Provocations

A Blueprint for Restoring Fragile Ecosystems

By piecing together a complex ecological puzzle, biologist Willie Smits has found a way to re-grow clearcut rainforest in Borneo, saving local orangutans - and creating a thrilling blueprint for restoring fragile ecosystems.

About Willie Smits
Willie Smits has devoted his life to saving the forest habitat of orangutans, the "thinkers of the jungle." As towns, farms and wars encroach on native forests, Smits works to save what is left.

Watch this remarkable and inspiring 20-minute video.

George Monbiot exposes Shell's flimsy alternative energy figleaf

Ever wanted to sit down with an oil CEO and ask some clear and direct questions? George Monbiot is very good at asking clear and direct questions. Bearing in mind that, at least in the USA, a CEO's first priority is to his/her shareholders, he reveals that this emperor has little more than an advertising fig leaf.

Carbon capture and storage - nowhere near application

Hope springs eternal but it seems likely we will soon find ourselves here in Canada with a return of the Harper government (with his muzzling of most of its elected representatives, "Harper government" is a fair description). In case you've forgotten, amidst the intensity of financial meltdown: these are the people who have the powder-puff approach to global warming. One of their prime strategies to reduce carbon emissions, especially from coal power plants, is what is called "carbon sequestration" - meaning capture and storage of the offending gas. Here's a recent, brief  assessment of this technique by energy expert Richard Heinberg:

[But] is carbon capture and storage (CCS) a solution? The technology exists only in the sense that its components have been demonstrated on a small scale. Deploying it broadly would require the development of an infrastructure that would require trillions of dollars of investment and decades of work. According to Vaclav Smil of the University of Manitoba, in a recent letter to Nature, we would need to handle a volume of CO2 twice as large as the world’s crude oil flows just to sequester one quarter of carbon dioxide emitted in 2005 by large stationary sources.

CCS is essentially a “delay and fail” strategy by the coal industry. By selling the idea of “clean coal,” the industry delays an energy transition away from fossil fuels, while setting itself up for an eventual failure of the entire CCS project. By the time that the failure is clear and obvious, there will be no alternative: the coal plants will have been built, the money invested. We’ll burn more coal, and to hell with the climate.

Pesticide monitoring system wins award

Tech Museum Awards: 2008 Health Award Laureate

Pesticide Action Network North America

Laureate Country: United States
Project Countries: Germany, the Philippines, South Africa, United States
Website: http://www.panna.org/drift/catcher

The Pesticide Action Network devised air-monitoring technology that allows people to detect and fight toxic pesticide exposure.

Five billion pounds of hazardous pesticides are applied to crops each year. The chemicals are a major source of toxic air pollution. As a result, farm workers and others near agricultural sites experience high rates of cancer, asthma, miscarriage, and birth defects.

The Pesticide Action Network developed the Drift Catcher, a monitoring system that allows people without scientific training to test their air for pesticides. The device captures airborne pesticides on a resin filter, which is then analyzed in a lab to determine the quantity and types of pesticides present. With these scientific results in hand, vulnerable communities have won legislation to force the use of safer pest management and reduce hazardous exposures.

Sierra Club Canadian Voters' Guide ranks parties

From the above, it's pretty clear that Canada is lagging seriously in taking action on its greenhouse gases. With an election about to be called in Canada, The Sierra Club of Canada has come out with a Sierra Club Voters' Guide on what they call The Climate Crisis Election, which includes the above image and a ranking of the contesting parties on the effectiveness of their policies to reduce greenhouse gases. 

From the CBC report:

The Green party's A- mark reflects a plan that "is very ambitious," national campaigns director Jean Langlois said at an Ottawa news conference.

The Liberals, who have made their environmental plan, dubbed the Green Shift, the centrepiece of their platform, received a B+. Their aim is to balance a carbon tax with income-tax cuts.

The Bloc Québécois  received a B. "The Bloc have a target that reflects what needs to be done based on science. However, their plan is not very detailed," said Langlois. For instance, the party doesn't specify a price for carbon emissions.

The NDP received a B.  . . . lost marks for relying only on cap and trade for reducing emissions and forgoing a carbon tax.

The Conservative party received an F+ because the Sierra Club said it has chosen a "completely inadequate" target for reducing greenhouse gases and because it is relying on intensity targets to meet its goals.

See also: Canadian elections and climate change

Technology changes slower when applied to non-renewable resources

A reality check from Richard Heinberg's current Museletter:

Given plenty of cheap available energy, technology can work wonders. It is understandable that our society has fetishized technology, given the spectacular societal changes it has wrought in the past century. In the last twenty years alone, computers, cell phones, and a suite of other digital communications technologies have created industries and fortunes, altered our habits, and morphed our vocabulary. The evolution of computers has been subject to Moore's Law, according to which processor speed, memory capacity, and even the resolution of digital cameras are expected to double every two years. It is tempting to extrapolate these rapid developments in communication technologies to the fields of transportation and energy production. But in these areas technological change is slower and more expensive, and more obviously dependent on continued consumption of non-renewable resources such as oil, natural gas, coal, and iron ore.

US Politicans and FDA accept continued use of bisphenol-A

Image © Michael Jastremski under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 1.0 License

If you follow this kind of thing, you probably heard that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has declared the plastic-modifying chemical, bisphenol-A, to be safe.  From here in Canada, where our ideologically-conservative government recently banned its use in baby bottles, this came as a bit of a surprise.  My skeptical stance did get me wondering what role lobbying might have played in rescuing the peddlers of BPA but, to be fair to me, I did withhold judgement. This article, by the generally-conservative Economist, quickly tipped me back into a more familiar, corporate-wary view.  It does a good job in clearing cobwebs and uncertainly on the issue. My conclusion: avoid the stuff. A few quotes:

A bill in the California assembly, which passed the state senate in May, would have banned the use of bisphenol-A (BPA) in products used by children under the age of three. An avalanche of shameless lobbying killed it: the vote was 31 to 27 against, with 22 weaselly abstentions.

The brouhaha over BPA echoes the battle over smoking and cancer a generation ago. Sooner or later, health authorities in most developed countries will heed the scientific evidence and follow Canada’s lead in banning BPA - at least in baby bottles, if not in all household products.
...............................................................................................
. . . over 100 scientific studies have linked low doses of BPA to prostate and breast cancer, reproductive abnormalities, accelerated puberty in females, low sperm count in males, neurological effects similar to ADHD, diabetes and even obesity.

The effects have their biggest impact during early stages of development. Hence the special concern about protecting infants and young children from exposure to even the smallest doses of BPA. Altogether, more than 300 research papers have now been published on the health hazards associated with BPA.

Energy Options

Politics and profit motivations have so invaded the critical area of energy alternatives that it's getting hard to find a relatively objective perspective. This is the best, short version, I've some across recently. (If you want detail, check out Richard Heinberg's web site)

Biofuels causing starvation and pollution

Making money out of climate change? Maybe that's the main motivation. After a very short time, it's becoming clear that biofuels are, in general, a bad idea. In Europe and elsewhere, the brakes are coming on, but not before a lot of harm's been done, including food riots and significant hunger and starvation.  I understand also that the same controls of pesticide and herbicide use that are on food crops in the USA do not apply to biofuels so the land and its runoff are generally much more toxic. Here's an update:

Energy Action Coalition Fossil Fool Awards

The coalition reports that " over 6,000 people voted for the individuals keeping us most addicted to fossil fuels. " . . and here are the Fossil Fool award winners:

• Fossil Fool of the Year:  Ken Lewis, Bank of America
  With a solid 30% of the votes, the message from you was clear. NO NEW COAL. Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach came in a close second for his reckless support of tar sands expansion
   
• Most Inauspicious Newcomer:   Patricia Woertz, CEO of Archer Daniels Midland
  A landslide victory is letting ADM know that the public is no longer fooled by false solutions.

• Lifetime Achievement Award:  George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, President and Vice President of the United States   
  Even with fierce competitors like Joe Manchin and William Clay Ford, Jr in the running, President Bush and Vice President Cheney received an overwhelming number of your votes (63%) for their career-long efforts to deny the reality and impacts of global climate change.

• Biggest Human Toll: Gregory R. Page, CEO of Cargill
  Winning by a narrow margin, Cargill's displacement of frontline communities throughout South America, Southeast Asia and the Pacific gave them the edge over big name, 1st runner up Chevron.

• Outstanding Performance in Corporate Greenwashing:  Rick Wagoner, CEO of General Motors 
  GM might have fooled some with their Corporate Greenwashing, but not you voters.  You've decided that a clean and just energy future will not be coming from empty lip-service.

For the full results, check out http://energyactioncoalition.org/foolies/

Read about the Fossil Fool award winner and nominees at www.energyactioncoalition.org/newsroom.