Year: 2011

Colombian Forest Project Reaps Credits… and Criticism

Stephen 1 Must Read, Biodiversity, CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, developing world, ECOLOGY, News , , , , , , ,
Procuenca reforestation

By Stephen Leahy*

UXBRIDGE, Canada, May 6, 2010 (Tierramérica)

The “Procuenca Initiative” in the Andes region of western Colombia may be the first in the world to sell certified forest carbon credits with a biodiversity protection component. But alarms are sounding about the potential negative social and environmental consequences.

Under way since 2001, the programme will begin to operate in the international market next year, having received official registration Apr. 16 under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).

Part of the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change, in force since 2005, the CDM allows industrialised countries to earn credits for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases by investing in projects in developing countries that expand their capacity to absorb the carbon emissions.

Procuenca is expected to auction credits for some 350,000 tonnes of carbon that has been sequestered since the project began, initiative director Francisco Ocampo told Tierramérica through a translator.

At the current market value of 20 dollars per tonne, the total would be 7 million dollars for a struggling community, one that is still suffering from the collapse of coffee prices more than a decade ago.

“This project demonstrates the international importance of these forests for carbon storage,” said Ocampo. Continue reading →

Injecting Drug Use Spreads HIV in Eastern Europe

Stephen 1 Must Read, Culture, economics, Health , , , , , , ,

By Stephen Leahy

LIVERPOOL, Apr 29, 2010 (IPS)

Poor intervention in Injecting drug use (IDU) is driving the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Eastern Europe and is also largely responsible for the tuberculosis epidemic in parts of Russia, says a new study.

Shockingly, a mere three US cents a day per injecting drug user are being invested to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS and TB, according to the study released at the opening of the Harm Reduction 2010 conference this week in this English port city.

“Our report shows that just 160 million US dollars a year are being used in total for all the harm reduction programmes to prevent the spread of HIV around the world,” says Gerry Stimson, executive director of the International Harm Reduction Association.

Harm reduction involves providing access to the drug methadone, needle exchange services, and counselling. “Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration cost at least that much,” Stimson, emeritus professor at the Imperial College, London, told IPS in an interview.

In Russia there are an estimated 1.6 million IDUs of which 60 to 70 percent have HIV-related illnesses. In the past decade the number of HIV-infected people increased tenfold from an estimated 100,000 to one million, he said.

“Three cents a day is a terrifying figure and equally terrifying are the HIV infection rates amongst IDUs in parts of Eastern Europe and Asia.”

See rest of story here:  HEALTH: Injecting Drug Use Spreads HIV in Eastern Europe 

Former Presidents Denounce Drug War As Failure

Stephen 1 Must Read, Culture, Global Issues and Perspectives, Health, News , , , , , , ,

By Stephen Leahy

BERLIN, Jul 14, 2010 (IPS)

The failed “war on drugs” has not only badly damaged countries where it is waged, it is responsible for driving up HIV infection rates in some countries, says an official declaration endorsed Wednesday by three former Latin American presidents in advance of the XVIII International AIDS Conference that begins Jul. 18 in Vienna.

In Eastern Europe and Central Asia, injecting drug use is the primary cause of new HIV infections. Outside of sub- Saharan Africa, injecting drug use accounts for approximately one in three new cases of HIV, experts will report at the week-long meeting.

“The war on drugs has failed…Instead of sticking to failed policies with disastrous consequences, we must direct our efforts to the reduction of consumption and the reduction of the harm caused by drugs to people and society,” said former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

“Repressive policies are firmly rooted in prejudices, fears and ideological visions. The way forward to safeguard human rights, security and health is a strategy of peace not war,” said Cardoso.

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Cardoso, along with former presidents Ernesto Zedillo of México and César Gaviria of Colombia, have endorsed the Vienna Declaration that lists a range of harms stemming from the war on drugs, and notes that the criminalisation of people who use drugs has resulted in record high incarceration rates, placing a massive burden on taxpayers.

Continue reading →

Limited Liability – Nuclear Energy’s ‘Mother of all Subsidies’

Stephen 1 Must Read, CANADA, CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, economics, Energy, News, sustainability , , , , , , ,

By Stephen Leahy

UXBRIDGE, Canada, May 6, 2011 (IPS)

The nuclear energy industry only exists thanks to what insurance experts call the “mother of all subsidies”, and the public is largely unaware that every nuclear power plant in the world has a strict cap on how much the industry might have to pay out in case of an accident.

In Canada, this liability cap is an astonishingly low 75 million dollars. In India, it is 110 million dollars and in Britain 220 million dollars. If there is an accident, governments – i.e. the public – are on the hook for all costs exceeding those caps.

Japan has a higher liability cap of 1.2 billion dollars, but that is not nearly enough for the estimated 25 to 150 billion dollars in decommissioning and liability costs for what is still an ongoing disaster at its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Seven weeks after the tsunami caused the disaster, radiation levels continued to spike higher.

No one knows when the reactors will finally be in cold shutdown, or when the costs of theFukushima disaster will stop piling up. One report suggests decommissioning will take 30 years.

This independent environmental journalism depends on public support. Click here learn more.

Japan’s credit rating was downgraded because of the accident, noted Mycle Schneider, a Paris-based energy and nuclear policy analyst who has worked in Japan. “The Japanese know it’s just a matter of time before another large earthquake occurs,” Schneider told IPS.

“Japan will never build another nuclear plant.”
Continue reading →

Fossil Fuel Industry Kings of Corporate Welfare

Stephen 1 Must Read, CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, economics, Energy, global warming , , , ,

This graphic from GOOD magazine shows who gets the bulk of the enormous US energy subsidies. Many subsidies are hidden and difficult to estimate and this attempt looks to be low according to the experts I’ve interviewed for various articles (cited below). The graphic also doesn’t include subsidies for nuclear which are equally enormous.  — Stephen

The enormous fossil fuel subsidies are rarely acknowledged when complaints are raised about costs of renewable energy. This report shown below says subsidies for fossil fuel are 12X that for green energy but this is a gross underestimate based on the experts I’ve interviewed in June for this article Free Ride for Oil and Coal Industry May Be Over.

Subsidies experts in Switzerland told me that “two-billion-dollars-a-day public subsidy for carbon-based fuels is a very conservative estimate..”

In reality big oil and coal get more like 20X the money green energy. So let’s do some real pricing: electricity from coal 5 cents kWh X 20 for subsidies (not to mention free use of the atmosphere /environment for its CO2, mercury etc waste products.) Corporate welfare at its best.

A few of the many articles I’ve written on the subject of energy subsidies:

Fossil Fuel Subsidies Are 12X (more like 20X) Support for Renewables, Study Shows

Every Day Governments Give an Estimated $2 billion to Oil, Coal & Gas Industry

Oil Companies and Special Interests Spend Half a Billion Dollars to Defeat US Clean Energy – Study

Nuclear Power Costs Skyrocket, Cost of Renewables Plummet

Is Rio Earth Summit 2.0 Doomed to Fail?

Stephen 1 Must Read, CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, developing world, economics, Energy, Food, Forests, Global Issues and Perspectives, global warming, News, sustainability , , , , , ,

By Stephen Leahy

UXBRIDGE, Mar 7, 2011 (IPS)

Timed to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit, the Rio 2012 Summit hopes to recapture the optimism of that earlier era.

At the June 2012 Rio Summit it is hoped countries will agree on policies to move toward a green economy from the present “brown” economic system driven by fossil fuel energy and the serial depletion and degradation of natural resources and ecosystems. A green economy promises to bring good jobs, clean energy and water while ensuring a more sustainable and fairer use of resources.

“If we continue on our current path, we will bequeath material and environmental poverty, not prosperity, to our children and grandchildren,” said Rio 2012 Secretary-General Sha Zukang.

“Rio 2012 will be one of the most important events in the coming decades,” Zukang said

Continue reading →

A Fatal Addiction to Plastic – Trashing the Oceans and Our own Health

Stephen 1 Must Read, Culture, News, OCEAN, Pollution and Toxics, sustainability , , , , , ,
Ocean trash art - plastic soda bottle tops, lighters, misc bits of plastic

By Stephen Leahy

KAUAI, Hawaii, U.S., Apr 1, 2011 (IPS)

“Be fantastic, don’t use plastic!” chanted a troop of 10-year- olds from President Thomas Jefferson Elementary School in Honolulu at the conclusion of an international conference on the millions of tonnes of trash that enter the oceans every year, with serious consequences for marine life and habitats as well as to human health and the global economy.

Most participants were in a celebratory mood at the Fifth International Marine Debris Conference, which concluded Mar. 25 with the Honolulu Commitment to address the growing problem of marine debris.

But Captain Charles Moore, the man who brought the world’s attention to the scope and scale of the problem, was not celebrating.

“I’ve been doing this for 30 years and every year it has only become worse,” Moore told IPS.

Moore is famous for revealing the immense amount of plastic in the north Pacific gyre, formed by ocean currents in a massive slow-moving whirlpool thousands of square kilometres in size.

Moore’s Algalita Marine Research Foundation documented that this vast expanse of oceans has about six kilogrammes of plastic for every kilogramme of plankton. He is careful to point out that there is no plastic island as reported in some media, it’s much more dispersed. Continue reading →

April Heat Wave and Drought Breaks European Records

Stephen 1 Must Read, arctic, CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, ENVIRONMENT, Global Issues and Perspectives, global warming, News, Science, water , , , ,

From the coldest December ever recorded to the warmest, driest April  Britain is just one of the countries being whipsawed by extreme weather. Normally wet Scotland is experiencing rare wildfires outbreaks this week. Europe’s wheat crop is at high risk due to very hot and dry temps.

My recent science articles explaining why weather extremes are becoming more common:

Why Our Weather is Weird ‘n Wild and Why It Is Getting Worse

The Yin and Yang of Climate Extremes We Will See More of

Will Year of Climate Extremes End Without Progress on Tackling Climate Change?

10 Years in the Amazon: The Forest Vanishes Before Your Eyes

Stephen 1 Must Read, Biodiversity, Forests, News , , , , ,
Amazon Forest 2000 - The state of Rondônia in western Brazil

The state of Rondônia in western Brazil — once home to 208,000 square kilometers of forest (about 51.4 million acres), an area slightly smaller than the state of Kansas — has become one of the most deforested parts of the Amazon. In the past three decades, clearing and degradation of the state’s forests have been rapid: 4,200 square kilometers cleared by 1978; 30,000 by 1988; and 53,300 by 1998. By 2003, an estimated 67,764 square kilometers of rainforest—an area larger than the state of West Virginia—had been cleared. Source: Amazon Deforestation – NASA

See also: Amazon Drought Accelerating Climate Change   The REAL Amazon-gate: On the Brink of Collapse Reveals Million $ Study

Amazon Forest 2010 - The state of Rondônia in western Brazil

Multiple Award-winning Journalist and Author

Stephen News ,

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My work is featured in publications around the world including National Geographic,  The Guardian,  Vice Motherboard, The Weather Network, Inter Press Service News Agency (IPS), Changing America (The Hill), Ensia, Al Jazeera, New Scientist, The Ecologist, Mo Magazine (Brussels), TerraGreen (India), Toronto Star, Maclean’s Magazine, China Dialogue, Earth Island Journal, The Narwhal and many more.

This site does not have my recent articles. Most of my 1500+ articles, including the very latest, can be found at Authory, My Portfolio. The content is searchable by keyword and media outlet.

AWARDS:

Winner of the 2018 & 2019 SEAL Award for Environmental Journalism celebrating my work in documenting climate change impacts and solutions at National Geographic and Vice.

“Environmental journalism matters now more than ever.”

     — Matt Harney, Founder, SEAL Awards.

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