Bio fuel from Jatropha crops, biogas from municipal waste, wind power and solar cells are all on the agenda in Kenya. Climate change and other factors have caused rainfall to decrease, which again leads to a decline in hydropower that presently account for 60 percent of Kenya’s electricity supply.
“We are making a big bet on renewable energy so that we are always prepared, even when the rains fail,” Prime Minister Raila Odinga says according to Business Today.
A government task force is to identify green energy projects that can generate 2000 MW of electricity. The figure can be compared to the present installed capacity of 1296 MW. 80 percent of Kenyans live in rural areas with scarce access to electricity. For the country to develop, production needs to be raised.
As water levels in dams producing hydropower are at record lows, Kenya’s reserve margin for power production is non-existent and millions of consumers are experiencing rationing. Rainfall is expected to decrease further, partly due to climate change and partly due to illegal logging which brings down the capacity of soils to catch water.
The government, already faced with a budget deficit, urges foreign investments in the proposed green energy projects.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Sunday, August 23, 2009
U.S. approves oilsands pipeline (reality trumps AGW religion)
The United States approved Enbridge Inc's $3.3 billion Alberta Clipper pipeline project on Thursday, granting the project, which will deliver Canadian oil to U.S. refineries, a presidential permit, and raising the ire of some environmental groups.
The U.S. State Department said that allowing construction of the 450,000 barrel per day line serves U.S. interests by adding secure oil supplies from outside the OPEC nations at a time when political tensions in some producing regions threaten to interfere with oil shipments. ...
Most of the oil shipped on the line will come from Canadian oil sands producers, which have been under attack from some U.S. environmental groups and legislators for boosting greenhouse gas emissions because of expanding production in the oil sands -- a Florida-sized region of northern Alberta that contains the largest oil reserves outside the Middle East.
The State Department said it took greenhouse gas emissions into account when deciding to issue the permit, saying that the issue is best addressed through the domestic policies of the United States and Canada and through international agreements." "U.S. approves Alberta Clipper pipeline project"
The U.S. State Department said that allowing construction of the 450,000 barrel per day line serves U.S. interests by adding secure oil supplies from outside the OPEC nations at a time when political tensions in some producing regions threaten to interfere with oil shipments. ...
Most of the oil shipped on the line will come from Canadian oil sands producers, which have been under attack from some U.S. environmental groups and legislators for boosting greenhouse gas emissions because of expanding production in the oil sands -- a Florida-sized region of northern Alberta that contains the largest oil reserves outside the Middle East.
The State Department said it took greenhouse gas emissions into account when deciding to issue the permit, saying that the issue is best addressed through the domestic policies of the United States and Canada and through international agreements." "U.S. approves Alberta Clipper pipeline project"
Nile Delta: 'We are going underwater. The sea will conquer our lands'
Maged Shamdy's ancestors arrived on the shores of Lake Burrulus in the mid-19th century. In the dusty heat of Cairo at the time, French industrialists were rounding up forced labour squads to help build the Suez Canal, back-breaking labour from which thousands did not return. Like countless other Egyptians, the Shamdys abandoned their family home and fled north into the Nile Delta, where they could hide within the marshy swamplands that fanned out from the great river's edge.
As the years passed, colonial rulers came and went. But the Shamdys stayed, carving out a new life as farmers and fishermen on one of the most fertile tracts of land in the world. A century and a half later, Maged is still farming his family's fields. In between taking up the rice harvest and dredging his irrigation canals, however, he must contemplate a new threat to his family and livelihood, one that may well prove more deadly than any of Egypt's previous invaders. "We are going underwater," the 34-year-old says simply. "It's like an occupation: the rising sea will conquer our lands."
Maged understands better than most the menace of coastal erosion, which is steadily ingesting the edge of Egypt in some places at an astonishing rate of almost 100 metres a year. Just a few miles from his home lies Lake Burrulus itself, where Nile flower spreads all the way out to trees on the horizon. Those trunks used to be on land; now they stand knee-deep in water.
Maged's imperial imagery may sound overblown, but travel around Egypt's vast, overcrowded Delta region and you hear the same terms used time and again to describe the impact climate change is having on these ancient lands. Egypt's breadbasket is littered with the remnants of old colonisers, from the Romans to the Germans, and today its 50 million inhabitants jostle for space among the crumbling forts and cemeteries of those who sought to subjugate them in the past.
On the Delta's eastern border, in Port Said, an empty stone plinth is all that remains of a statue of Ferdinand de Lesseps, the man who built the Suez Canal; somewhere along the Delta's westernmost reaches, the long-lost tomb of Cleopatra lies buried. With such a rich history of foreign rule, it's only natural that the latest hostile force knocking at the gates should be couched in the language of occupation.
"Egypt is a graveyard for occupiers," observes Ramadan el-Atr, a fruit farmer near the antiquated town of Rosetta, where authorities have contracted a Chinese company to build a huge wall of concrete blocks in the ocean to try to save any more land from melting away. "Just like the others, the sea will come and go – but we will always survive."
Scientists aren't so sure. Two years ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change declared Egypt's Nile Delta to be among the top three areas on the planet most vulnerable to a rise in sea levels, and even the most optimistic predictions of global temperature increase will still displace millions of Egyptians from one of the most densely populated regions on earth.
The Delta spills out from the northern stretches of the capital into 10,000 square miles of farmland fed by the Nile's branches. It is home to two-thirds of the country's rapidly growing population, and responsible for more than 60% of its food supply: Egypt relies unconditionally on it for survival. But with its 270 km of coastline lying at a dangerously low elevation (large parts are between zero and 1m above sea level, with some areas lying below it), any melting of the polar ice caps could see its farmland and cities – including the historical port of Alexandria – transformed into an ocean floor. A 1-m rise in the sea level, which many experts think likely within the next 100 years, will cause 20% of the Delta to go underwater. At the other extreme, the 14-m rise that would result from the disappearance of Greenland and western Antarctica would leave the Mediterranean lapping at the northern suburbs of Cairo, with practically all of the Delta underwater.
Already, a series of environmental crises are parking themselves on the banks of the Nile. Some are subtle, like the river's quiet vanishing act in the Delta's northern fields; others, like the dramatic collapse of coastal lands into the ocean, are more striking. Major flooding is yet to become a reality but, from industrial pollution to soil salinity, a whole new set of interconnected green concerns is now forcing its way into Egyptian public discourse for the first time.
"The Delta is a kind of Bangladesh story," says Dr Rick Tutwiler, director of the American University in Cairo's Desert Development Centre. "You've got a massive population, overcrowding, a threat to all natural resources from the pressure of all the people, production, pollution, cars and agricultural chemicals. And on top of all that, there's the rising sea. It's the perfect storm."
Follow the Nile north out of Cairo on the old agricultural road, and you find it hard to pinpoint where the city ends and the lotus-shaped Delta begins. Carpeted with redbrick apartment blocks and spliced with streets in every direction, the lush greenery of the Nile's splintered arteries is almost impossible to appreciate in isolation. This is where the urban and the rural get lost in each other, with livestock living in doorways and workers camping out in fields. In the past, literary giants venerated the Delta's wild marshlands; today, any clear-cut divisions between the metropolis and the countryside have long faded away.
Urban encroachment – the steady chipping away at arable land through unauthorised construction – haunts the Delta everywhere you look. Despite a web of legislation outlawing illegal building practices and theoretically "fencing off" agricultural land, in every direction the sweeping vista of wheat fields and rice paddies always ends abruptly in a cluster of half-built homes. There are more than 4,000 people per square mile in the Delta; it's hard to think of any other place where humans and the environment around them are more closely intertwined. With Egypt's present-day population of 83 million set to increase to more than 110 million in the next two decades, the seemingly unstoppable spread of bricks and mortar over the soil is both the most visible symptom of the country's demographic time-bomb and an inevitable response to it.
More people in the Delta means more cars, more pollution and less land to feed them all on, just at a time when increased crop production is needed most. Yet the desertification of land through human habitation is, worryingly, only the beginning of the problem. Although few in the Delta have noticed it yet, the freshwater of the Nile – which has enabled Egypt to survive as a unified state longer than any other territory on earth – is creaking under the strain of this population boom. The world's most famous river has provided the backdrop to all manner of dramas throughout history, real and fictional. Now, around its northernmost branches where the minarets and pylons thin out and the landscape becomes more windswept, another is playing out to devastating effect.
The villain is salinity. I visit one of the worst-affected regions, Kafr el-Sheikh, on a Friday morning when the fields have emptied out for the noon prayer. The streets are eerily silent; with its people gone, the area takes on the appearance of one of Italo Calvino's fantastical string cities, chock-a-block with the shells of human habitation but no living souls remaining. The exception is Maged, who owns six feddan (about six acres) of land near the village of el-Hadadi.
Maged is halfway down a hole when I approach his house. Clambering out apologetically, he explains that German experts visited this area last year and declared that the fresh water being pumped to local villages "wasn't fit for a dog to drink." After months of phone calls to the national water company, none of which were answered, Maged decided to lay down a new set of pipes himself in the hope it would improve the quality of drinking water for his two young daughters. It's hot, exhausting work, which he fits in between his farming duties and a new part-time job as an accountant in a local alfalfa plant. "We don't have much time on our hands at the moment," Maged says, dusting himself off and gulping down some fresh melon juice. "Nobody can make a living solely off the land any more."
On a tour of his fields, I see why. The rich brown soil has greyed out in recent years, leaving a barren salt-encrustation on the surface. The cause is underground saltwater intrusion from the nearby coast, which pushes up through the soil and kills off roots. Coastal farmland has always been threatened by saltwater, but salinity has traditionally been kept at bay by plentiful supplies of fresh water gushing over the soil and flushing out the salt. It used to happen naturally with the Nile's seasonal floods; after the construction of Egypt's High Dam in the 1970s (one of the most ambitious engineering projects on earth), these seasonal floods came to an end, but a vast network of irrigation canals continued to bring gallons of fresh water to the people who worked the land, the fellahin, ensuring salinity levels remained low.
Today, however, Nile water barely reaches this corner of the Delta. Population growth has sapped its energy upstream, and what "freshwater" does make it downriver is increasingly awash with toxins and other impurities. Farmers such as Maged now essentially rely on waste water – a mix of agricultural drainage and sewage – from the nearby town of Sidi Salim.
The result is plummeting fertility; local farmers say that whereas their fathers spent just a handful of Egyptian pounds on chemicals to keep the harvests bountiful, they now have to put aside between 25 and 80% of their profits for fertilisers just to keep their crops alive.
"We can see with our own eyes that the water is no good, it's less and less pure," Maged says. He points out huge swaths of neighbouring land that once glimmered with rice paddies; recently they have been dug up and replaced by fish farms, the ground too barren for crop cultivation. Further out, in the village of Damru, the green fields of 10 years ago are cracked and brown, now put into service as informal football pitches and rubbish dumps.
Experts believe the problem is only going to get worse. "We currently have a major water deficit in Egypt, with only 700 cubic metres of freshwater per person," explains Professor Salah Soliman of Alexandria University. "That's already short of the 1,000 cubic metres per person the UN believes is the minimum needed for water security. Now, with the population increase, it will drop to 450 cubic metres per person – and this is all before we take into account the impact of climate change."
That impact is likely to be a 70% drop in the amount of Nile water reaching the Delta over the next 50 years, due to increased evaporation and heavier demands on water use upstream. The consequences of all these ecological changes on food production are staggering: experts at Egypt's Soils, Water and Environment Research Institute predict that wheat and maize yields could be down 40% and 50% respectively in the next 30 years, and that farmers who make a living off the land will lose around $1,000 per hectare for each degree rise in the average temperature.
The farmers here feel abandoned by the state; there are regular dismissive references to the "New Age," a euphemism for the much-hated regime of President Hosni Mubarak, whose neoliberal reform programmes and widespread corruption scandals have provoked a wave of popular discontent across the country. This disconnect between the state and its people has led to distrust of government scientists who think coastal erosion, rather than freshwater scarcity, is the main reason for the farmers' problems. And, in a worrying twist for Egypt's creaking economy, the erosion isn't only affecting farmers. "Unfortunately, most of our industry and investment has been built on sites very close to the shore," says Soliman. "There's only so much water we can hold back."
Ras el-Bar is a small holiday resort at the mouth of the Nile's Damietta branch. This was the summer paradise that Nobel prizewinning novelist Naguib Mahfouz's well-heeled characters would escape to when the heat of the capital became unbearable; today its squat pink lighthouse and endless boulevards of deserted, low-rise holiday homes have the faded feel of a 1950s Disneyland.
Although still popular in July and August, Ras el-Bar has been overtaken as a seaside destination by the brash consumerism of a new generation of towns: Sharm el-Sheikh, Marina, Hurghada. In place of tourists, however, new factories have arrived here in abundance, including some that nearby residents believe are poisoning the air. The arrival of one industrial plant in Damietta, which coincided with the ministry of environment's last-minute decision not to designate the area a protected nature reserve, is a familiar story of shady backdoor deals, public outrage and the studious disregard of local opinions. In this case, the locals managed to postpone the factory's construction, but other plants remain. "In the morning here you can see nothing but smoke," says Mohammed Fawzia, who is fishing in a canal down by the side of an industrial complex run by the state-owned Mopco company. "Take photos of it for us so we can show who is killing our children. We want the factories gone."
Many Cairo-based experts, however, insist that the task of coping with the dramatic ecological changes faced by the Delta is made harder by the ignorance of people such as Mohammed. They claim the fellahin are too uneducated to change their ways. But they are wrong: while farmers in the southern Delta, where Nile water is still relatively plentiful, have little knowledge of climate change, those in the north are painfully aware of the science behind the death of their land. However, they also have little time to listen to the harrying of a government which is widely seen to preach green rhetoric on the one hand but is only too willing to sell out the environment on the other, along with the local people.
Money talks in Egypt, and sustainable development is forgotten when the interests of the rich and powerful – such as the industrial plants in Damietta or the influential Badrawi clan in Daqahliyah – are at stake. The repression and self-interest of Mubarak's inner circle have left them bereft of any moral authority on environmental issues.
And while scientists, academics and community organisers are making a concerted effort to educate Egyptians about the dangers of climate change, there is confusion over whether the focus of all these programmes should be on promoting ways to combat climate change, or on accepting climate change as inevitable and instead encouraging new forms of adaptation to the nation's uncertain ecological future.
Efforts are further hampered by a popular feeling that this is a crisis made by the west. "We're not responsible for climate change," says Soliman, pointing out that Egypt's contribution to global carbon emissions is an underwhelming 0.5%, nine times less per capita than the US. "But unfortunately the consequence of climate change is no respecter of national borders."
The scale of the crisis – more people, less land, less water, less food – is overwhelming, and has infected discussion of climate change with a toxic combination of cynicism and fatalism at every level. There are senior environmental officials in top scientific jobs here who do not believe climate change is real; others are convinced the problem is so great that human intervention is useless. "It's down to God," one environmental officer for a major Delta town tells me. "If the Delta goes we'll find new places to live. If Egypt was big enough for Mary and Joseph, then it will be big enough for all of us."
Of course, if sea levels do rise significantly, "then the debate is over," says Dr Tutwiler. "The land will be underwater and crop production will be over."
As a result, many now believe that Egypt's future lies far away from the Delta, in land newly reclaimed from the desert. Since the time of the pharaohs, when the Delta was first farmed, Egypt's political leaders have rested their legitimacy on their ability to feed it by taming the Nile. Mohammed Ali, Lord Cromer and Gamal Abdel Nasser all launched major projects to control and harness the river's seasonal floods; now Mubarak is following in their footsteps – not by saving the Delta, but by creating a bewildering array of canals and pumping stations that draw water out from the Nile into sandy valleys to the east and west, where the desert is slowly being turned green.
You can see evidence of these new lands on the Delta's fringes; mile upon mile of agri-business-owned fields peeking out behind the advertising billboards of the Cairo-Alexandria desert road. The billboards depict gated compounds and luxury second homes, escapist dreams for the Egyptian upper-middle class.
The new lands behind them are another sort of escape, this time for the whole country. Their very water-intensive existence is, though, only hastening the demise of the Delta; once the glittering jewel of Egypt and bedrock of its survival, but now a region whose death warrant may already have been signed.
Invasion of the Nile: The Delta's troubled history
• 4,000 – 3,000 BC approx – The Delta is populated by migrants from the Sahara and intensive farming begins in the region
• 1,300 BC approx – According to the Bible, the Delta is home to the Israelites, and miraculously survives God's plague of hail
• 343 BC – The Persians kill Egypt's last native pharaoh, ushering in more than 2,000 years of foreign rule over the Delta
• 332 BC – Alexander the Great invades and founds Alexandria at the tip of the Delta
• 30 BC – Cleopatra and Marc Anthony kill themselves
• 639 AD – Muslim Arabs sweep into the Delta, forcing out the Byzantine rulers
• 1517 AD – The Delta is absorbed into the Ottoman Empire and ruled from Turkey
• 1798 AD – Napoleon Bonaparte begins a three-year French occupation
• 1805 AD – The Albanian pasha Muhammad Ali seizes power but his dynasty falls under the control of the British Empire
• 1952 AD – Gamal Abdel Nasser restores Egyptian rule for the first time in two millennia
• 1970 AD – The Aswan Dam is completed, ending seasonal flooding in the Delta
• 2007 AD – Delta declared among top three areas vulnerable to rising sea levels
Alexandria: An ancient city under threat
Alexandria has been through several reincarnations: as a small Pharaonic town in the 4th century BC, as the capital of Egypt for 1,000 years, and as a cosmopolitan melting-ground in the early 20th century. While most of its former glories are already lying on the seabed, scientists now fear the city's outer fringes could be among the first victims of any rise in sea levels.
A rise of only 1m will leave the city centre cut off from the mainland. If it does disappear, its literary chroniclers may provide some comfort. Lawrence Durrell called it "the capital of memory", a city where recollections stay "clinging to the minds of old men like traces of perfume upon a sleeve". The Greek poet Constantine Cavafy shared Durrell's sense of being trapped by history. In what may prove a remarkable piece of foresight, he wrote in The City:
You'll find no new places, you won't find other shores.
The city will follow you. The streets in which you pace
will be the same, you'll haunt the same familiar places,
and inside those same houses you'll grow old.
You'll always end up in this city. Don't bother to hope
for a ship.
As the years passed, colonial rulers came and went. But the Shamdys stayed, carving out a new life as farmers and fishermen on one of the most fertile tracts of land in the world. A century and a half later, Maged is still farming his family's fields. In between taking up the rice harvest and dredging his irrigation canals, however, he must contemplate a new threat to his family and livelihood, one that may well prove more deadly than any of Egypt's previous invaders. "We are going underwater," the 34-year-old says simply. "It's like an occupation: the rising sea will conquer our lands."
Maged understands better than most the menace of coastal erosion, which is steadily ingesting the edge of Egypt in some places at an astonishing rate of almost 100 metres a year. Just a few miles from his home lies Lake Burrulus itself, where Nile flower spreads all the way out to trees on the horizon. Those trunks used to be on land; now they stand knee-deep in water.
Maged's imperial imagery may sound overblown, but travel around Egypt's vast, overcrowded Delta region and you hear the same terms used time and again to describe the impact climate change is having on these ancient lands. Egypt's breadbasket is littered with the remnants of old colonisers, from the Romans to the Germans, and today its 50 million inhabitants jostle for space among the crumbling forts and cemeteries of those who sought to subjugate them in the past.
On the Delta's eastern border, in Port Said, an empty stone plinth is all that remains of a statue of Ferdinand de Lesseps, the man who built the Suez Canal; somewhere along the Delta's westernmost reaches, the long-lost tomb of Cleopatra lies buried. With such a rich history of foreign rule, it's only natural that the latest hostile force knocking at the gates should be couched in the language of occupation.
"Egypt is a graveyard for occupiers," observes Ramadan el-Atr, a fruit farmer near the antiquated town of Rosetta, where authorities have contracted a Chinese company to build a huge wall of concrete blocks in the ocean to try to save any more land from melting away. "Just like the others, the sea will come and go – but we will always survive."
Scientists aren't so sure. Two years ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change declared Egypt's Nile Delta to be among the top three areas on the planet most vulnerable to a rise in sea levels, and even the most optimistic predictions of global temperature increase will still displace millions of Egyptians from one of the most densely populated regions on earth.
The Delta spills out from the northern stretches of the capital into 10,000 square miles of farmland fed by the Nile's branches. It is home to two-thirds of the country's rapidly growing population, and responsible for more than 60% of its food supply: Egypt relies unconditionally on it for survival. But with its 270 km of coastline lying at a dangerously low elevation (large parts are between zero and 1m above sea level, with some areas lying below it), any melting of the polar ice caps could see its farmland and cities – including the historical port of Alexandria – transformed into an ocean floor. A 1-m rise in the sea level, which many experts think likely within the next 100 years, will cause 20% of the Delta to go underwater. At the other extreme, the 14-m rise that would result from the disappearance of Greenland and western Antarctica would leave the Mediterranean lapping at the northern suburbs of Cairo, with practically all of the Delta underwater.
Already, a series of environmental crises are parking themselves on the banks of the Nile. Some are subtle, like the river's quiet vanishing act in the Delta's northern fields; others, like the dramatic collapse of coastal lands into the ocean, are more striking. Major flooding is yet to become a reality but, from industrial pollution to soil salinity, a whole new set of interconnected green concerns is now forcing its way into Egyptian public discourse for the first time.
"The Delta is a kind of Bangladesh story," says Dr Rick Tutwiler, director of the American University in Cairo's Desert Development Centre. "You've got a massive population, overcrowding, a threat to all natural resources from the pressure of all the people, production, pollution, cars and agricultural chemicals. And on top of all that, there's the rising sea. It's the perfect storm."
Follow the Nile north out of Cairo on the old agricultural road, and you find it hard to pinpoint where the city ends and the lotus-shaped Delta begins. Carpeted with redbrick apartment blocks and spliced with streets in every direction, the lush greenery of the Nile's splintered arteries is almost impossible to appreciate in isolation. This is where the urban and the rural get lost in each other, with livestock living in doorways and workers camping out in fields. In the past, literary giants venerated the Delta's wild marshlands; today, any clear-cut divisions between the metropolis and the countryside have long faded away.
Urban encroachment – the steady chipping away at arable land through unauthorised construction – haunts the Delta everywhere you look. Despite a web of legislation outlawing illegal building practices and theoretically "fencing off" agricultural land, in every direction the sweeping vista of wheat fields and rice paddies always ends abruptly in a cluster of half-built homes. There are more than 4,000 people per square mile in the Delta; it's hard to think of any other place where humans and the environment around them are more closely intertwined. With Egypt's present-day population of 83 million set to increase to more than 110 million in the next two decades, the seemingly unstoppable spread of bricks and mortar over the soil is both the most visible symptom of the country's demographic time-bomb and an inevitable response to it.
More people in the Delta means more cars, more pollution and less land to feed them all on, just at a time when increased crop production is needed most. Yet the desertification of land through human habitation is, worryingly, only the beginning of the problem. Although few in the Delta have noticed it yet, the freshwater of the Nile – which has enabled Egypt to survive as a unified state longer than any other territory on earth – is creaking under the strain of this population boom. The world's most famous river has provided the backdrop to all manner of dramas throughout history, real and fictional. Now, around its northernmost branches where the minarets and pylons thin out and the landscape becomes more windswept, another is playing out to devastating effect.
The villain is salinity. I visit one of the worst-affected regions, Kafr el-Sheikh, on a Friday morning when the fields have emptied out for the noon prayer. The streets are eerily silent; with its people gone, the area takes on the appearance of one of Italo Calvino's fantastical string cities, chock-a-block with the shells of human habitation but no living souls remaining. The exception is Maged, who owns six feddan (about six acres) of land near the village of el-Hadadi.
Maged is halfway down a hole when I approach his house. Clambering out apologetically, he explains that German experts visited this area last year and declared that the fresh water being pumped to local villages "wasn't fit for a dog to drink." After months of phone calls to the national water company, none of which were answered, Maged decided to lay down a new set of pipes himself in the hope it would improve the quality of drinking water for his two young daughters. It's hot, exhausting work, which he fits in between his farming duties and a new part-time job as an accountant in a local alfalfa plant. "We don't have much time on our hands at the moment," Maged says, dusting himself off and gulping down some fresh melon juice. "Nobody can make a living solely off the land any more."
On a tour of his fields, I see why. The rich brown soil has greyed out in recent years, leaving a barren salt-encrustation on the surface. The cause is underground saltwater intrusion from the nearby coast, which pushes up through the soil and kills off roots. Coastal farmland has always been threatened by saltwater, but salinity has traditionally been kept at bay by plentiful supplies of fresh water gushing over the soil and flushing out the salt. It used to happen naturally with the Nile's seasonal floods; after the construction of Egypt's High Dam in the 1970s (one of the most ambitious engineering projects on earth), these seasonal floods came to an end, but a vast network of irrigation canals continued to bring gallons of fresh water to the people who worked the land, the fellahin, ensuring salinity levels remained low.
Today, however, Nile water barely reaches this corner of the Delta. Population growth has sapped its energy upstream, and what "freshwater" does make it downriver is increasingly awash with toxins and other impurities. Farmers such as Maged now essentially rely on waste water – a mix of agricultural drainage and sewage – from the nearby town of Sidi Salim.
The result is plummeting fertility; local farmers say that whereas their fathers spent just a handful of Egyptian pounds on chemicals to keep the harvests bountiful, they now have to put aside between 25 and 80% of their profits for fertilisers just to keep their crops alive.
"We can see with our own eyes that the water is no good, it's less and less pure," Maged says. He points out huge swaths of neighbouring land that once glimmered with rice paddies; recently they have been dug up and replaced by fish farms, the ground too barren for crop cultivation. Further out, in the village of Damru, the green fields of 10 years ago are cracked and brown, now put into service as informal football pitches and rubbish dumps.
Experts believe the problem is only going to get worse. "We currently have a major water deficit in Egypt, with only 700 cubic metres of freshwater per person," explains Professor Salah Soliman of Alexandria University. "That's already short of the 1,000 cubic metres per person the UN believes is the minimum needed for water security. Now, with the population increase, it will drop to 450 cubic metres per person – and this is all before we take into account the impact of climate change."
That impact is likely to be a 70% drop in the amount of Nile water reaching the Delta over the next 50 years, due to increased evaporation and heavier demands on water use upstream. The consequences of all these ecological changes on food production are staggering: experts at Egypt's Soils, Water and Environment Research Institute predict that wheat and maize yields could be down 40% and 50% respectively in the next 30 years, and that farmers who make a living off the land will lose around $1,000 per hectare for each degree rise in the average temperature.
The farmers here feel abandoned by the state; there are regular dismissive references to the "New Age," a euphemism for the much-hated regime of President Hosni Mubarak, whose neoliberal reform programmes and widespread corruption scandals have provoked a wave of popular discontent across the country. This disconnect between the state and its people has led to distrust of government scientists who think coastal erosion, rather than freshwater scarcity, is the main reason for the farmers' problems. And, in a worrying twist for Egypt's creaking economy, the erosion isn't only affecting farmers. "Unfortunately, most of our industry and investment has been built on sites very close to the shore," says Soliman. "There's only so much water we can hold back."
Ras el-Bar is a small holiday resort at the mouth of the Nile's Damietta branch. This was the summer paradise that Nobel prizewinning novelist Naguib Mahfouz's well-heeled characters would escape to when the heat of the capital became unbearable; today its squat pink lighthouse and endless boulevards of deserted, low-rise holiday homes have the faded feel of a 1950s Disneyland.
Although still popular in July and August, Ras el-Bar has been overtaken as a seaside destination by the brash consumerism of a new generation of towns: Sharm el-Sheikh, Marina, Hurghada. In place of tourists, however, new factories have arrived here in abundance, including some that nearby residents believe are poisoning the air. The arrival of one industrial plant in Damietta, which coincided with the ministry of environment's last-minute decision not to designate the area a protected nature reserve, is a familiar story of shady backdoor deals, public outrage and the studious disregard of local opinions. In this case, the locals managed to postpone the factory's construction, but other plants remain. "In the morning here you can see nothing but smoke," says Mohammed Fawzia, who is fishing in a canal down by the side of an industrial complex run by the state-owned Mopco company. "Take photos of it for us so we can show who is killing our children. We want the factories gone."
Many Cairo-based experts, however, insist that the task of coping with the dramatic ecological changes faced by the Delta is made harder by the ignorance of people such as Mohammed. They claim the fellahin are too uneducated to change their ways. But they are wrong: while farmers in the southern Delta, where Nile water is still relatively plentiful, have little knowledge of climate change, those in the north are painfully aware of the science behind the death of their land. However, they also have little time to listen to the harrying of a government which is widely seen to preach green rhetoric on the one hand but is only too willing to sell out the environment on the other, along with the local people.
Money talks in Egypt, and sustainable development is forgotten when the interests of the rich and powerful – such as the industrial plants in Damietta or the influential Badrawi clan in Daqahliyah – are at stake. The repression and self-interest of Mubarak's inner circle have left them bereft of any moral authority on environmental issues.
And while scientists, academics and community organisers are making a concerted effort to educate Egyptians about the dangers of climate change, there is confusion over whether the focus of all these programmes should be on promoting ways to combat climate change, or on accepting climate change as inevitable and instead encouraging new forms of adaptation to the nation's uncertain ecological future.
Efforts are further hampered by a popular feeling that this is a crisis made by the west. "We're not responsible for climate change," says Soliman, pointing out that Egypt's contribution to global carbon emissions is an underwhelming 0.5%, nine times less per capita than the US. "But unfortunately the consequence of climate change is no respecter of national borders."
The scale of the crisis – more people, less land, less water, less food – is overwhelming, and has infected discussion of climate change with a toxic combination of cynicism and fatalism at every level. There are senior environmental officials in top scientific jobs here who do not believe climate change is real; others are convinced the problem is so great that human intervention is useless. "It's down to God," one environmental officer for a major Delta town tells me. "If the Delta goes we'll find new places to live. If Egypt was big enough for Mary and Joseph, then it will be big enough for all of us."
Of course, if sea levels do rise significantly, "then the debate is over," says Dr Tutwiler. "The land will be underwater and crop production will be over."
As a result, many now believe that Egypt's future lies far away from the Delta, in land newly reclaimed from the desert. Since the time of the pharaohs, when the Delta was first farmed, Egypt's political leaders have rested their legitimacy on their ability to feed it by taming the Nile. Mohammed Ali, Lord Cromer and Gamal Abdel Nasser all launched major projects to control and harness the river's seasonal floods; now Mubarak is following in their footsteps – not by saving the Delta, but by creating a bewildering array of canals and pumping stations that draw water out from the Nile into sandy valleys to the east and west, where the desert is slowly being turned green.
You can see evidence of these new lands on the Delta's fringes; mile upon mile of agri-business-owned fields peeking out behind the advertising billboards of the Cairo-Alexandria desert road. The billboards depict gated compounds and luxury second homes, escapist dreams for the Egyptian upper-middle class.
The new lands behind them are another sort of escape, this time for the whole country. Their very water-intensive existence is, though, only hastening the demise of the Delta; once the glittering jewel of Egypt and bedrock of its survival, but now a region whose death warrant may already have been signed.
Invasion of the Nile: The Delta's troubled history
• 4,000 – 3,000 BC approx – The Delta is populated by migrants from the Sahara and intensive farming begins in the region
• 1,300 BC approx – According to the Bible, the Delta is home to the Israelites, and miraculously survives God's plague of hail
• 343 BC – The Persians kill Egypt's last native pharaoh, ushering in more than 2,000 years of foreign rule over the Delta
• 332 BC – Alexander the Great invades and founds Alexandria at the tip of the Delta
• 30 BC – Cleopatra and Marc Anthony kill themselves
• 639 AD – Muslim Arabs sweep into the Delta, forcing out the Byzantine rulers
• 1517 AD – The Delta is absorbed into the Ottoman Empire and ruled from Turkey
• 1798 AD – Napoleon Bonaparte begins a three-year French occupation
• 1805 AD – The Albanian pasha Muhammad Ali seizes power but his dynasty falls under the control of the British Empire
• 1952 AD – Gamal Abdel Nasser restores Egyptian rule for the first time in two millennia
• 1970 AD – The Aswan Dam is completed, ending seasonal flooding in the Delta
• 2007 AD – Delta declared among top three areas vulnerable to rising sea levels
Alexandria: An ancient city under threat
Alexandria has been through several reincarnations: as a small Pharaonic town in the 4th century BC, as the capital of Egypt for 1,000 years, and as a cosmopolitan melting-ground in the early 20th century. While most of its former glories are already lying on the seabed, scientists now fear the city's outer fringes could be among the first victims of any rise in sea levels.
A rise of only 1m will leave the city centre cut off from the mainland. If it does disappear, its literary chroniclers may provide some comfort. Lawrence Durrell called it "the capital of memory", a city where recollections stay "clinging to the minds of old men like traces of perfume upon a sleeve". The Greek poet Constantine Cavafy shared Durrell's sense of being trapped by history. In what may prove a remarkable piece of foresight, he wrote in The City:
You'll find no new places, you won't find other shores.
The city will follow you. The streets in which you pace
will be the same, you'll haunt the same familiar places,
and inside those same houses you'll grow old.
You'll always end up in this city. Don't bother to hope
for a ship.
5 medical tests that could save your life
There are health tests we need, and those we don't. Pelvic ultrasound? Sounds ultrasuspicious. Occult blood test? Only if it comes with an exorcism. Urinalysis? Great, now I'll be kicked off the tour...
It's tough to know which of these are truly essential, especially when they're packaged with dozens of other tests and called an "executive health exam." And yet thousands of men sign up for these screenings — at an out-of-pocket cost of up to $10,000 apiece — based on the sales pitch that a test may uncover a hidden health condition.
Of course, 10 grand might be worth it if all that random screening actually did any good: But a seminal study by the Rand Corporation found that patients who had the most screenings over 5 years were no healthier than those given less medical attention. This isn't to say executive health exams are scams. They can be quite valuable — if you know which of the procedures are worthwhile. So we asked our experts to create an a la carte menu to bring to your GP. Think of these as the best tests for a recession.
Cardiac CT angiographyThese colorful 3-D images allow radiologists to calculate one of your most important heart numbers: your coronary artery calcium score, a measure of how much plaque is piling up in your arteries. A 2007 study of over 10,000 people published in the journal Atherosclerosis reported that calcium scores alone can predict heart attacks, while a 2003 study found that a high calcium score is associated with a tenfold increase in heart-disease risk. This is compared with a less-than-twofold increase in risk from traditional risk factors such as diabetes and smoking. The test has one significant downside: The radiation exposure from your average cardiac CT is equal to 600 chest x-rays, according to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. This produces a 1-in-5,000 risk of cancer, another study reveals. Who needs it: Men with some of the risk factors for heart disease whose physicians may be on the fence about starting treatment. "In these medium-risk cases, cardiac CT scans and calcium scoring can provide the extra level of information that we feel we need," says Gerald Fletcher, M.D., a professor of cardiology at the Mayo Clinic. The lower the calcium score, the lower the risk. If you reach 112, your physician might recommend aspirin or statins. Cost: $350 to $900. Most insurance companies will reimburse you if you've previously had an abnormal stress test or chest pain. Bone density scanThink osteoporosis affects only old ladies? Fact is, men begin losing bone mass at age 30. That's why it's important to assess the state of your skeleton now with a dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) scan, which uses low-radiation X-rays to gauge bone mineral density (it can also measure body fat percentage). "DEXA scans allow us to identify people at high risk for fracture so they can start treatment to strengthen their bones before a fracture occurs," says Murray J. Favus, M. D., director of the bone program at the University of Chicago medical center. Your doctor might suggest adding strengthening workouts to your exercise program and supplementing your daily diet with up to 1,000 milligrams of calcium and up to 400 IU of vitamin D.
It's tough to know which of these are truly essential, especially when they're packaged with dozens of other tests and called an "executive health exam." And yet thousands of men sign up for these screenings — at an out-of-pocket cost of up to $10,000 apiece — based on the sales pitch that a test may uncover a hidden health condition.
Of course, 10 grand might be worth it if all that random screening actually did any good: But a seminal study by the Rand Corporation found that patients who had the most screenings over 5 years were no healthier than those given less medical attention. This isn't to say executive health exams are scams. They can be quite valuable — if you know which of the procedures are worthwhile. So we asked our experts to create an a la carte menu to bring to your GP. Think of these as the best tests for a recession.
Cardiac CT angiographyThese colorful 3-D images allow radiologists to calculate one of your most important heart numbers: your coronary artery calcium score, a measure of how much plaque is piling up in your arteries. A 2007 study of over 10,000 people published in the journal Atherosclerosis reported that calcium scores alone can predict heart attacks, while a 2003 study found that a high calcium score is associated with a tenfold increase in heart-disease risk. This is compared with a less-than-twofold increase in risk from traditional risk factors such as diabetes and smoking. The test has one significant downside: The radiation exposure from your average cardiac CT is equal to 600 chest x-rays, according to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. This produces a 1-in-5,000 risk of cancer, another study reveals. Who needs it: Men with some of the risk factors for heart disease whose physicians may be on the fence about starting treatment. "In these medium-risk cases, cardiac CT scans and calcium scoring can provide the extra level of information that we feel we need," says Gerald Fletcher, M.D., a professor of cardiology at the Mayo Clinic. The lower the calcium score, the lower the risk. If you reach 112, your physician might recommend aspirin or statins. Cost: $350 to $900. Most insurance companies will reimburse you if you've previously had an abnormal stress test or chest pain. Bone density scanThink osteoporosis affects only old ladies? Fact is, men begin losing bone mass at age 30. That's why it's important to assess the state of your skeleton now with a dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) scan, which uses low-radiation X-rays to gauge bone mineral density (it can also measure body fat percentage). "DEXA scans allow us to identify people at high risk for fracture so they can start treatment to strengthen their bones before a fracture occurs," says Murray J. Favus, M. D., director of the bone program at the University of Chicago medical center. Your doctor might suggest adding strengthening workouts to your exercise program and supplementing your daily diet with up to 1,000 milligrams of calcium and up to 400 IU of vitamin D.
Southern governors hear warning on climate change
Global climate change over the next 20 years will cause intense droughts in the Southwest, floods in the Northeast threatening the coastline and urban areas, and significant storm damage along the Gulf Coast, a panel of Southern governors was told yesterday.
Retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Richard Engel, director of the Climate Change and State Stability program of the National Intelligence Council, told the governors that the changes could also affect U.S. national-security interests -- aggravating poverty, degrading the environment and destabilizing fragile government regimes of nations around the world.
He said that although the U.S. will be "less affected and better equipped than the vast majority of nations to deal with climate change," it will still face challenges. Engel said these range from the costs to control emissions and respond to emergencies, to safeguarding against the potential for terrorists to "obtain and utilize" nuclear material and expertise that will increase as more countries pursue nuclear power as an energy source.
The sobering assessment, accompanied by a presentation on energy and climate security from former U.S. Sen. John W. Warner, R-Va., kicked off the Southern Governors' Association's annual meeting at the Kingsmill Resort & Spa near Williamsburg.
Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine is the outgoing chairman of the association, which has 16 states and two territories as members, ranging geographically from Puerto Rico to Maryland to Florida, and west to Texas.
Eleven chief executives showed up for this year's conference, which is traditionally held in the summer at a five-star resort. Financed by state dues and corporations, it is equal parts policy conference and expenses-paid junket for governors' families and top staff.
Northrop Grumman Corp., the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, Altria Group Inc., Dominion Resources Inc., Exxon Mobil Corp., Capital One Financial Corp. and Norfolk Southern Corp. were among the 70 industry groups that bankrolled half the costs of this year's meeting, attended by roughly 400 people.
Notably absent was Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, recently embroiled in a sex scandal with an Argentine woman.
Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, who was to succeed Kaine as chairman of the SGA next year, also opted out, having announced this year that he will run for the U.S. Senate. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a rising star in the Republican Party rumored to be mulling a run for president in 2012, also did not attend.
Kaine's theme for this year's meeting was climate change, energy and the environment.
"I think that opened all of our eyes," Kaine said after the climate-change presentation. "This is a big issue, where economics, the environment and national security all intersect."
Kaine's mission was to build regional consensus on how the South -- which produces a disproportionate share of the nation's energy for its size -- can develop more cost-effective and efficient ways of generating power while reducing greenhouse gases and mitigating impact on the environment.
Governors were treated to a detailed analysis of 23 climate-policy options and costs for their region compiled by the nonprofit, nonpartisan Center for Climate Strategies.
Transportation, electricity consumption and industrial fuel use account for more than four-fifths of the greenhouse-gas emissions in the region, according to the preliminary results of the analysis.
The reduction in the growth rate of emissions brought on by reduced energy consumption and new fuel-consumption standards is expected to reduce overall emissions by 10 percent between now and 2020.
Specific numbers for each state were not presented, but governors were thankful for having data and cost information from which they could begin to devise an energy policy.
"I think the biggest bang for the buck because you both save money and you remove a lot [of greenhouse gases] is in the conservation and efficiency investments," Kaine said after the presentation.
However, with great diversity among the states in the SGA in terms of size, development and resources -- as well as politics -- agreement on a regional strategy is, as Kaine put it, "a work in progress."
A number of governors expressed concern that costs to make the South more "green" and efficient be shared among other states in the nation that benefit from the energy the region provides.
"Obviously we all agree on the goals of trying to approach this climate-change issue -- that's cleaning up our air and holding down greenhouse-gas emissions," said Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear.
"The issues that we're wrestling with are in the details of how we do that, the cost of doing it and how those costs are distributed."
Last night, Kaine hosted conference attendees with a dinner on the lawn of the Governor's Palace in Colonial Williamsburg, and tonight he'll host a black-tie-optional Virginia State Dinner in the ballroom of the resort.
The conference, which concludes tomorrow, also will brief governors on efforts to upgrade the nation's electricity grid.
Governors will also discuss regional transportation issues and the impact of federal health-care reform, which will feature a presentation by U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius.
Retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Richard Engel, director of the Climate Change and State Stability program of the National Intelligence Council, told the governors that the changes could also affect U.S. national-security interests -- aggravating poverty, degrading the environment and destabilizing fragile government regimes of nations around the world.
He said that although the U.S. will be "less affected and better equipped than the vast majority of nations to deal with climate change," it will still face challenges. Engel said these range from the costs to control emissions and respond to emergencies, to safeguarding against the potential for terrorists to "obtain and utilize" nuclear material and expertise that will increase as more countries pursue nuclear power as an energy source.
The sobering assessment, accompanied by a presentation on energy and climate security from former U.S. Sen. John W. Warner, R-Va., kicked off the Southern Governors' Association's annual meeting at the Kingsmill Resort & Spa near Williamsburg.
Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine is the outgoing chairman of the association, which has 16 states and two territories as members, ranging geographically from Puerto Rico to Maryland to Florida, and west to Texas.
Eleven chief executives showed up for this year's conference, which is traditionally held in the summer at a five-star resort. Financed by state dues and corporations, it is equal parts policy conference and expenses-paid junket for governors' families and top staff.
Northrop Grumman Corp., the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, Altria Group Inc., Dominion Resources Inc., Exxon Mobil Corp., Capital One Financial Corp. and Norfolk Southern Corp. were among the 70 industry groups that bankrolled half the costs of this year's meeting, attended by roughly 400 people.
Notably absent was Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, recently embroiled in a sex scandal with an Argentine woman.
Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, who was to succeed Kaine as chairman of the SGA next year, also opted out, having announced this year that he will run for the U.S. Senate. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a rising star in the Republican Party rumored to be mulling a run for president in 2012, also did not attend.
Kaine's theme for this year's meeting was climate change, energy and the environment.
"I think that opened all of our eyes," Kaine said after the climate-change presentation. "This is a big issue, where economics, the environment and national security all intersect."
Kaine's mission was to build regional consensus on how the South -- which produces a disproportionate share of the nation's energy for its size -- can develop more cost-effective and efficient ways of generating power while reducing greenhouse gases and mitigating impact on the environment.
Governors were treated to a detailed analysis of 23 climate-policy options and costs for their region compiled by the nonprofit, nonpartisan Center for Climate Strategies.
Transportation, electricity consumption and industrial fuel use account for more than four-fifths of the greenhouse-gas emissions in the region, according to the preliminary results of the analysis.
The reduction in the growth rate of emissions brought on by reduced energy consumption and new fuel-consumption standards is expected to reduce overall emissions by 10 percent between now and 2020.
Specific numbers for each state were not presented, but governors were thankful for having data and cost information from which they could begin to devise an energy policy.
"I think the biggest bang for the buck because you both save money and you remove a lot [of greenhouse gases] is in the conservation and efficiency investments," Kaine said after the presentation.
However, with great diversity among the states in the SGA in terms of size, development and resources -- as well as politics -- agreement on a regional strategy is, as Kaine put it, "a work in progress."
A number of governors expressed concern that costs to make the South more "green" and efficient be shared among other states in the nation that benefit from the energy the region provides.
"Obviously we all agree on the goals of trying to approach this climate-change issue -- that's cleaning up our air and holding down greenhouse-gas emissions," said Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear.
"The issues that we're wrestling with are in the details of how we do that, the cost of doing it and how those costs are distributed."
Last night, Kaine hosted conference attendees with a dinner on the lawn of the Governor's Palace in Colonial Williamsburg, and tonight he'll host a black-tie-optional Virginia State Dinner in the ballroom of the resort.
The conference, which concludes tomorrow, also will brief governors on efforts to upgrade the nation's electricity grid.
Governors will also discuss regional transportation issues and the impact of federal health-care reform, which will feature a presentation by U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Post-affair Ensign gets mixed results in Nevada
Two months after a weary looking John Ensign hastily confessed to having an extramarital affair with a former campaign aide who was his best friend's wife, the Nevada senator set out to reconstruct his image before a forgiving crowd in the Fernley Community Center.
On a hot August afternoon before plates of catered lasagna, he opened a speech with a promise to make up for his "big mistake" by working harder than ever.
But Ensign's determination to move on and rebuild his trust with voters after apologizing for the affair was met with mixed reviews during two days of carefully scripted appearances, his first events in the state since the scandal erupted.
Reaction to comments Ensign made to The Associated Press before the speech - how his indiscretion was different from Bill Clinton's because the ex-president lied under oath and his unwillingness to answer lingering questions about his own affair - show he has more work to do before he can put the scandal behind him.
The Nevada Republican was welcomed Wednesday with a standing ovation from about 100 people at a sweltering chamber of commerce luncheon in the rural agricultural community some 40 miles from Reno and far from the media scrutiny that has dogged him since his June 16th admission.
"We had a distraction go on for the last six or seven weeks in my life. I think it would be inappropriate to start any other way than to say I'm sorry," Ensign said.
That was good enough for Peggy Gray, president of the Fernley Republican Women.
"There are a lot more important things going on in Congress than that," Gray said.
"At least he didn't go to the Mustang Ranch," said Jane Lewis, editor of the local political group's newsletter, referring to one of Nevada's legal brothels.
Eric Herzik, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, said it made sense for Ensign to launch the rebuilding effort in a "relatively safe environment" in front of a largely GOP group before he hosted a bipartisan environmental summit the next day at Lake Tahoe.
"This is something of a classic image control move," Herzik said. "He also got back to policy issues."
Before the scandal, the handsome son of a Las Vegas casino mogul known for his affiliation with the conservative Christian group the Promise Keepers was a rising GOP star with presidential aspirations.
During a June visit to Iowa, Ensign gave a lecture about conservative values and told AP in an interview, "Our party got away from its basic principles."
Two weeks later with rumors swirling, he announced at a news conference in Las Vegas that he had carried on the extramarital affair with a staffer for much of last year.
Ensign, 51, resigned as chairman of the Republican Policy Committee the next day.
The woman, Cindy Hampton, was treasurer for two Ensign-controlled campaign committees. Hampton's husband, Doug, was Ensign's administrative assistant in his Washington, D.C., Senate office and the families were longtime friends.
Doug Hampton later said Ensign paid Cindy Hampton more than $25,000 in severance when she left her job. The next day, Ensign said his parents had written a check for $96,000 to the Hamptons and two of their children. He described the money as a gift that was not related to any campaign or official duties.
He has refused to discuss it further.
A poll commissioned by the Las Vegas Review-Journal in mid-July showed the number of voters with a favorable opinion of Ensign dropped 22 points to 31 percent after he acknowledged the affair. The former congressman who was first elected to the Senate in 2000 won't be up for re-election until 2012.
Before his Fernley appearance, Ensign had spent eight days in a secluded vacation with his family at Lake Tahoe where he lived for much of his youth and starred on the high school basketball and golf teams.
Prior to that, he had been "fairly invisible, which let media focus gradually fade," Herzik said. "He'll get more media scrutiny, but unless there is more to come out, media hounding on this will ultimately fade as it is `old news.'"
Fernley Mayor LeRoy Goodman said he thinks Ensign is still quite electable.
"I think he handled it well coming out forthright," Goodman said.
But the forthright approach disappeared at Lake Tahoe, a day after newscasts and talk radio shows were filled with his explanation of the distinction between his affair and Clinton's relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
"I said everything I was going to say yesterday," Ensign told reporters before turning and walking away.
Ensign had told The Associated Press in Fernley that he was convinced Clinton had committed a felony by perjuring himself in front of a grand jury examining the Lewinsky affair.
"I haven't done anything legally wrong," he said.
Betsy Dart, one of the few people who didn't stand to clap for Ensign in Fernley, doesn't see it that way.
"I beg to differ," said Dart, who views the affair as "a common human failing" but finds it hypocritical that Ensign "was one of the people who was very vocal about President Clinton during the impeachment hearings."
A government watchdog group calling for a Senate ethics probe of Ensign seized on his legal distinction.
"One politician comparing his illicit affair to another's is a sure sign his career is in trouble," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
The host of a conservative radio talk show in Reno has uncharacteristically joined those calling for Ensign's resignation.
"It may be legally different, but is it different in terms of him representing us and him doing what he should have been doing?" KKOH's Bill Manders said while devoting most of his two-hour show to the topic in the hours after Ensign's Clinton comments.
"Sen. Ensign sat right there in that chair and talked to me about family values and the whole time knew he was doing this," he told his listeners who usually are most upset about illegal immigration, taxes and gun rights. "I'm not going to let him move on until he answers some questions."
On a hot August afternoon before plates of catered lasagna, he opened a speech with a promise to make up for his "big mistake" by working harder than ever.
But Ensign's determination to move on and rebuild his trust with voters after apologizing for the affair was met with mixed reviews during two days of carefully scripted appearances, his first events in the state since the scandal erupted.
Reaction to comments Ensign made to The Associated Press before the speech - how his indiscretion was different from Bill Clinton's because the ex-president lied under oath and his unwillingness to answer lingering questions about his own affair - show he has more work to do before he can put the scandal behind him.
The Nevada Republican was welcomed Wednesday with a standing ovation from about 100 people at a sweltering chamber of commerce luncheon in the rural agricultural community some 40 miles from Reno and far from the media scrutiny that has dogged him since his June 16th admission.
"We had a distraction go on for the last six or seven weeks in my life. I think it would be inappropriate to start any other way than to say I'm sorry," Ensign said.
That was good enough for Peggy Gray, president of the Fernley Republican Women.
"There are a lot more important things going on in Congress than that," Gray said.
"At least he didn't go to the Mustang Ranch," said Jane Lewis, editor of the local political group's newsletter, referring to one of Nevada's legal brothels.
Eric Herzik, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, said it made sense for Ensign to launch the rebuilding effort in a "relatively safe environment" in front of a largely GOP group before he hosted a bipartisan environmental summit the next day at Lake Tahoe.
"This is something of a classic image control move," Herzik said. "He also got back to policy issues."
Before the scandal, the handsome son of a Las Vegas casino mogul known for his affiliation with the conservative Christian group the Promise Keepers was a rising GOP star with presidential aspirations.
During a June visit to Iowa, Ensign gave a lecture about conservative values and told AP in an interview, "Our party got away from its basic principles."
Two weeks later with rumors swirling, he announced at a news conference in Las Vegas that he had carried on the extramarital affair with a staffer for much of last year.
Ensign, 51, resigned as chairman of the Republican Policy Committee the next day.
The woman, Cindy Hampton, was treasurer for two Ensign-controlled campaign committees. Hampton's husband, Doug, was Ensign's administrative assistant in his Washington, D.C., Senate office and the families were longtime friends.
Doug Hampton later said Ensign paid Cindy Hampton more than $25,000 in severance when she left her job. The next day, Ensign said his parents had written a check for $96,000 to the Hamptons and two of their children. He described the money as a gift that was not related to any campaign or official duties.
He has refused to discuss it further.
A poll commissioned by the Las Vegas Review-Journal in mid-July showed the number of voters with a favorable opinion of Ensign dropped 22 points to 31 percent after he acknowledged the affair. The former congressman who was first elected to the Senate in 2000 won't be up for re-election until 2012.
Before his Fernley appearance, Ensign had spent eight days in a secluded vacation with his family at Lake Tahoe where he lived for much of his youth and starred on the high school basketball and golf teams.
Prior to that, he had been "fairly invisible, which let media focus gradually fade," Herzik said. "He'll get more media scrutiny, but unless there is more to come out, media hounding on this will ultimately fade as it is `old news.'"
Fernley Mayor LeRoy Goodman said he thinks Ensign is still quite electable.
"I think he handled it well coming out forthright," Goodman said.
But the forthright approach disappeared at Lake Tahoe, a day after newscasts and talk radio shows were filled with his explanation of the distinction between his affair and Clinton's relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
"I said everything I was going to say yesterday," Ensign told reporters before turning and walking away.
Ensign had told The Associated Press in Fernley that he was convinced Clinton had committed a felony by perjuring himself in front of a grand jury examining the Lewinsky affair.
"I haven't done anything legally wrong," he said.
Betsy Dart, one of the few people who didn't stand to clap for Ensign in Fernley, doesn't see it that way.
"I beg to differ," said Dart, who views the affair as "a common human failing" but finds it hypocritical that Ensign "was one of the people who was very vocal about President Clinton during the impeachment hearings."
A government watchdog group calling for a Senate ethics probe of Ensign seized on his legal distinction.
"One politician comparing his illicit affair to another's is a sure sign his career is in trouble," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
The host of a conservative radio talk show in Reno has uncharacteristically joined those calling for Ensign's resignation.
"It may be legally different, but is it different in terms of him representing us and him doing what he should have been doing?" KKOH's Bill Manders said while devoting most of his two-hour show to the topic in the hours after Ensign's Clinton comments.
"Sen. Ensign sat right there in that chair and talked to me about family values and the whole time knew he was doing this," he told his listeners who usually are most upset about illegal immigration, taxes and gun rights. "I'm not going to let him move on until he answers some questions."
EPA sets legal limits for water pollution in Fla.
Environmental groups on Friday lauded long-awaited action by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to set legal limits for farm and urban runoff polluting Florida's waterways, limits that could serve as a model for other states.
A consent decree signed Wednesday settled a lawsuit filed last year by the Sierra Club, Florida Wildlife Federation and others against the EPA seeking to get the federal agency to set numeric standards for runoff such as fertilizers and animal waste.
The settlement marks the first time the EPA has forced numeric limits on so-called nutrient runoff on a state. A handful of other states, at the urging of the EPA, have already acted to set their own standards. The rest have only vague limits on waste and fertilizer pollution, but many of those are in the process of developing numeric limits.
Environmentalists say rain sends the runoff into rivers and lakes, nourishing algae blooms that poison the ecosystems.
The agreement means "real protection for Florida's waters," said Earthjustice attorney Colin Adams, speaking at a news conference in Tampa. The public interest law firm had filed the suit in federal court on behalf of the environmental groups.
"For the first time, EPA will begin the process to address massive fertilizer and human and animal waste pollution problems that increase dead zone areas along practically every U.S. coastline," Adams said.
He said numeric limits, which still have to be determined, will make it easier for the government to go after major polluters and help farmers regulate agricultural runoff.
The groups credited President Barack Obama's administration with quick action on the matter after years of what they called "foot-dragging" by the Bush administration.
The EPA acknowledged in a statement Friday that standards are necessary "to protect Florida waters from the impacts of nitrogen and phosphorus pollution."
The statement said the agency will work closely with scientists from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to develop "scientifically defensible" water quality standards.
Under the settlement, the EPA has until Jan. 14 to propose the new pollution limits for Florida's lakes, rivers and creeks, and until October 2010 to finalize the rules.
The Sierra Club's Cris Costello said the agreement was expected to move the EPA to set similar standards in other states.
"We believe this should and will be held up by the EPA as a model," she said.
The Florida Department of Environmental Protection said in a statement Friday that it has been working for years to establish its own guidelines for such runoff. In a 2008 report, the department concluded that half of the state's rivers and more than half of its lakes had poor water quality.
"To ensure that there is no duplication of work, we will continue to work with EPA in the same manner they have worked with us," the statement said.
The EPA acknowledged more than 10 years ago that Florida needed to promptly develop runoff standards to meet the requirements of the federal Clean Water Act. Congress enacted the Clean Water Act in 1972 "to restore and maintain the chemical, physical and biological integrity of the nation's waters."
The agency noted then that "nutrient pollution is the leading cause of impairment in lakes and coastal waterways." The agency also said the nutrients in runoff had been linked to so-called "dead zones" in the Gulf of Mexico.
A consent decree signed Wednesday settled a lawsuit filed last year by the Sierra Club, Florida Wildlife Federation and others against the EPA seeking to get the federal agency to set numeric standards for runoff such as fertilizers and animal waste.
The settlement marks the first time the EPA has forced numeric limits on so-called nutrient runoff on a state. A handful of other states, at the urging of the EPA, have already acted to set their own standards. The rest have only vague limits on waste and fertilizer pollution, but many of those are in the process of developing numeric limits.
Environmentalists say rain sends the runoff into rivers and lakes, nourishing algae blooms that poison the ecosystems.
The agreement means "real protection for Florida's waters," said Earthjustice attorney Colin Adams, speaking at a news conference in Tampa. The public interest law firm had filed the suit in federal court on behalf of the environmental groups.
"For the first time, EPA will begin the process to address massive fertilizer and human and animal waste pollution problems that increase dead zone areas along practically every U.S. coastline," Adams said.
He said numeric limits, which still have to be determined, will make it easier for the government to go after major polluters and help farmers regulate agricultural runoff.
The groups credited President Barack Obama's administration with quick action on the matter after years of what they called "foot-dragging" by the Bush administration.
The EPA acknowledged in a statement Friday that standards are necessary "to protect Florida waters from the impacts of nitrogen and phosphorus pollution."
The statement said the agency will work closely with scientists from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to develop "scientifically defensible" water quality standards.
Under the settlement, the EPA has until Jan. 14 to propose the new pollution limits for Florida's lakes, rivers and creeks, and until October 2010 to finalize the rules.
The Sierra Club's Cris Costello said the agreement was expected to move the EPA to set similar standards in other states.
"We believe this should and will be held up by the EPA as a model," she said.
The Florida Department of Environmental Protection said in a statement Friday that it has been working for years to establish its own guidelines for such runoff. In a 2008 report, the department concluded that half of the state's rivers and more than half of its lakes had poor water quality.
"To ensure that there is no duplication of work, we will continue to work with EPA in the same manner they have worked with us," the statement said.
The EPA acknowledged more than 10 years ago that Florida needed to promptly develop runoff standards to meet the requirements of the federal Clean Water Act. Congress enacted the Clean Water Act in 1972 "to restore and maintain the chemical, physical and biological integrity of the nation's waters."
The agency noted then that "nutrient pollution is the leading cause of impairment in lakes and coastal waterways." The agency also said the nutrients in runoff had been linked to so-called "dead zones" in the Gulf of Mexico.
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