thing it won't do is substantially increase federal research dollars.
Nordhaus and Shellenberger rail against the bill in the blogosphere. And they're trying to get attention on Capitol Hill.
Taking Their Agenda To The Capitol
A few days after our interview, we meet up again in front of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.
They came to town with a simple plea: The government needs to spend more money — not less — to develop radical new energy technologies, and to help bring those to market.
On this day, they're accompanied by Peter Teague from the left-leaning Nathan Cummings Foundation — the Breakthrough Institute's main funder. Teague is pleased with what Shellenberger and Nordhaus have achieved to date.
"The president has adopted their language, their message, the story they helped to develop," Teague says. "The next stage in the development of all of this is for the actual reality of the policy to reflect the glowing, wonderful, positive, visionary rhetoric."
Turning Obama's rhetoric on energy opportunity into a fundamentally new approach to climate change will require a massive political shift. And that's the breakthrough that the Breakthrough Institute is hoping to achieve.
Climate change is a potential environmental disaster — but it's also potentially an economic opportunity. President Obama spoke of it in economic terms Tuesday when he urged the House of Representatives to pass legislation that wo"The nation that leads in the creation of a clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the 21st century global economy," he said. "That is what this legislation seeks to achieve. It is a bill that will open the door to a better future for this nation. And that is why I urge members of Congress to come together and pass it."
Promoting responses to global warming as an economic opportunity — rather than as a pollution problem that needs to be solved through regulation — has long been championed by a tiny think tank in Oakland, Calif.
The Breakthrough Institute
The Breakthrough Institute doesn't look like much — just a few offices in a shared suite in downtown Oakland.
There are only five people on staff. On a recent day, they were outnumbered by an incoming crop of seven freshly minted college graduates, who showed up for their summer internships.
Michael Shellenberger, 37, and Ted Nordhaus, 43, founded the Breakthrough Institute in 2002.
Shellenberger tells the interns that environmental groups — like the ones he used to work for — are going about it all wrong. By urging Congress to cast carbon dioxide as a pollutant that needs to be controlled, he says, they will constantly swim against the tide of public opinion.
"We're stuck in this kind of poor paradigm for dealing with climate change, this pollution paradigm," he says, "not because environmentalists are failures, but actually because they were so successful. The Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the cap and trade on acid rain — these things worked really well."
Pushing Innovation, Not Regulation
But reducing carbon dioxide is a different story. It's not just a nuisance byproduct, like the sulfur in coal that contributes to acid rain. Carbon dioxide is unavoidable when we burn coal, oil and natural gas. So getting rid of it means either capturing it at great expense, or regulating fossil fuels into oblivion.
In theory, regulation will force companies to develop cleaner alternatives as the price of carbon pollution grows. But Shellenberger says that'll never work.
"When was the last time human beings modernized our energy sources by making older power sources more expensive?" he asks the interns. "And, of course, by now you probably know that the answer is never."
Personal computers didn't take off because there was a tax on typewriters, he says. And the Internet didn't sprout up because the government made telegraphs more expensive.
"So is there a better way to do this? Well, we think that there is. It's very simple: It's that we need to make clean energy cheap worldwide."
China will never stop burning its massive reserves of coal unless there's something cheap to replace them, he argues. And the United States isn't likely to stop burning coal, either, he says.
Shellenberger and Nordhaus argue that the best way to develop those clean technologies is to increase federal energy research tenfold, and to create a project akin to the Apollo mission to the moon. But a massive increase in federal energy research spending is not a popular idea at the moment.
"There's this idea that the government shouldn't be involved in technology, the government shouldn't be picking winners and losers," Shellenberger says. "Which is sort of a funny thing to say. It's kind of like, well, why not? And when hasn't the United States government been involved in picking technology winners and losers?"
He points to the computer industry as just one example of something that came into being because of deliberate federal investments.
Tapping Into Americans' Love Of Invention
Nordhaus and Shellenberger weren't always technology advocates. They met as young adults, trying to save redwood trees on the California coast. Working as pollsters and strategists, they spent a lot of time figuring out what motivates people. That led them to rethink how to frame global warming as an issue.
"The things that will drive or not drive action have nothing to do with how well you understand how fast the polar ice caps are melting," Nordhaus says.
A sense of doom or shame only motivates a small segment of the public — and puts off the rest, he says. Instead, their research shows that people are motivated when the issue is presented as an opportunity to revolutionize energy technology.
"In fact, not only is it popular, but voters get excited about it," Shellenberger says. "If you go and talk to folks in the Rust Belt, in Ohio, or you talk to people in Silicon Valley, you talk to people in New York, Americans love that. And they love that, I think, for reasons that are really specific to the national character, which is: That's what Americans do; we invent stuff. That is so much part of who we are. It just seems crazy that we wouldn't put that at the center of our policy agenda."
Critics Say There Isn't Time
The downside of this is that global warming is a looming crisis, and critics say their solution offers no timetable for action and no assurances that technologies will be ready before the world tips into a dangerous new state. So they often hear that their approach is a distraction.
"Well, I say, look in the mirror here," Nordhaus says. He says the pollution paradigm isn't succeeding either. Most countries aren't keeping the lofty promises they made in international climate talks. And the 1,200 page climate legislation now before Congress is so full of escape clauses and giveaways, it's not clear what exactly it will achieve. One thing it won't do is substantially increase federal research dollars.
Nordhaus and Shellenberger rail against the bill in the blogosphere. And they're trying to get attention on Capitol Hill.
Taking Their Agenda To The Capitol
A few days after our interview, we meet up again in front of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.
They came to town with a simple plea: The government needs to spend more money — not less — to develop radical new energy technologies, and to help bring those to market.
On this day, they're accompanied by Peter Teague from the left-leaning Nathan Cummings Foundation — the Breakthrough Institute's main funder. Teague is pleased with what Shellenberger and Nordhaus have achieved to date.
"The president has adopted their language, their message, the story they helped to develop," Teague says. "The next stage in the development of all of this is for the actual reality of the policy to reflect the glowing, wonderful, positive, visionary rhetoric."
Turning Obama's rhetoric on energy opportunity into a fundamentally new approach to climate change will require a massive political shift. And that's the breakthrough that the Breakthrough Institute is hoping to achieve.
US Government Scientists Call For Urgent Action on Global Warming
Several top U.S. government climate change scientists released a new report on Tuesday warning that the effects of global warming will become more severe unless the Obama administration takes action quickly. For years, scientists have talked about the threat of rising sea levels on remote tropical islands and melting ice in the polar regions. But a new report by the U.S. Global Climate Research Program makes the threat of global warming personal. "Climate change is happening now and it's happening in our own backyards, and it affects the kinds of things people care about," said Jane Lubchenco.Jane Lubchenco is the head of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She says the report presents scientific evidence that will inform policy making.The report, compiled by more than 30 scientists at 13 U.S. government agencies, describes climate-related changes that are happening in the United States.Tom Karl, was a principal author of the report."U.S. average temperature has risen by 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 50 years," said Tom Karl. "We've had more rain coming in heavy downpours that can lead to flooding. Less winter precipitation is falling as snow, more as rain."The report, commissioned by the White House, uses climate models to project what will happen if action is not taken to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions that most scientists say cause global warming.It predicts increasingly deadly heat waves, and higher incidents of asthma and diseases transmitted through the water and by insects and rodents.Jerry Melillo, an author and director of the Ecosystems Center at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Massachusetts, says U.S. coastlines are under particular threat of rising sea levels and stronger hurricanes.He points specifically to the U.S. coast along the Gulf of Mexico, where seven of the nation's 10 biggest seaports are located and two-thirds of all U.S. oil imports are transported."Vital energy and transportation infrastructure will be at risk with expected sea level rise and associated storm surge," said Jerry Melillo.The report says the most severe affects of climate change can be avoided if action is taken swiftly to reduce heat-trapping gasses. Not everyone is convinced. William Gray, a professor emeritus at Colorado State University's Department of Atmospheric Science, is one of the skeptics.He says some scientists are placing too much emphasis on the role of greenhouse gases in climate change."There's no way they can warm the way the models say they do warm," said William Gray.Gray says the rising temperatures are caused by natural fluctuations in the oceans' salinity levels. "I think this whole thing in 10, 15, 20 years as we look back on this, and as we learn more, we'll see that this was a great exaggeration," he said.Scientists are not the only people debating climate change. The U.S. Congress is considering legislation on how to tackle the problem. And international negotiators from 182 nations are working on a roadmap to fight global warming. Negotiators have to come up with a plan to replace the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions by December, when they present their proposal at a United Nations conference in Copenhagen.
Michael Jackson Dies
Michael Jackson, the sensationally gifted child star who rose to become the "King of Pop" and the biggest celebrity in the world only to fall from his throne in a freakish series of scandals, died Thursday. He was 50. Jackson died at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. Ed Winter, the assistant chief coroner for Los Angeles County, confirmed his office had been notified of the death and would handle the investigation.
The circumstances of Jackson's death were not immediately clear. Jackson was not breathing when Los Angeles Fire Department paramedics responded to a call at his Los Angeles home about 12:30 p.m., Capt. Steve Ruda told the Los Angeles Times. The paramedics performed CPR and took him to UCLA Medical Center, Ruda told the newspaper.
Jackson's death brought a tragic end to a long, bizarre, sometimes farcical decline from his peak in the 1980s, when he was popular music's premier all-around performer, a uniter of black and white music who shattered the race barrier on MTV, dominated the charts and dazzled even more on stage.
His 1982 album "Thriller" _ which included the blockbuster hits "Beat It," "Billie Jean" and "Thriller" _ remains the biggest-selling album of all time, with more than 100 million copies worldwide.
The public first knew him in the late 1960s, when as a boy he was the precocious, spinning lead singer of the Jackson 5, the music group he formed with his four older brothers. Among their No. 1 hits were "I Want You Back," "ABC," and "I'll Be There."
He was perhaps the most exciting performer of his generation, known for his feverish, crotch-grabbing dance moves and his high-pitched voice punctuated with squeals and titters. His single sequined glove, tight, military-style jacket and aviator sunglasses were trademarks second only to his ever-changing, surgically altered appearance.
"For Michael to be taken away from us so suddenly at such a young age, I just don't have the words," said Quincy Jones, who produced "Thriller." "He was the consummate entertainer and his contributions and legacy will be felt upon the world forever. I've lost my little brother today, and part of my soul has gone with him."
Jackson ranked alongside Elvis Presley and the Beatles as the biggest pop sensations of all time. In fact, he united two of music's biggest names when he was briefly married to Presley's daughter, Lisa Marie.
The circumstances of Jackson's death were not immediately clear. Jackson was not breathing when Los Angeles Fire Department paramedics responded to a call at his Los Angeles home about 12:30 p.m., Capt. Steve Ruda told the Los Angeles Times. The paramedics performed CPR and took him to UCLA Medical Center, Ruda told the newspaper.
Jackson's death brought a tragic end to a long, bizarre, sometimes farcical decline from his peak in the 1980s, when he was popular music's premier all-around performer, a uniter of black and white music who shattered the race barrier on MTV, dominated the charts and dazzled even more on stage.
His 1982 album "Thriller" _ which included the blockbuster hits "Beat It," "Billie Jean" and "Thriller" _ remains the biggest-selling album of all time, with more than 100 million copies worldwide.
The public first knew him in the late 1960s, when as a boy he was the precocious, spinning lead singer of the Jackson 5, the music group he formed with his four older brothers. Among their No. 1 hits were "I Want You Back," "ABC," and "I'll Be There."
He was perhaps the most exciting performer of his generation, known for his feverish, crotch-grabbing dance moves and his high-pitched voice punctuated with squeals and titters. His single sequined glove, tight, military-style jacket and aviator sunglasses were trademarks second only to his ever-changing, surgically altered appearance.
"For Michael to be taken away from us so suddenly at such a young age, I just don't have the words," said Quincy Jones, who produced "Thriller." "He was the consummate entertainer and his contributions and legacy will be felt upon the world forever. I've lost my little brother today, and part of my soul has gone with him."
Jackson ranked alongside Elvis Presley and the Beatles as the biggest pop sensations of all time. In fact, he united two of music's biggest names when he was briefly married to Presley's daughter, Lisa Marie.
No Need to Oversimplify Poverty
Bill Easterly takes a complex problem, African poverty, and tries to reduce it to a single factor: "the consensus among most academic economists is that destructive governments rather than destructive geography explain the poverty of nations." This is a strange assertion. Geography and government policies both matter.
The idea that geography affects economic performance is an old one. Easterly and some other economists have taken a particular position about the relationship between geography and development. They too have recognized the high correlation of a country's poverty with being in a malaria-transmission region, or being landlocked, or being in an ecological zone leading to low food productivity. Those correlations after all are powerful, as recently shown again by Prof. William Nordhaus of Yale , in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Easterly and the others, however, have made a very unusual argument: yes, the correlations are there, but only for historical reasons. Bad geography two centuries ago led colonial powers to adopt exploitative political and economic institutions in the adversely affected regions. The adverse geography itself is no longer important, Easterly and his colleagues have claimed, but the adverse political and economic institutions live on nonetheless.
Specialists in many fields, inside economics and beyond, disagree strongly with this way of thinking. They believe that various dimensions of geography were important in the past, and are still important directly today. A region that suffers from malaria today, whether because of its tropical climate or the species of its mosquitoes, is hindered in development not only because it has poor institutions inherited from 1820, but because it has malaria, which kills and disables children, discourages public and private investments, and hinders economies in many other ways. A recent academic study by Kai Carstensen and Erich Gundlach, published in the World Bank Economic Review in 2006, made this point powerfully and directly: "After controlling for institutional quality, malaria prevalence is found to cause quantitatively negative effects on income."
Adam Smith, the pioneer of market economics, knew about the direct role of geography in affecting transport and trade all the way back in 1776. Even though the main purpose of the Wealth of Nations was to discuss the implications of economic policy and the division of labor on economic wealth, Smith also emphasized the role of geography in affecting national wealth. He cited Africa as a region suffering from especially high transport costs and therefore poor economic development:
There are in Africa none of those great inlets, such as the Baltic and Adriatic seas in Europe, the Mediterranean and Euxine [Black] seas in both Europe and Asia, and the gulfs of Arabia, Persia, India, Bengal, and Siam, in Asia, to carry maritime commerce into the interior parts of that great continent: and the great rivers of Africa are at too great a distance from one another to give occasion to any considerable inland navigation.
More recently, Paul Collier in The Bottom Billion, as well as my colleagues and I in several studies, have shown that being landlocked and far from the coast continues to be a major hindrance to participating in certain kinds of international trade, especially for manufacturing exports. This is seen powerfully in sectors like apparel and other assembly exports, where semi-processed goods are imported from abroad, further processed, and then re-exported. It is very disadvantageous in general to set up such export operations in landlocked countries or far from ports or major markets. Collier emphasizes the special difficulty for a poor landlocked country that is surrounded by poor neighbors. The nearby markets are insufficient to generate much trade, and participation in globe trade is very hard. As Collier puts it, landlocked countries are "hostages to their neighbors."
When it comes to agriculture, the geography-based problems of water are often paramount. The Green Revolution in Asia, which helped to trigger long-term economic growth in India and other countries, depended heavily on irrigation from the massive rivers systems of the region. In dry land areas with much higher costs of irrigation, the Green Revolution has been much harder to achieve. It may not be impossible, but the costs of entry for poor dry land countries are very high. The result can be low farm productivity, chronic rural poverty, and often no escape from extreme deprivation.
Bill Easterly seems not to want to be bothered by the details of irrigation-based versus rain-fed agriculture, or the types of mosquito species in Africa, or the implications of being landlocked for international trade, or the effects of a dry climate and high costs of irrigation on food production in poor rural areas. He seems to prefer a one-factor solution. He is not alone among economists in ignoring these "details," but this is nonetheless an odd approach scientifically, especially when dealing with a complex system like an economy. When biologists deal with a complex system like the human body, they know that thousands of particular causes - even one single change of base pair in the genetic code - can cause crippling diseases or deaths. They are attentive to the large number of possible causes and their interactions, rather than claiming as the ancients once did that disease is the result of an imbalance of the four bodily humours. The key is to use a "differential diagnosis" to ascertain the causes underlying a specific situation, rather than assuming that a problem like poverty has a single cause.
Sub-Saharan Africa faces a constellation of special challenges, with greater or lesser impact in different parts of the region, including: a climate and ecology especially burdened by infectious diseases such as p. falciparum malaria and other vector-borne diseases; a rain-fed agriculture, much of it in sub-humid or arid zones that are prone to drought; high overland transport costs, including the greatest number of landlocked countries of any continent and a relative paucity of ocean-navigable rivers; low population densities in rural areas, characteristic of many rainforest and dry ecosystems, which make rural infrastructure relatively expensive; a historical legacy of colonial rule in which the colonial powers left behind relatively little infrastructure; and of course challenges of bad governance like Mr. Mugabe of Zimbabwe. These challenges should be addressed forthrightly and in an integrated manner.It's just bad science, and offensive, to read in Easterly's blog that I offer "a bizarre geographic theory of Africa's poverty and [am] oblivious to the bad governments that many courageous dissenters have fought at great sacrifice." The geographic factors are not "bizarre," and I have never been oblivious to the tremendous costs that can be caused by bad governments. In the End of Poverty (p. 194) I wrote "I visited Zimbabwe several times, and saw Robert Mugabe's depredations firsthand. Zimbabwe is a case where the traditional explanation of miserable rule is a sufficient explanation for a country's ills (although the nation no doubt suffers from other serious problems as well)." I have always pointed to geography and good governance as complementary factors, not a choice of one or the other.Complex systems, in summary, require explanations that acknowledge complexity. An economy is affected by many factors: its proximity to trade, resource base, climate, history, social divisions, as well as government policies. A true economic science treats the economy with the care and sophistication that biologists treat an organism or that ecologists treat an ecosystem. Single-factor explanations for poverty take us back to pre-scientific realms and ways of thinking that are counterproductive for solving real problems.
The idea that geography affects economic performance is an old one. Easterly and some other economists have taken a particular position about the relationship between geography and development. They too have recognized the high correlation of a country's poverty with being in a malaria-transmission region, or being landlocked, or being in an ecological zone leading to low food productivity. Those correlations after all are powerful, as recently shown again by Prof. William Nordhaus of Yale , in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Easterly and the others, however, have made a very unusual argument: yes, the correlations are there, but only for historical reasons. Bad geography two centuries ago led colonial powers to adopt exploitative political and economic institutions in the adversely affected regions. The adverse geography itself is no longer important, Easterly and his colleagues have claimed, but the adverse political and economic institutions live on nonetheless.
Specialists in many fields, inside economics and beyond, disagree strongly with this way of thinking. They believe that various dimensions of geography were important in the past, and are still important directly today. A region that suffers from malaria today, whether because of its tropical climate or the species of its mosquitoes, is hindered in development not only because it has poor institutions inherited from 1820, but because it has malaria, which kills and disables children, discourages public and private investments, and hinders economies in many other ways. A recent academic study by Kai Carstensen and Erich Gundlach, published in the World Bank Economic Review in 2006, made this point powerfully and directly: "After controlling for institutional quality, malaria prevalence is found to cause quantitatively negative effects on income."
Adam Smith, the pioneer of market economics, knew about the direct role of geography in affecting transport and trade all the way back in 1776. Even though the main purpose of the Wealth of Nations was to discuss the implications of economic policy and the division of labor on economic wealth, Smith also emphasized the role of geography in affecting national wealth. He cited Africa as a region suffering from especially high transport costs and therefore poor economic development:
There are in Africa none of those great inlets, such as the Baltic and Adriatic seas in Europe, the Mediterranean and Euxine [Black] seas in both Europe and Asia, and the gulfs of Arabia, Persia, India, Bengal, and Siam, in Asia, to carry maritime commerce into the interior parts of that great continent: and the great rivers of Africa are at too great a distance from one another to give occasion to any considerable inland navigation.
More recently, Paul Collier in The Bottom Billion, as well as my colleagues and I in several studies, have shown that being landlocked and far from the coast continues to be a major hindrance to participating in certain kinds of international trade, especially for manufacturing exports. This is seen powerfully in sectors like apparel and other assembly exports, where semi-processed goods are imported from abroad, further processed, and then re-exported. It is very disadvantageous in general to set up such export operations in landlocked countries or far from ports or major markets. Collier emphasizes the special difficulty for a poor landlocked country that is surrounded by poor neighbors. The nearby markets are insufficient to generate much trade, and participation in globe trade is very hard. As Collier puts it, landlocked countries are "hostages to their neighbors."
When it comes to agriculture, the geography-based problems of water are often paramount. The Green Revolution in Asia, which helped to trigger long-term economic growth in India and other countries, depended heavily on irrigation from the massive rivers systems of the region. In dry land areas with much higher costs of irrigation, the Green Revolution has been much harder to achieve. It may not be impossible, but the costs of entry for poor dry land countries are very high. The result can be low farm productivity, chronic rural poverty, and often no escape from extreme deprivation.
Bill Easterly seems not to want to be bothered by the details of irrigation-based versus rain-fed agriculture, or the types of mosquito species in Africa, or the implications of being landlocked for international trade, or the effects of a dry climate and high costs of irrigation on food production in poor rural areas. He seems to prefer a one-factor solution. He is not alone among economists in ignoring these "details," but this is nonetheless an odd approach scientifically, especially when dealing with a complex system like an economy. When biologists deal with a complex system like the human body, they know that thousands of particular causes - even one single change of base pair in the genetic code - can cause crippling diseases or deaths. They are attentive to the large number of possible causes and their interactions, rather than claiming as the ancients once did that disease is the result of an imbalance of the four bodily humours. The key is to use a "differential diagnosis" to ascertain the causes underlying a specific situation, rather than assuming that a problem like poverty has a single cause.
Sub-Saharan Africa faces a constellation of special challenges, with greater or lesser impact in different parts of the region, including: a climate and ecology especially burdened by infectious diseases such as p. falciparum malaria and other vector-borne diseases; a rain-fed agriculture, much of it in sub-humid or arid zones that are prone to drought; high overland transport costs, including the greatest number of landlocked countries of any continent and a relative paucity of ocean-navigable rivers; low population densities in rural areas, characteristic of many rainforest and dry ecosystems, which make rural infrastructure relatively expensive; a historical legacy of colonial rule in which the colonial powers left behind relatively little infrastructure; and of course challenges of bad governance like Mr. Mugabe of Zimbabwe. These challenges should be addressed forthrightly and in an integrated manner.It's just bad science, and offensive, to read in Easterly's blog that I offer "a bizarre geographic theory of Africa's poverty and [am] oblivious to the bad governments that many courageous dissenters have fought at great sacrifice." The geographic factors are not "bizarre," and I have never been oblivious to the tremendous costs that can be caused by bad governments. In the End of Poverty (p. 194) I wrote "I visited Zimbabwe several times, and saw Robert Mugabe's depredations firsthand. Zimbabwe is a case where the traditional explanation of miserable rule is a sufficient explanation for a country's ills (although the nation no doubt suffers from other serious problems as well)." I have always pointed to geography and good governance as complementary factors, not a choice of one or the other.Complex systems, in summary, require explanations that acknowledge complexity. An economy is affected by many factors: its proximity to trade, resource base, climate, history, social divisions, as well as government policies. A true economic science treats the economy with the care and sophistication that biologists treat an organism or that ecologists treat an ecosystem. Single-factor explanations for poverty take us back to pre-scientific realms and ways of thinking that are counterproductive for solving real problems.
Ecological balance in northern region under threat following withdrawal of waters of common rivers
The ecological balance in five districts of Rangpur region is under severe threat because of unilateral withdrawal of waters of common rivers by India, official concerned feared.They said as an impact of ecological imbalance, the region is facing unprecedented floods, drought, desertification and arsenic contamination, which might fasten the causes of degradation, experienced circle said demanding anonymity.They said unilateral withdrawal of waters of the common rivers by neighbouring India is the main reason of destroying ecological imbalance, they said. They added if the present situation is continued going, the human habitat in the region might be relocated in near future.They said the flash floods, which are visiting the region every year, is not only due to heave rains, but also due to release of huge waters by India during the rainy season through their barrages. The flow of the rivers is also being disrupted because of withdrawal in upstream during the lean season causing drought in the region, the circle viewed.Meanwhile, India is constructing more structures for controlling flow of the common rivers, which made the rivers flow less when enter into Bangladesh.According to survey reports, underground water level in Rangpur region has going down by 30 to 80 feet during the past two decades. Hundreds of trees are dying during the lean season because of inadequate moisture in the soil of the region. "If water flow through the round the year, the situation might improve," said the circle, adding it is only possible if India refrain from withdrawing waters of the common rivers
Grocery shopping part II: 10 compelling reasons to buy organic
Why should you go organic? Here are 10 compelling reasons to put down the conventional products...
1. Keep chemicals off your plate. Pesticides are poisons designed to kill living organisms and thus are harmful to humans. Many EPA-approved pesticides were registered long before extensive research linked these chemicals to cancer, autoimmune diseases and a host of other malfunctions in the body. Want to know the EXACT chemicals on your foods? Search whatsonmyfood.com for your favorite fruits and vegetables.
2. Help lose weight. Toxins in the body make it diffcult for our metabolism to function optimally from interupting the thryoid function to affecting hormone levels.
3. Protect future generations. Children are four times more sensitive to exposure to cancer-causing pesticides in foods than adults.
4. Protect water quality. The EPA estimates that pesticides pollute the public’s primary source of drinking water for more than half the country's population.
5. Organic farmers work in harmony with nature. Three billion tons of topsoil is eroded from croplands in the U.S. each year, and much of it is due to conventional farming practices, which often ignore the health of the soil. Organic agriculture respects the balance necessary for a healthy ecosystem; wildlife is encouraged by including forage crops in rotation and by retaining fencerows, wetlands and other natural areas.
5. Save energy. More energy is now used to produce synthetic fertilizers than to till, cultivate and harvest all the crops in the US.
7. Support a true economy. Organic foods might seem expensive at first. However, your tax dollars pay for hazardous waste clean-up and environmental damage caused by conventional farming.
8. Mineral Rich Soil. Planting large plots of land with the same crop year after year tripled farm production between 1950 and 1970, but the lack of natural diversity of plant life has negatively affected soil quality, leaving mineral levels extremely low. MInerals are crucial for the body to function optimally.
9. Nourishment. Organic farming starts with the nourishment of the soil, in turn producing nourishing plants. Well-balanced soil produces strong, healthy plants that have more nutrients than conventionally grown produce.
10. Flavor. Organic produce simply tastes better. Conduct your own taste test!
Check out Urban Organics, a New York organic produce and grocery delivery service
1. Keep chemicals off your plate. Pesticides are poisons designed to kill living organisms and thus are harmful to humans. Many EPA-approved pesticides were registered long before extensive research linked these chemicals to cancer, autoimmune diseases and a host of other malfunctions in the body. Want to know the EXACT chemicals on your foods? Search whatsonmyfood.com for your favorite fruits and vegetables.
2. Help lose weight. Toxins in the body make it diffcult for our metabolism to function optimally from interupting the thryoid function to affecting hormone levels.
3. Protect future generations. Children are four times more sensitive to exposure to cancer-causing pesticides in foods than adults.
4. Protect water quality. The EPA estimates that pesticides pollute the public’s primary source of drinking water for more than half the country's population.
5. Organic farmers work in harmony with nature. Three billion tons of topsoil is eroded from croplands in the U.S. each year, and much of it is due to conventional farming practices, which often ignore the health of the soil. Organic agriculture respects the balance necessary for a healthy ecosystem; wildlife is encouraged by including forage crops in rotation and by retaining fencerows, wetlands and other natural areas.
5. Save energy. More energy is now used to produce synthetic fertilizers than to till, cultivate and harvest all the crops in the US.
7. Support a true economy. Organic foods might seem expensive at first. However, your tax dollars pay for hazardous waste clean-up and environmental damage caused by conventional farming.
8. Mineral Rich Soil. Planting large plots of land with the same crop year after year tripled farm production between 1950 and 1970, but the lack of natural diversity of plant life has negatively affected soil quality, leaving mineral levels extremely low. MInerals are crucial for the body to function optimally.
9. Nourishment. Organic farming starts with the nourishment of the soil, in turn producing nourishing plants. Well-balanced soil produces strong, healthy plants that have more nutrients than conventionally grown produce.
10. Flavor. Organic produce simply tastes better. Conduct your own taste test!
Check out Urban Organics, a New York organic produce and grocery delivery service
Should Rochester parents feed their kids organic or locally grown foods?
In Rochester, thankfully, you don't have to choose.
Wegmans has announced their brand new blog. Its purpose is to "share our experiment with organic farming." It also provides news from local growers. A lot of the organic foods you find in Wegmans come straight from their organic farm near Canandaigua Lake.
This is community whose major supermarket retailer is dedicated to providing the community with fresh, nutritious, organic foods. There are also a plethora of farms dedicated to producing organic food: organic dairy farms, fruit farms, etc. However, organic produce can be hard on the wallet. Local farmers who do not farm organically provide wonderful, tasty and nutritious foods as well. NO consumer should feel bad about purchasing from their neighborhood farmer.
What exactly IS organic food?
Simply put, it is food that was grown without the assistance of chemicals or pesticides.
What qualifies as "locally grown" food?
Food that was harvested within a 50 to 100 mile radius from where you live.
Which is better for my family?
The debate is out on that. Some argue that local produce, even if not organically grown, holds onto more of its nutritional value because it is fresher. Also, the environmental impact of transporting food across the country is more significant than spraying crops with chemicals. Locally grown food tastes better and scientists have not proven that chemicals sprayed on crop have any negative long-term effects on people.
However, if it comes out that chemical and pesticides have long-term, negative side-effects, organic foods win hands down! In the meantime, what to feed your kids?
If you can afford it, buy local organic foods. If that just seems out of your price range, buy from your local farmer. Always wash your fruits and veggies thoroughly with water to remove chemical residue. If local consumers continue to buy from local farmers, they will have a greater impact on the local economy AND will have significant impact in help farmers decide to go organic.
It's strawberry season, people. Go buy some strawberries!!!
Further reading on the subject:
Wegmans Farm Blog
Eating Better than Organic
This or that: Local vs. Organic Food
Wegmans has announced their brand new blog. Its purpose is to "share our experiment with organic farming." It also provides news from local growers. A lot of the organic foods you find in Wegmans come straight from their organic farm near Canandaigua Lake.
This is community whose major supermarket retailer is dedicated to providing the community with fresh, nutritious, organic foods. There are also a plethora of farms dedicated to producing organic food: organic dairy farms, fruit farms, etc. However, organic produce can be hard on the wallet. Local farmers who do not farm organically provide wonderful, tasty and nutritious foods as well. NO consumer should feel bad about purchasing from their neighborhood farmer.
What exactly IS organic food?
Simply put, it is food that was grown without the assistance of chemicals or pesticides.
What qualifies as "locally grown" food?
Food that was harvested within a 50 to 100 mile radius from where you live.
Which is better for my family?
The debate is out on that. Some argue that local produce, even if not organically grown, holds onto more of its nutritional value because it is fresher. Also, the environmental impact of transporting food across the country is more significant than spraying crops with chemicals. Locally grown food tastes better and scientists have not proven that chemicals sprayed on crop have any negative long-term effects on people.
However, if it comes out that chemical and pesticides have long-term, negative side-effects, organic foods win hands down! In the meantime, what to feed your kids?
If you can afford it, buy local organic foods. If that just seems out of your price range, buy from your local farmer. Always wash your fruits and veggies thoroughly with water to remove chemical residue. If local consumers continue to buy from local farmers, they will have a greater impact on the local economy AND will have significant impact in help farmers decide to go organic.
It's strawberry season, people. Go buy some strawberries!!!
Further reading on the subject:
Wegmans Farm Blog
Eating Better than Organic
This or that: Local vs. Organic Food
A Voice of Echo Agriculture
Acres U.S.A., the monthly magazine
Acres U.S.A. is North America's oldest, largest magazine covering commercial-scale organic and sustainable farming ... subscribe now and receive Acres U.S.A. monthly by mail. Read some of our current issue below.
Subscribe to Acres U.S.A.
Free Sample Issue
Give a Gift SubscriptionChange Your Mailing AddressBulk IssuesAdvertise in Acres U.S.A.Write a Letter to the EditorFeature Article Archives
June 2009Featured Articles
Use Lime to Correct Calcium Needs, Not to Correct pHA top soil consultant shares key considerations that can make the difference between effective and ineffective — or even damaging — lime applications.
Increasing Winter Stockpiles & ProfitsHow holistic high density mob grazing allows this grass farmer to build healthy soil and winter graze at the same time.
Weed the Soil, Not the CropThese experienced organic growers explain in detail how changing the soil environment will in itself reduce weeds and the need for tillage.
Sustainable Hog Breeds: The WhitesSome venerable heritage breeds are examined for their suitability to today's natural, range-based hog grower.
Don't Believe the Hype!A renowned cowman explains why the use of line-breeding to create a predictable paternal gene pool is crucial to our national — and international — cattle herds.
Sustainable Sorghum Syrup Production in Mid-OhioThis Ohio sorghum grower produces a great niche crop every October and an excellent value-added product every March.
The Biochemical Sequence of Plant NutritionAfter being taken up by plants, minerals set up a kind of nutritional chain reaction, with each element in the sequence activating an element that follows.
Seeds: More Precious than Gold or OilWhy saving seed has become critical in an age of GMOs and industrial agriculture.
June 2009Columns
Interview — Charles Benbrook: Policy, Science & Organic AgricultureThe chief scientist for the Organic Center shares stories from behind the scenes in his longtime quest to win hearts and minds in the battle for a healthy, sustainable food system.
Eco-UpdateEco-ag news from around the world.
OpinionCommentary on vital issues affecting organic and sustainable farmers.
Transitions"Certified Organic Industry News"
Eco-Gardener"A 'Recycled' Greenhouse!" by Anne Van Nest
Health & Healing"Pandemics & Swine Flu" by Dr. Michael W. Fox
The Natural Vet"Staying out of Trouble" by C. Edgar Sheaffer, V.M.D. & Bonnie M. Sheaffer, R.N.
Books & InformationReviews of new eco-farming literature
Acres U.S.A. ZipsLetters to the editor
Eco-ResourcesA roundup of eco-suppliers
Eco-MeetingsEco-farming meetings and events across North America
The Last WordEssays and parting shots
Acres U.S.A. is North America's oldest, largest magazine covering commercial-scale organic and sustainable farming ... subscribe now and receive Acres U.S.A. monthly by mail. Read some of our current issue below.
Subscribe to Acres U.S.A.
Free Sample Issue
Give a Gift SubscriptionChange Your Mailing AddressBulk IssuesAdvertise in Acres U.S.A.Write a Letter to the EditorFeature Article Archives
June 2009Featured Articles
Use Lime to Correct Calcium Needs, Not to Correct pHA top soil consultant shares key considerations that can make the difference between effective and ineffective — or even damaging — lime applications.
Increasing Winter Stockpiles & ProfitsHow holistic high density mob grazing allows this grass farmer to build healthy soil and winter graze at the same time.
Weed the Soil, Not the CropThese experienced organic growers explain in detail how changing the soil environment will in itself reduce weeds and the need for tillage.
Sustainable Hog Breeds: The WhitesSome venerable heritage breeds are examined for their suitability to today's natural, range-based hog grower.
Don't Believe the Hype!A renowned cowman explains why the use of line-breeding to create a predictable paternal gene pool is crucial to our national — and international — cattle herds.
Sustainable Sorghum Syrup Production in Mid-OhioThis Ohio sorghum grower produces a great niche crop every October and an excellent value-added product every March.
The Biochemical Sequence of Plant NutritionAfter being taken up by plants, minerals set up a kind of nutritional chain reaction, with each element in the sequence activating an element that follows.
Seeds: More Precious than Gold or OilWhy saving seed has become critical in an age of GMOs and industrial agriculture.
June 2009Columns
Interview — Charles Benbrook: Policy, Science & Organic AgricultureThe chief scientist for the Organic Center shares stories from behind the scenes in his longtime quest to win hearts and minds in the battle for a healthy, sustainable food system.
Eco-UpdateEco-ag news from around the world.
OpinionCommentary on vital issues affecting organic and sustainable farmers.
Transitions"Certified Organic Industry News"
Eco-Gardener"A 'Recycled' Greenhouse!" by Anne Van Nest
Health & Healing"Pandemics & Swine Flu" by Dr. Michael W. Fox
The Natural Vet"Staying out of Trouble" by C. Edgar Sheaffer, V.M.D. & Bonnie M. Sheaffer, R.N.
Books & InformationReviews of new eco-farming literature
Acres U.S.A. ZipsLetters to the editor
Eco-ResourcesA roundup of eco-suppliers
Eco-MeetingsEco-farming meetings and events across North America
The Last WordEssays and parting shots
Sustainable Harvest International
For $25 you can plant a forest and feed a family.
Sustainable Harvest International provides struggling families in Central America with the technical assistance and materials they need to plant a variety of trees together with other crops such as coffee, cocoa, bananas, vanilla and ginger in an integrated system that provides food and income while protecting the environment. You can support a family's ongoing participation in the SHI program by clicking here and making a donation of $25 per month. If you would like to know more, keep reading.
The Problem: The world's tropical forests are being lost at an alarming rate, largely due to agricultural expansion. This loss is resulting in the extinction of native plant and animal species, a net increase in greenhouse gases that contribute to global climate change, increased soil erosion, drought and flooding. This environmental degradation forces farmers to clear even more land to grow food for their families.The Solution: Sustainable Harvest InternationalA $25 donation to SHI provides a family with the training, tools and support to plant 100 trees!
Founded in 1997 by Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Florence Reed, Sustainable Harvest International (SHI) addresses the tropical deforestation crisis by providing farmers with sustainable alternatives to slash-and-burnagriculture. SHI facilitates long-term collaboration among trained local staff, farmers and communities to implement sustainable land-use practices that alleviate poverty by restoring ecological stability.
SHI works with local farmers, cooperatives, environmental organizations and indigenous groups that invite us into their communities. We provide these groups with long-term assistance adopting sustainable land-use practices such as reforestation, agro-forestry and organic farming. These practices allow rural people to raise their standard of living while planting trees, rather than clearing forest.
The more than 1,100 families working with SHI have planted more than two million trees and converted thousands of acres of degraded land to sustainable land-use practices, thereby saving tens of thousands of acres of tropical forest from slash-and-burn farming. Participating families enjoy increased income (up to 800%) from alternative cash crops as well as better health due to greater and more varied food crop production.
Rather than contributing to rainforest destruction, SHI participants are preserving forests and planting trees on degraded land. They are taking control of their environmental and economic destinies.
The vital work of Sustainable Harvest International must continue. Although SHI has accomplished a great deal, more remains to be done.
SHI constantly receives requests from new families, communities and organizations in other countries asking us to help them make their hope for a sustainable future a reality. We would love to help them, but we need increased financial support to make their dreams a reality.
Sustainable Harvest International's success has been made possible by a growing number of friends around the world who provide the funding to carry out our work. In order to keep our commitments to our existing participants and to reach new ones, however, Sustainable Harvest International urgently needs new financial support.
Working with SHI, you can change a desert into an oasis and hunger into plenty. I hope you will accept my offer to help create sustainable forests, food and income for some of the world's most economically disadvantaged people.
Sustainable Harvest International provides struggling families in Central America with the technical assistance and materials they need to plant a variety of trees together with other crops such as coffee, cocoa, bananas, vanilla and ginger in an integrated system that provides food and income while protecting the environment. You can support a family's ongoing participation in the SHI program by clicking here and making a donation of $25 per month. If you would like to know more, keep reading.
The Problem: The world's tropical forests are being lost at an alarming rate, largely due to agricultural expansion. This loss is resulting in the extinction of native plant and animal species, a net increase in greenhouse gases that contribute to global climate change, increased soil erosion, drought and flooding. This environmental degradation forces farmers to clear even more land to grow food for their families.The Solution: Sustainable Harvest InternationalA $25 donation to SHI provides a family with the training, tools and support to plant 100 trees!
Founded in 1997 by Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Florence Reed, Sustainable Harvest International (SHI) addresses the tropical deforestation crisis by providing farmers with sustainable alternatives to slash-and-burnagriculture. SHI facilitates long-term collaboration among trained local staff, farmers and communities to implement sustainable land-use practices that alleviate poverty by restoring ecological stability.
SHI works with local farmers, cooperatives, environmental organizations and indigenous groups that invite us into their communities. We provide these groups with long-term assistance adopting sustainable land-use practices such as reforestation, agro-forestry and organic farming. These practices allow rural people to raise their standard of living while planting trees, rather than clearing forest.
The more than 1,100 families working with SHI have planted more than two million trees and converted thousands of acres of degraded land to sustainable land-use practices, thereby saving tens of thousands of acres of tropical forest from slash-and-burn farming. Participating families enjoy increased income (up to 800%) from alternative cash crops as well as better health due to greater and more varied food crop production.
Rather than contributing to rainforest destruction, SHI participants are preserving forests and planting trees on degraded land. They are taking control of their environmental and economic destinies.
The vital work of Sustainable Harvest International must continue. Although SHI has accomplished a great deal, more remains to be done.
SHI constantly receives requests from new families, communities and organizations in other countries asking us to help them make their hope for a sustainable future a reality. We would love to help them, but we need increased financial support to make their dreams a reality.
Sustainable Harvest International's success has been made possible by a growing number of friends around the world who provide the funding to carry out our work. In order to keep our commitments to our existing participants and to reach new ones, however, Sustainable Harvest International urgently needs new financial support.
Working with SHI, you can change a desert into an oasis and hunger into plenty. I hope you will accept my offer to help create sustainable forests, food and income for some of the world's most economically disadvantaged people.
The Common Sense Environmental Fund
Sustainable Agriculture
The environmental costs incurred through modern, chemical- intensive farming are no longer acceptable. Rampant pesticide use, soil depletion and genetic homogenization of crops threaten the air we breathe, the water we drink and the land we and other depend on for food and habitat. Organic, sustainable agriculture is a realistic and necessary alternative to those practices.Soil Erosion
Soil erosion is an urgent problem because new soil forms very slowly; 2.5 centimeters (1 inch) of topsoil may take anywhere from 20 to 1200 years to form. Soil erosion also has a number of serious environmental impacts. For instance, soil particles attach to pesticides. Transported to nearby waterways, these pesticide-laden particles may contaminate fish and other aquatic organisms, which, in turn, may be passed to birds and human consumers in the food chain. Sediment deposited in waterways also increases flooding, destroys breeding grounds of fish and other wildlife, and increases the need for dredging harbors and rivers. The World Resources Institute estimates the offsite damage from soil erosion in the United States is over $10 billion a year.
Since 1880 one third of the top soil in the United States has been lost to erosion, according to the U.S. Soil Conservation Service. Unfortunately, soil erosion continues today. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates about 1 billion metric tons of topsoil were lost from U.S. farmland in 2000. Although, that is less than the 1.45 billion metric tons lost in 1985, the current rate of erosion remains too high. The average rate of erosion on U.S. farmland is approximately seven times greater than soil formation, a situation that is clearly unsustainable. Should erosion continue, the U.S. agricultural system could experience substantial declines in productivity.
Unfortunately, little information is available on soil erosion rates throughout the world. Scientists currently estimate that approximately one-third of the world's cropland topsoil is being eroded faster than it is being regenerated.
Soil erosion is especially rapid in many developing nations. In China, for example, the Yellow River annually transports 1.6 billion metric tons of soil from badly eroded farmland to the sea. In India, the Ganges carries two times that amount. Overall, the Worldwatch Institute estimates that 24 billion metric tons of topsoil are eroded from the world's cropland each year. At this rate, the world loses about 7% of its cropland topsoil every ten years.
Livestock
In many countries, cattle and other livestock are raised in confined quarters for at least a part of their life cycle. Although this does not affect grasslands directly, it does have a tremendous environmental impact. For example, pen-raised cattle produce incredible amounts of manure in limited spaces and at one time, farmers applied the
mountains of manure their animals produced to nearby cropland. Today, however, many livestock operations are specialized, that is, not combined with crop production. Thus, their manure creates a huge waste disposal problem. Often after rainstorms the waste washes into nearby streams and rivers causing serious environmental problems. Ironically, farmers who now supply grain to feed cattle use artificial fertilizer on their land. This linear system disrupts one of nature's vital loops - nutrient cycles - and is clearly unsustainable
Another problem with livestock raised in enclosures is that they require enormous quantities of grain, mostly corn and sorghum. In developing nations, meat primarily feeds the wealthy class. Because livestock are fed grains or are sometimes produced on land that could grow food crops, meat production reduces overall
supplies and makes food more costly for the poor. In Egypt, for example, corn to feed animals is now grown on cropland previously used to grow staple grains, such as wheat and rice. The percentage of that nation's grain fed to livestock has increased from 5% in 1960 to 36% over the past quarter century. In Mexico, the share of grain fed to livestock has increased from 5% in 1960 to 30% today, despite the fact that 22% of the nation's people are malnourished.
Livestock production on rangeland and in confined spaces can be sustainable, but it must be scaled back, according to the Worldwatch Institute. To downsize this activity, rich countries have to reduce their meat consumption. A sustainable system also requires a reintegration of livestock and crop production. Rangelands need to be managed with an ecosystem approach, one that adjusts herd size to the carrying capacity of the land. Efforts are also needed to restore damaged grasslands.
The environmental costs incurred through modern, chemical- intensive farming are no longer acceptable. Rampant pesticide use, soil depletion and genetic homogenization of crops threaten the air we breathe, the water we drink and the land we and other depend on for food and habitat. Organic, sustainable agriculture is a realistic and necessary alternative to those practices.Soil Erosion
Soil erosion is an urgent problem because new soil forms very slowly; 2.5 centimeters (1 inch) of topsoil may take anywhere from 20 to 1200 years to form. Soil erosion also has a number of serious environmental impacts. For instance, soil particles attach to pesticides. Transported to nearby waterways, these pesticide-laden particles may contaminate fish and other aquatic organisms, which, in turn, may be passed to birds and human consumers in the food chain. Sediment deposited in waterways also increases flooding, destroys breeding grounds of fish and other wildlife, and increases the need for dredging harbors and rivers. The World Resources Institute estimates the offsite damage from soil erosion in the United States is over $10 billion a year.
Since 1880 one third of the top soil in the United States has been lost to erosion, according to the U.S. Soil Conservation Service. Unfortunately, soil erosion continues today. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates about 1 billion metric tons of topsoil were lost from U.S. farmland in 2000. Although, that is less than the 1.45 billion metric tons lost in 1985, the current rate of erosion remains too high. The average rate of erosion on U.S. farmland is approximately seven times greater than soil formation, a situation that is clearly unsustainable. Should erosion continue, the U.S. agricultural system could experience substantial declines in productivity.
Unfortunately, little information is available on soil erosion rates throughout the world. Scientists currently estimate that approximately one-third of the world's cropland topsoil is being eroded faster than it is being regenerated.
Soil erosion is especially rapid in many developing nations. In China, for example, the Yellow River annually transports 1.6 billion metric tons of soil from badly eroded farmland to the sea. In India, the Ganges carries two times that amount. Overall, the Worldwatch Institute estimates that 24 billion metric tons of topsoil are eroded from the world's cropland each year. At this rate, the world loses about 7% of its cropland topsoil every ten years.
Livestock
In many countries, cattle and other livestock are raised in confined quarters for at least a part of their life cycle. Although this does not affect grasslands directly, it does have a tremendous environmental impact. For example, pen-raised cattle produce incredible amounts of manure in limited spaces and at one time, farmers applied the
mountains of manure their animals produced to nearby cropland. Today, however, many livestock operations are specialized, that is, not combined with crop production. Thus, their manure creates a huge waste disposal problem. Often after rainstorms the waste washes into nearby streams and rivers causing serious environmental problems. Ironically, farmers who now supply grain to feed cattle use artificial fertilizer on their land. This linear system disrupts one of nature's vital loops - nutrient cycles - and is clearly unsustainable
Another problem with livestock raised in enclosures is that they require enormous quantities of grain, mostly corn and sorghum. In developing nations, meat primarily feeds the wealthy class. Because livestock are fed grains or are sometimes produced on land that could grow food crops, meat production reduces overall
supplies and makes food more costly for the poor. In Egypt, for example, corn to feed animals is now grown on cropland previously used to grow staple grains, such as wheat and rice. The percentage of that nation's grain fed to livestock has increased from 5% in 1960 to 36% over the past quarter century. In Mexico, the share of grain fed to livestock has increased from 5% in 1960 to 30% today, despite the fact that 22% of the nation's people are malnourished.
Livestock production on rangeland and in confined spaces can be sustainable, but it must be scaled back, according to the Worldwatch Institute. To downsize this activity, rich countries have to reduce their meat consumption. A sustainable system also requires a reintegration of livestock and crop production. Rangelands need to be managed with an ecosystem approach, one that adjusts herd size to the carrying capacity of the land. Efforts are also needed to restore damaged grasslands.
The Environmental Quality Incentives Program Organic Initiative
General InformationUSDA is allocating $50 million of funds through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) to be set aside for a new Organics Initiative to assist organic farmers and those transitioning to organic. Current organic producers and those transitioning to organic will be eligible to receive contracts for implementing conservation practices and conservation planning under the program, but they’ll have to act fast. Applications will be accepted beginning Monday, May 11, 2009.To ensure consideration for assistance from this pool of funds, producers must file an EQIP Organic Initiative application no later than May 29.
The Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) is administering the EQIP Organic Initiative. To apply, producers should visit their local NRCS Service Center. Use the NRCS Service Center locator to find the one closest to you - offices.sc.egov.usda.gov/locator/app?agency=nrcs.
Update: NRCS has required each state office to appoint an organic point person. To find out your state's organic point person and his/her contact info, download the NRCS Organic State Contact list (PDF).
The NRCS has created a webpage with information about the Organic Initiative. The site explains the eligibility requirements and provides guidance on how to participate and resources on organic production - www.nrcs.usda.gov/programs/eqip/organic/
According to the NRCS, the states in the chart below have extended the deadline to apply for the EQIP Organic Initiative past May 29th. States not listed in this chart will still continue to accept applications, but may not be able to fund them in 2009. This chart is continually being updated, so please check back.
State
New Deadline
State
New Deadline
Alabama
6/5/09
Mississippi
6/12/09
Alaska
6/12/09
Montana
6/12/09
Arkansas
6/26/09
Nebraska
6/12/09
California
6/26/09
Nevada
6/12/09
Colorado
6/12/09
New York
6/12/09
Connecticut
6/12/09
North Carolina
6/5/09
Delaware
6/26/09
North Dakota
6/15/09
Florida
6/12/09
Ohio
6/12/09
Georgia
6/5/09
Oklahoma
6/12/09
Hawaii
6/15/09
Oregon
6/12/09
Indiana
continuous
Pacific Basin
6/15/09
Iowa
6/13/09
Pennsylvania
6/12/09
Kentucky
6/12/09
South Carolina
6/5/09
Louisiana
6/12/09
South Dakota
6/12/09
Maine
6/12/09
Utah
6/12/09
Maryland
6/26/09
West Virginia
6/12/09
Massachusetts
6/12/09
Virginia
6/30/09
Minnesota
6/30/09
Wisconsin
6/12/09
The Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) is administering the EQIP Organic Initiative. To apply, producers should visit their local NRCS Service Center. Use the NRCS Service Center locator to find the one closest to you - offices.sc.egov.usda.gov/locator/app?agency=nrcs.
Update: NRCS has required each state office to appoint an organic point person. To find out your state's organic point person and his/her contact info, download the NRCS Organic State Contact list (PDF).
The NRCS has created a webpage with information about the Organic Initiative. The site explains the eligibility requirements and provides guidance on how to participate and resources on organic production - www.nrcs.usda.gov/programs/eqip/organic/
According to the NRCS, the states in the chart below have extended the deadline to apply for the EQIP Organic Initiative past May 29th. States not listed in this chart will still continue to accept applications, but may not be able to fund them in 2009. This chart is continually being updated, so please check back.
State
New Deadline
State
New Deadline
Alabama
6/5/09
Mississippi
6/12/09
Alaska
6/12/09
Montana
6/12/09
Arkansas
6/26/09
Nebraska
6/12/09
California
6/26/09
Nevada
6/12/09
Colorado
6/12/09
New York
6/12/09
Connecticut
6/12/09
North Carolina
6/5/09
Delaware
6/26/09
North Dakota
6/15/09
Florida
6/12/09
Ohio
6/12/09
Georgia
6/5/09
Oklahoma
6/12/09
Hawaii
6/15/09
Oregon
6/12/09
Indiana
continuous
Pacific Basin
6/15/09
Iowa
6/13/09
Pennsylvania
6/12/09
Kentucky
6/12/09
South Carolina
6/5/09
Louisiana
6/12/09
South Dakota
6/12/09
Maine
6/12/09
Utah
6/12/09
Maryland
6/26/09
West Virginia
6/12/09
Massachusetts
6/12/09
Virginia
6/30/09
Minnesota
6/30/09
Wisconsin
6/12/09
A strong, stable Congress government may be good for business, but can it contend with the real, looming threat of environmental catastrophe
Business and financial communities reacted with outright euphoria to the recent landslide victory of India’s National Congress Party. Mumbai’s stock exchange soared. Foreign investment poured in. Pundits at what used to be known as investment banks trumpeted the results as nothing less than India finally throwing off the shackles that have held it back from greatness: the limitations of a weak coalition government beholden to Communists. India, we are told, is free at last to embark on a project of wealth creation that the rest of the world will be hard-pressed to imitate. India is expected to recover smartly from the current global recession, hitting an annual economic growth rate of 6.9 percent by next year. Meanwhile, bearish economists are warning that structural weaknesses will delay the recovery of the US economy until well into 2011. The icing on this cake: General Motors is soothing investors rattled by its recent bankruptcy in the United States with the assurance that its India operations will not be affected. Charles Wilson, a former GM CEO, once quipped that “what’s good for General Motors is good for the country.” That quaint, 20th century line now begs only one question: which country? The world’s financial press buzzes that India could be the “new China”; capital (at least some of it) is stampeding from Shenzhen to Bangalore; and the US dollar is in free-fall.After a few terms in the wilderness of coalition dependencies, Congress has, to use a favorite euphemism of recessionary America, “right sized” the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party down to a mere hundred or so seats. It has utterly ham-strung the Left, which held onto a mere 26 seats. Congress need no more worry about the Communists spoiling its new friendship with the United States or its own version of GM’s old dictum: “what’s good for India Inc. is good for India.”Knowing that half the country’s population - and most of tomorrow’s voters - is under the age of 25, Congress has put fresh faces in ministries, including some in their twenties. Thirty-seven-year-old Rahul Gandhi is the heralded heir apparent of the Congress dynasty that stretches back to his great-grandfather, India’s founding prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru. At 63 years of age, the Republic of India is young again. The impending supernovaWhat could possibly hold India back now? Surely Congress’s substantial mandate gives it the power to enact the bold policy measures India requires to overcome the many obstacles in its path to greatness. The list is long: laughably poor infrastructure, desperate farmers committing suicide in droves, peasants and so-called tribals or Adivasis dispossessed of their lands by aggressive resource extraction and industrial expansion (and a related Maoist insurgency), overloaded cities, water shortages, energy deficits, high rates of illiteracy, and a notoriously bad national health care system. Add to these a wealth gap that has widened, not narrowed, in globalization’s wake; the fact that the majority of the world’s malnourished children live in India; the fact that, while 250,000 Indians may qualify as USD millionaires, 800 million live on less than 2 US dollars per day.As staggering as these challenges are, they pale in comparison to the one supernova on track to blow them (along with the rest of us) off the navigable charts of human reckoning: climate change. As every major report on climate change has alarmingly pointed out, the impact of global warming will be most felt by developing countries. In a final injustice of geography and imperial history, the world’s developing countries are by and large also the world’s warmest and most densely populated. Of all the emerging economies whose fortunes are rising, India is one of the most vulnerable to climate change.A weapon of mass destructionIndia has one of the world’s longest coastlines. Rising sea levels are already swallowing up the Sunderbans at the mouth of West Bengal’s mighty Hooghly River. Next door in Bangladesh, 15 percent of whose land mass will be under water if sea levels rise as predicted, things are even worse. Little wonder India is building a fence along its border with Bangladesh in anticipation of a wave of climate-change refugees. At 4,000 kilometers in length, the Indo-Bangladeshi Barrier will rival the Great Wall of China. One can only imagine what rising sea levels will do to the millions crammed onto reclaimed land in Mumbai or in India’s new auto manufacturing hub of Chennai, around which one trusts the government of India has no plans to build fences.Climate change is also already causing the glaciers of the Himalayas to melt at an alarming rate, the rivers they feed are receding. Some scientists are predicting that the sacred Ganga, whose waters have nourished the great grain-producing Gangetic plains as well as the souls of untold millions of Hindu faithful through millennia, is in danger of simply drying up. Three billion people - half the world’s current population - depend on the Himalayas for water. The impact of that water dwindling away is terrifying.If temperatures rise in India by even a couple of degrees Celsius, which they are already well on track to do, the very viability of food plants will be threatened. Yields will plummet in plants simply not evolved to thrive in higher temperatures. More immediately, climate change causes predictable weather patterns to become unpredictable. This is not good news for a country where the vast majority of agricultural production depends on the regular arrival, duration, and bounty of the monsoon rains. No wonder William Cline, in his meticulously researched book Global Warming and Agriculture: Impact Estimates by Country (Center for Global Development 2007) projects that agricultural production in India will decline by as much as 38 percent over current levels by 2080 as a direct result of climate change alone. By that year, India will have added 450 million more people to its population.Shifting prioritiesClimate change is a weapon of mass destruction. Mitigating global warming by whatever means necessary should be the new Indian government’s priority number one. The government should make a major push to develop low-cost alternative energy technologies that don’t require finite, toxic fuel sources (which means both fossil and fissile energy sources).It should help India’s small-scale farmers return to the cultivation of traditional hardy (and higher in protein) food plants such as millet and buckwheat, and install low-cost, highly effective micro-irrigation systems to get the biggest plant-growing benefit for every drop of precious water. It should require all new construction across the country to be green construction, naturally cooler with little or no air conditioning, and with roofs that collect and channel rain when during monsoons.It should recognize that the infrastructure India so desperately needs is green infrastructure that encourages public transportation and the use of bicycles, a realization at long last sweeping cities in richer nations. India cannot afford to do as the west did: get dirty to get rich, then start to think about cleaning up the mess. It also cannot expect wealthier countries to push the hardest to deal with climate change, the global menace that will devastate India far more than it will them.A new pathThe new Congress-led government should hitch its strong mandate to India’s emerging economic power to force the west - sorely tempted by the current economic crisis to ratchet down its efforts - to do the right thing and pay for its share of not only reducing current carbon emissions, but accounting for the carbon accumulated over centuries of western industrial expansion. It should provide incentives to investors willing to put capital behind green technology ventures, especially small-scale technologies quickly scalable among India’s still largely poor population, and it should identify and support the untold number of locally-adapted, grass-roots, inexpensive solutions that business is simply never going to be interested in because they cannot be made into profit-making ventures.India has momentum and history on its side. The new government should propose a new bilateral pact focused on climate change to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when she visits India in July. And it should do so in a spirit very different from that of the nuclear deal where, at least on the US side, billions of dollars in corporate profits and arms sales were major drivers.To grapple with climate change, a different approach is required. The new Congress government needs to bring to this task the real spirit of “young India”, the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi who warned decades ago that the “earth has enough to satisfy man’s need but not every man’s greed.”A climate-change pact between the governments of two of the world’s great democracies should include agreement on bold commitments that would anticipate real progress when the nations of the world gather in Copenhagen later this year to address this rapidly worsening calamity. There is no better way for two nations so key to our collective survival to address the challenge that imperils us all. India must embrace a new path to equity and sustainability, without which democracy will merely be one casualty among many too terrible to imagine
Carbon Capture and Geological Storage (CCS) in emerging developing countries: financing the EU-China Near Zero Emissions Coal Plant project
The European Commission today set out plans to finance the demonstration of carbon capture and geological storage (CCS) in cooperation with China. This comes in the context of a commitment made by the EU and China to develop and demonstrate in China and the EU advanced, near-zero emissions coal technology through carbon capture and storage by 2020. CCS is an important technology in the fight against climate change and has the potential to cut emissions from power generation in fast-developing and coal-dependent emerging economies, such as China.
Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said: “We have taken action to put in place the regulatory framework and the incentives to facilitate CCS demonstration in Europe and now we are making good on our promise to China. Action by developed and developing countries alike is essential to ensure global warming is kept below the danger level of 2ºC. This important cooperation between the EU and China on CCS can act as a model for cooperation under the post-2012 global climate change regime the world must agree in Copenhagen in December."
Commissioner for External Relations Benita Ferrero-Waldner added: "The joint efforts of the EU and China are key to the success of the post-2012 climate change negotiations in Copenhagen and we have an opportunity to show true leadership. The fact that the EU is supporting the construction of a power plant equipped with this innovative technology in China is proof of our common goal to look way beyond Copenhagen and to prepare the ground for cleaner energy production based on coal worldwide."
The need for action by all countries
As set out in the Commission's 'Copenhagen Communication', 1 ( IP/09/141 ), both developed and developing countries need to mitigate their greenhouse gas emissions in order to limit average global warming to less than 2°C compared to pre-industrial levels.
Under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the EU and the other developed countries have agreed to help developing countries tackle climate change through financial and technical cooperation.
EU cooperation with China on CCS
Specifically, the EU agreed in 2005 to cooperate with China on a range of climate change issues, including CCS, in the context of the EU-China Climate Change Partnership. 2
The Communication adopted today sets out the Commission's plans for establishing an investment scheme to co-finance the design and construction of a power plant to demonstrate carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology in China. The Commission has programmed funding of up to €50 million for the construction and operation phase of the project, out of a total of €60 million that has been earmarked for cooperation with emerging economies on cleaner coal technologies and carbon capture and storage.
Depending on the choice of technology used, and assuming China introduces some form of carbon pricing instrument, the additional cost of constructing and operating over 25 years a new power plant equipped with CCS in China is estimated at €300-€550 million. The Commission will work closely with China, Member States, other European Economic Area (EEA) countries and industry to secure the additional financing required. The Commission proposes to combine these funding sources in a public-private partnership, possibly in the form of a a Special Purpose Vehicle.
This investment scheme could serve as a model for other technology cooperation activities between developed countries and emerging/developing countries in the context of a post-2012 climate change agreement.
The importance of CCS
Coal, the fossil fuel with the highest emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, is China's predominant energy source, contributing 70% to the energy mix. It is expected to maintain its important role into the future. Ways therefore need to be found to reduce the impact of coal burning on the climate. CCS technologies could make a significant contribution by mitigating the greenhouse gas emissions produced. CCS would be a bridge technology while alternatives to fossil fuels are further developed and deployed.
European Commission analysis indicates that under an emissions scenario compatible with meeting the 2ºC target, around 18% of global fossil fuel power generation would have to be fitted with CCS technology in 2030.
Action on CCS in the EU
EU leaders have committed to the establishment of a network of up to 12 CCS demonstration plants in the EU by 2015.
The new EU directive on the geological storage of carbon dioxide, 3 agreed as part of the EU climate and energy package ( IP/09/628 ), sets out an enabling legal framework for CCS to enable the safe operation of CCS in Europe. The EU has also agreed to incentivise CCS demonstration through the EU Emissions Trading System (CO 2 safely stored will not count as emitted), by providing funding from the auctioning of EU ETS allowances which can be used to co-finance CCS demonstration plants), and through revised State Aid rules.
The European Economic Recovery Plan has allocated €1050 million to CCS demonstration projects inside the EU. Several EU companies have announced demonstration plants to be completed in the EU over the next 5-10 years.
Next steps
The Commission invites EU Member States, interested EEA States and China to pledge financial and political support for this novel initiative. It also invites the European Parliament to provide its political support.
Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said: “We have taken action to put in place the regulatory framework and the incentives to facilitate CCS demonstration in Europe and now we are making good on our promise to China. Action by developed and developing countries alike is essential to ensure global warming is kept below the danger level of 2ºC. This important cooperation between the EU and China on CCS can act as a model for cooperation under the post-2012 global climate change regime the world must agree in Copenhagen in December."
Commissioner for External Relations Benita Ferrero-Waldner added: "The joint efforts of the EU and China are key to the success of the post-2012 climate change negotiations in Copenhagen and we have an opportunity to show true leadership. The fact that the EU is supporting the construction of a power plant equipped with this innovative technology in China is proof of our common goal to look way beyond Copenhagen and to prepare the ground for cleaner energy production based on coal worldwide."
The need for action by all countries
As set out in the Commission's 'Copenhagen Communication', 1 ( IP/09/141 ), both developed and developing countries need to mitigate their greenhouse gas emissions in order to limit average global warming to less than 2°C compared to pre-industrial levels.
Under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the EU and the other developed countries have agreed to help developing countries tackle climate change through financial and technical cooperation.
EU cooperation with China on CCS
Specifically, the EU agreed in 2005 to cooperate with China on a range of climate change issues, including CCS, in the context of the EU-China Climate Change Partnership. 2
The Communication adopted today sets out the Commission's plans for establishing an investment scheme to co-finance the design and construction of a power plant to demonstrate carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology in China. The Commission has programmed funding of up to €50 million for the construction and operation phase of the project, out of a total of €60 million that has been earmarked for cooperation with emerging economies on cleaner coal technologies and carbon capture and storage.
Depending on the choice of technology used, and assuming China introduces some form of carbon pricing instrument, the additional cost of constructing and operating over 25 years a new power plant equipped with CCS in China is estimated at €300-€550 million. The Commission will work closely with China, Member States, other European Economic Area (EEA) countries and industry to secure the additional financing required. The Commission proposes to combine these funding sources in a public-private partnership, possibly in the form of a a Special Purpose Vehicle.
This investment scheme could serve as a model for other technology cooperation activities between developed countries and emerging/developing countries in the context of a post-2012 climate change agreement.
The importance of CCS
Coal, the fossil fuel with the highest emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, is China's predominant energy source, contributing 70% to the energy mix. It is expected to maintain its important role into the future. Ways therefore need to be found to reduce the impact of coal burning on the climate. CCS technologies could make a significant contribution by mitigating the greenhouse gas emissions produced. CCS would be a bridge technology while alternatives to fossil fuels are further developed and deployed.
European Commission analysis indicates that under an emissions scenario compatible with meeting the 2ºC target, around 18% of global fossil fuel power generation would have to be fitted with CCS technology in 2030.
Action on CCS in the EU
EU leaders have committed to the establishment of a network of up to 12 CCS demonstration plants in the EU by 2015.
The new EU directive on the geological storage of carbon dioxide, 3 agreed as part of the EU climate and energy package ( IP/09/628 ), sets out an enabling legal framework for CCS to enable the safe operation of CCS in Europe. The EU has also agreed to incentivise CCS demonstration through the EU Emissions Trading System (CO 2 safely stored will not count as emitted), by providing funding from the auctioning of EU ETS allowances which can be used to co-finance CCS demonstration plants), and through revised State Aid rules.
The European Economic Recovery Plan has allocated €1050 million to CCS demonstration projects inside the EU. Several EU companies have announced demonstration plants to be completed in the EU over the next 5-10 years.
Next steps
The Commission invites EU Member States, interested EEA States and China to pledge financial and political support for this novel initiative. It also invites the European Parliament to provide its political support.
Welcome to the Green Week Conference 2009
The biggest annual conference on European environment policy turns the spotlight this year on the multi-faceted challenges of climate change.
What are the prospects for reaching a new global deal to control climate change at the crucial Copenhagen conference in December?
How can we best 'climate-proof' our economies against the impacts of present and future climate change?
How can we create a carbon-free society by 2050?
How can we ensure action to address climate change best serves conservation of the ecosystems that support life on Earth?
These are some of the many questions Green Week 2009 will be examining in three days of discussion and debate between high-level speakers from Europe and beyond.
Green Week is a unique opportunity for exchanges of experience and good practice.
Some 3,500 participants are expected from EU institutions, business and industry, non-governmental organisations, public authorities, the scientific community and academia.
What are the prospects for reaching a new global deal to control climate change at the crucial Copenhagen conference in December?
How can we best 'climate-proof' our economies against the impacts of present and future climate change?
How can we create a carbon-free society by 2050?
How can we ensure action to address climate change best serves conservation of the ecosystems that support life on Earth?
These are some of the many questions Green Week 2009 will be examining in three days of discussion and debate between high-level speakers from Europe and beyond.
Green Week is a unique opportunity for exchanges of experience and good practice.
Some 3,500 participants are expected from EU institutions, business and industry, non-governmental organisations, public authorities, the scientific community and academia.
Climate Change: U.N. Launches 'Seal the Deal' Campaign
Growing U.S. support for U.N. initiatives is raising hopes among those who want to see the world community take immediate and concrete action to tackle climate change, although their optimism is also tinged with scepticism.
'So far, the response by the world’s governments has been less than sufficient,' said U.N. Secretary General-Ban Ki-moon at a news conference held outside the world body’s headquarters in an open space filled with leafy trees.
In pushing the U.N. agenda on climate change, Ban has invited world leaders to discuss this issue for one day on Sep. 22 before they participate in the General Assembly’s annual debate.
The goal of the September summit is to mobilise the 'political momentum needed to seal the deal' in Copenhagen, Denmark, 'on a fair, effective and scientifically ambitious new climate framework,' Ban said.
'We have a lot of work to do, and not a lot of time,' he said. 'This is the time to act. All nations, and all leaders, have a stake in a successful outcome in Copenhagen. Climate change involves everyone.'
Ban was joined by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who endorsed the 'Seal the Deal' campaign and said his administration would organise a series of events in the city when the world leaders come here in September.
The liberal Republican mayor of one of the world’s most populous cities said he hopes that the summit on climate change will help spotlight 'the urgent need for action, both to slow the pace of climate change, and also to adapt to the environmental effects of global warming.'
'We have to do what is right for the world and what is right for America,' said Bloomberg. 'The action is needed on a global level, [but] we need to shrink our climate footprint.'
His remarks allude to the fact that for years the United States has refused to take a substantive role in addressing the issue of global warming. The U.S. is responsible for 35 percent of carbon emissions, although its share in the world population is just 5 percent.
U.N. experts on population and environment say big cities like New York are responsible for at least 75 percent of the resources, including a huge quantity of fossil fuels, consumed by the global population.
According to the U.N., with more than three billion people residing in the cities, for the first time the world's urban population now exceeds the number of those living in rural areas.
The U.N.'s Millennium Ecosystem Assessment report in 2007 shows that before the industrial era, nearly half of Earth's land surface was covered with forests. Today, that proportion has dwindled to 10 percent.
During the news conference, Bloomberg seemed convinced that the current economic crisis in the United States and the world required a deeper understanding of the issue of environmental disasters and their impact on the lives of millions of working people.
'Going green is the formula for economic recovery,' he stressed.
Steve Howard of the Climate Group, an independent organisation trying to bring government and business leaders together to address the issue of climate change, agrees with Bloomberg.
'Influential U.S. partnerships and smarter choices will be critical to tackling global warming and setting the world on a pathway to a prosperous low carbon future,' he said.
But the low carbon future based on the concept of treating the climate change issue from the business point of view is not acceptable to who look at the environmental issues from the perspective of human rights.
On Tuesday, while Ban and Bloomberg spoke at the news conference in New York, a number of environmental activists, including the top climate scientist James Hansen and the actress Daryl Hannah, were arrested in Coal River Valley, West Virginia.
They were protesting against the destruction of mountains by the coal mining industry. Despite its supportive statements on environmental issues, the Barack Obama administration said it would take different measures but not abolish the strip mining practice.
Tuesday’s protest is happening just days before a Congressional hearing titled, 'The Impacts of Mountaintop Removal Mining on Water Quality in Appalachia.'
'I am not a politician; I am a scientist and a citizen,' said Hansen in a statement. 'Politicians may have to advocate for halfway measures if they choose. But it is our responsibility to make sure our representatives feel the full force of citizens who speak for what is right, not what is politically expedient.'
'Mountaintop removal, providing only a small fraction of our energy, should be abolished,' he added.
Two weeks ago, the Obama administration announced steps to end the fast tracking of certain mountaintop removal coal mine permits and to add tougher enforcement in Appalachia.
However, it remains unclear what, if any, improvements this will have on-the-ground in that region, activists say. Without a significant change in policy, mining companies will continue to destroy historic mountain ranges and bury communities' drinking water in toxic waste, they say.
'Every day, mountaintop removal mines use more explosive power than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima,' said Bo Webb, who organised the protest. 'This is not our traditional way of life, and we do not support the destruction of our land or our communities.'
A recent study by the University of Massachusetts found that investment in clean energy projects like wind power and mass transit creates more than three times more jobs than the same amount of spending on the coal industry.
The wind power sector has grown to employ more U.S. workers than coal mining as demand for clean energy has jumped over the past decade.
In New York, without naming the United States and other industrialised nations, the U.N. chief tried to make it clear that the rich nations must take responsibility to reach an agreement in Copenhagen on issues related to global warming.
'We have less than 10 years to halt the rise of greenhouse gas emissions if we are to avoid catastrophic consequences for people and planet,' he said. 'Now is the time for action
'So far, the response by the world’s governments has been less than sufficient,' said U.N. Secretary General-Ban Ki-moon at a news conference held outside the world body’s headquarters in an open space filled with leafy trees.
In pushing the U.N. agenda on climate change, Ban has invited world leaders to discuss this issue for one day on Sep. 22 before they participate in the General Assembly’s annual debate.
The goal of the September summit is to mobilise the 'political momentum needed to seal the deal' in Copenhagen, Denmark, 'on a fair, effective and scientifically ambitious new climate framework,' Ban said.
'We have a lot of work to do, and not a lot of time,' he said. 'This is the time to act. All nations, and all leaders, have a stake in a successful outcome in Copenhagen. Climate change involves everyone.'
Ban was joined by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who endorsed the 'Seal the Deal' campaign and said his administration would organise a series of events in the city when the world leaders come here in September.
The liberal Republican mayor of one of the world’s most populous cities said he hopes that the summit on climate change will help spotlight 'the urgent need for action, both to slow the pace of climate change, and also to adapt to the environmental effects of global warming.'
'We have to do what is right for the world and what is right for America,' said Bloomberg. 'The action is needed on a global level, [but] we need to shrink our climate footprint.'
His remarks allude to the fact that for years the United States has refused to take a substantive role in addressing the issue of global warming. The U.S. is responsible for 35 percent of carbon emissions, although its share in the world population is just 5 percent.
U.N. experts on population and environment say big cities like New York are responsible for at least 75 percent of the resources, including a huge quantity of fossil fuels, consumed by the global population.
According to the U.N., with more than three billion people residing in the cities, for the first time the world's urban population now exceeds the number of those living in rural areas.
The U.N.'s Millennium Ecosystem Assessment report in 2007 shows that before the industrial era, nearly half of Earth's land surface was covered with forests. Today, that proportion has dwindled to 10 percent.
During the news conference, Bloomberg seemed convinced that the current economic crisis in the United States and the world required a deeper understanding of the issue of environmental disasters and their impact on the lives of millions of working people.
'Going green is the formula for economic recovery,' he stressed.
Steve Howard of the Climate Group, an independent organisation trying to bring government and business leaders together to address the issue of climate change, agrees with Bloomberg.
'Influential U.S. partnerships and smarter choices will be critical to tackling global warming and setting the world on a pathway to a prosperous low carbon future,' he said.
But the low carbon future based on the concept of treating the climate change issue from the business point of view is not acceptable to who look at the environmental issues from the perspective of human rights.
On Tuesday, while Ban and Bloomberg spoke at the news conference in New York, a number of environmental activists, including the top climate scientist James Hansen and the actress Daryl Hannah, were arrested in Coal River Valley, West Virginia.
They were protesting against the destruction of mountains by the coal mining industry. Despite its supportive statements on environmental issues, the Barack Obama administration said it would take different measures but not abolish the strip mining practice.
Tuesday’s protest is happening just days before a Congressional hearing titled, 'The Impacts of Mountaintop Removal Mining on Water Quality in Appalachia.'
'I am not a politician; I am a scientist and a citizen,' said Hansen in a statement. 'Politicians may have to advocate for halfway measures if they choose. But it is our responsibility to make sure our representatives feel the full force of citizens who speak for what is right, not what is politically expedient.'
'Mountaintop removal, providing only a small fraction of our energy, should be abolished,' he added.
Two weeks ago, the Obama administration announced steps to end the fast tracking of certain mountaintop removal coal mine permits and to add tougher enforcement in Appalachia.
However, it remains unclear what, if any, improvements this will have on-the-ground in that region, activists say. Without a significant change in policy, mining companies will continue to destroy historic mountain ranges and bury communities' drinking water in toxic waste, they say.
'Every day, mountaintop removal mines use more explosive power than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima,' said Bo Webb, who organised the protest. 'This is not our traditional way of life, and we do not support the destruction of our land or our communities.'
A recent study by the University of Massachusetts found that investment in clean energy projects like wind power and mass transit creates more than three times more jobs than the same amount of spending on the coal industry.
The wind power sector has grown to employ more U.S. workers than coal mining as demand for clean energy has jumped over the past decade.
In New York, without naming the United States and other industrialised nations, the U.N. chief tried to make it clear that the rich nations must take responsibility to reach an agreement in Copenhagen on issues related to global warming.
'We have less than 10 years to halt the rise of greenhouse gas emissions if we are to avoid catastrophic consequences for people and planet,' he said. 'Now is the time for action
Biodiversity
The variety of life on Earth, its biological diversity is commonly referred to as biodiversity. The number of species of plants, animals, and microorganisms, the enormous diversity of genes in these species, the different ecosystems on the planet, such as deserts, rainforests and coral reefs are all part of a biologically diverse Earth. Appropriate conservation and sustainable development strategies attempt to recognize this as being integral to any approach. Almost all cultures have in some way or form recognized the importance that nature, and its biological diversity has had upon them and the need to maintain it. Yet, power, greed and politics have affected the precarious balance.
as taken from anup shah
Why Is Biodiversity Important? Who Cares?
Why is Biodiversity important? Does it really matter if there aren’t so many species?
Biodiversity boosts ecosystem productivity where each species, no matter how small, all have an important role to play.
For example, a larger number of plant species means a greater variety of crops; greater species diversity ensures natural sustainability for all life forms; and healthy ecosystems can better withstand and recover from a variety of disasters.
And so, while we dominate this planet, we still need to preserve the diversity in wildlife.
Read “Why Is Biodiversity Important? Who Cares?” to learn more.
Loss of Biodiversity and Extinctions
It is feared that human activity is causing massive extinctions. From various animal species, forests and the ecosystems that forests support, marine life. The costs associated with deteriorating or vanishing ecosystems will be high. However, sustainable development and consumption would help avert ecological problems.
Read “Loss of Biodiversity and Extinctions” to learn more.
Nature and Animal Conservation
Preserving species and their habitats is important for ecosystems to self-sustain themselves. Yet, the pressures to destroy habitat for logging, illegal hunting, and other facts are making conservation a struggle.
Read “Nature and Animal Conservation” to learn more.
Climate Change Affects Biodiversity
The World Resources Institute reports that there is a link between biodiversity and climate change. Rapid global warming can affect an ecosystems chances to adapt naturally. What have governments around the world been trying to do about it?
Read “Climate Change Affects Biodiversity” to learn more.
Coral Reefs
.
One type of ecosystem that perhaps is neglected more than any other is perhaps also the richest in biodiversity—the coral reefs.
Coral reefs are useful to the environment and to people in a number of ways. However, all around the world, much of the world’s marine biodiversity face threats from human and activities as well as natural. It is feared that very soon, many reefs could die off.
Read “Coral Reefs” to learn more.
Biosafety Protocol 1999
The February 1999 Biodiversity Protocol meeting in Colombia broke down because USA, not even a signatory to the Convention on Biological Diversity, to which the protocol is meant to be part of, and five other countries of the "Miami Group" felt that their business interests were threatened. The safety concerns were unfortunately overridden by trade concerns. Some technological advances, especially in genetically engineered food, have been very fast paced and products are being pushed into the market place without having been proven safe. All over the world, concerned citizens and governments have been trying to take precautionary measures. However, 1999 was not a successful year in that respect.
Read “Biosafety Protocol 1999” to learn more.
Biosafety Protocol 2000
A Biosafety Protocol meeting was hosted in Montreal, Canada January 24 to January 28. Compared to the fiasco of the previous year, this time, there had been a somewhat successful treaty to regulate the international transport and release of genetically modified organisms to protect natural biological diversity. However, there were a number of important and serious weaknesses too.
Read “Biosafety Protocol 2000” to learn more.
Biodiversity Links for more Information
Read “Biodiversity Links for more Information” to learn more.
Climate Change and Global Warming
The climate is changing. The earth is warming up, and there is now overwhelming scientific consensus that it is happening, and human-induced. With global warming on the increase and species and their habitats on the decrease, chances for ecosystems to adapt naturally are diminishing. Many are agreed that climate change may be one of the greatest threats facing the planet. Recent years show increasing temperatures in various regions, and/or increasing extremities in weather patterns.
This section explores some of the effects of climate change. It also attempts to provide insights into what governments, companies, international institutions, and other organizations are attempting to do about this issue, as well as the challenges they face. Some of the major conferences in recent years are also discussed.
Read “Climate Change and Global Warming” to learn more.
Environmental Issues
Environmental issues are also a major global issue. Humans depend on a sustainable and healthy environment, and yet we have damaged the environment in numerous ways. This section introduces other issues including biodiversity, climate change, animal and nature conservation, population, genetically modified food, sustainable development, and more.
as taken from anup shah
Why Is Biodiversity Important? Who Cares?
Why is Biodiversity important? Does it really matter if there aren’t so many species?
Biodiversity boosts ecosystem productivity where each species, no matter how small, all have an important role to play.
For example, a larger number of plant species means a greater variety of crops; greater species diversity ensures natural sustainability for all life forms; and healthy ecosystems can better withstand and recover from a variety of disasters.
And so, while we dominate this planet, we still need to preserve the diversity in wildlife.
Read “Why Is Biodiversity Important? Who Cares?” to learn more.
Loss of Biodiversity and Extinctions
It is feared that human activity is causing massive extinctions. From various animal species, forests and the ecosystems that forests support, marine life. The costs associated with deteriorating or vanishing ecosystems will be high. However, sustainable development and consumption would help avert ecological problems.
Read “Loss of Biodiversity and Extinctions” to learn more.
Nature and Animal Conservation
Preserving species and their habitats is important for ecosystems to self-sustain themselves. Yet, the pressures to destroy habitat for logging, illegal hunting, and other facts are making conservation a struggle.
Read “Nature and Animal Conservation” to learn more.
Climate Change Affects Biodiversity
The World Resources Institute reports that there is a link between biodiversity and climate change. Rapid global warming can affect an ecosystems chances to adapt naturally. What have governments around the world been trying to do about it?
Read “Climate Change Affects Biodiversity” to learn more.
Coral Reefs
.
One type of ecosystem that perhaps is neglected more than any other is perhaps also the richest in biodiversity—the coral reefs.
Coral reefs are useful to the environment and to people in a number of ways. However, all around the world, much of the world’s marine biodiversity face threats from human and activities as well as natural. It is feared that very soon, many reefs could die off.
Read “Coral Reefs” to learn more.
Biosafety Protocol 1999
The February 1999 Biodiversity Protocol meeting in Colombia broke down because USA, not even a signatory to the Convention on Biological Diversity, to which the protocol is meant to be part of, and five other countries of the "Miami Group" felt that their business interests were threatened. The safety concerns were unfortunately overridden by trade concerns. Some technological advances, especially in genetically engineered food, have been very fast paced and products are being pushed into the market place without having been proven safe. All over the world, concerned citizens and governments have been trying to take precautionary measures. However, 1999 was not a successful year in that respect.
Read “Biosafety Protocol 1999” to learn more.
Biosafety Protocol 2000
A Biosafety Protocol meeting was hosted in Montreal, Canada January 24 to January 28. Compared to the fiasco of the previous year, this time, there had been a somewhat successful treaty to regulate the international transport and release of genetically modified organisms to protect natural biological diversity. However, there were a number of important and serious weaknesses too.
Read “Biosafety Protocol 2000” to learn more.
Biodiversity Links for more Information
Read “Biodiversity Links for more Information” to learn more.
Climate Change and Global Warming
The climate is changing. The earth is warming up, and there is now overwhelming scientific consensus that it is happening, and human-induced. With global warming on the increase and species and their habitats on the decrease, chances for ecosystems to adapt naturally are diminishing. Many are agreed that climate change may be one of the greatest threats facing the planet. Recent years show increasing temperatures in various regions, and/or increasing extremities in weather patterns.
This section explores some of the effects of climate change. It also attempts to provide insights into what governments, companies, international institutions, and other organizations are attempting to do about this issue, as well as the challenges they face. Some of the major conferences in recent years are also discussed.
Read “Climate Change and Global Warming” to learn more.
Environmental Issues
Environmental issues are also a major global issue. Humans depend on a sustainable and healthy environment, and yet we have damaged the environment in numerous ways. This section introduces other issues including biodiversity, climate change, animal and nature conservation, population, genetically modified food, sustainable development, and more.
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