economics

Cell Phone Service, But No Toilets or Drinking Water for the Poor

Stephen Africa, CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, economics, Global Issues and Perspectives, News, water , ,

By Stephen Leahy

[Why are there mobile phone networks and not sanitation networks?]

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Oct 20 (IPS) – It is a fact of the 21st century that some of the poorest regions of the world have good mobile phone coverage but no toilets or safe drinking water.

Simply installing toilets where needed and ensuring safe water supplies would do more to end crippling poverty and improve world health than any other possible measure, according to an analysis released Monday by the United Nations University (UNU).

“Water problems, caused largely by an appalling absence of adequate toilets in many places, contribute tremendously to some of the world’s most punishing problems, foremost among them the inter-related afflictions of poor health and chronic poverty,” said Zafar Adeel, director of the U.N. University’s Canadian-based International Network on Water, Environment and Health. Continue reading →

A Green Lining in Market Meltdown?

Stephen CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, economics, Energy, ENVIRONMENT, Science/Tech, sustainability , ,

By Stephen Leahy

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Oct 17 (IPS) – Clean and green technologies may end up a big winner in the current global financial crisis, say investment professionals.

Billions of dollars in new investments have been made in clean/green tech such as renewable energy and energy efficiency in recent years. And, despite fears of a major recession in the U.S., nearly all investment professionals and institutions reported plans to introduce new investment opportunities before the end of 2009, according a new survey of the 500-member Social Investment Forum (SIF), an association for socially and environmentally responsible investment firms.

“In the last two years the growth in the green economy has been tremendous,” said Jack Robinson, president of Winslow Management Company in Boston.

“But the huge win for the green economy is the U.S. bank bailout programme,” Robinson, a green investment expert, told IPS.

It turns out the near collapse of the U.S. financial system has a silver lining for the long-cash-starved alternative energy sector. Continue reading →

‘Bailout’ for Oil Companies $20-40 Billion (and maybe more) every year

Stephen CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, economics, Energy, ENVIRONMENT, News , , , , ,


By Stephen Leahy

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Sep 30 ’08 (IPS)

Why do U.S. oil companies — some of the most profitable corporations on the planet — receive 20 to 40 billion dollars a year in subsidies from the U.S. government?

And, in a time of skyrocketing oil prices and profits, why did the George W. Bush administration in 2005 authorise an additional 32.9 billion dollars in new subsidies over a five-year period?

“Those are very good questions,” said Doug Koplow of Earth Track, Inc., an independent energy information research organisation in Boston, Massachusetts.

“I don’t have a good answer other than to say we’ve been subsidising American oil companies since 1918,” Koplow told IPS.

Koplow’s 2007 report to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development puts the annual U.S. subsidy at an average of 39 billion dollars a year, when the costs of guarding oil lanes in the Persian/Arab Gulf, and the Alaska Pipeline are included. This does not include any costs from the Iraq war.

Official U.S. government statistics from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) offer a different picture, stating that the oil and gas industry only received 2.15 billion dollars in 2007.

“The EIA has a very narrow definition of what constitutes a subsidy,” said Koplow.econ-v-envir-franke1

Like many industrialised countries, the U.S. subsidises oil production, not oil consumption. Consumption subsidies reduce the cost of buying fuel to the public while production subsidies reduce the cost of finding and producing oil for oil companies.

Experts agree that both forms of subsidies encourage consumption and thus increase the price of oil.

Estimating U.S. oil and gas subsidies is very challenging. Subsidies rarely involve cash payments. Instead scores of U.S. government agencies and departments create hundreds of programmes to support the U.S. energy sector. And there is no requirement for the federal government to keep track of all this.

Among the most common subsidies are construction bonds and research-and-development programmes at low interest rates or tax-free, assuming the legal risks of exploration and development in a company’s stead and income tax breaks. Despite record high prices at the pump, the federal sales tax on petroleum products is lower than average sales tax rates for other goods. And on it goes.

Originally these production subsidies were intended to help the nascent industry meet a growing nation’s energy needs. Despite record-high prices, that rationale remains firmly in place. In 2007, U.S. oil giant Exxon corporation made history with 40.7 billion dollars in profits, the most any U.S. company has ever achieved in a single year.

And subsidy programmes from 1918 are still in place.

“I’m not aware of any oil and gas subsidy that has ever been phased out,” said Koplow, the leading expert on U.S. energy subsidies.

Energy subsidies are often simply hidden from public scrutiny. It’s only recently been revealed that 40 companies granted leases between 1996 and 2000 for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico do not have to pay royalties for the publicly-owned resource. This is worth nearly a billion dollars a year in lost revenue to the federal government, according to a 2008 study by Friends of the Earth (FOE), a U.S. environmental NGO, and may ultimately total 50 billion dollars.

That study also revealed that the Energy Policy Act of 2005 would generate an additional 32.9 billion dollars in new subsidies in the form of tax breaks, reduced royalty payments, and accounting gimmicks over a five-year period.

“The report only includes the explicit subsidies we could find,” said Erich Pica, an energy analyst at FOE.

For complete article see US: Great Place for the Oil Business

It gets better — June 09: New Story: New Way to Give Money to Oil Companies – Economic Stimulus Packages

Cut Energy Costs 70%: Save Money, Live Better, Help the Climate

Stephen CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, economics, Energy

Making buildings more environmentally friendly is the easiest and most effective way to cut climate-changing carbon emissions, often slashing energy costs by up to 70 percent.

So why isn’t there a massive effort to “green up” existing buildings and set green standards for all new construction?

Apparently energy costs aren’t high enough. And then there are multi-billion-dollar government subsidies paid to the energy sector to lower the actual cost of energy, tilting the market away from green buildings towards the cheapest built structures.

FACT: The most efficient buildings today use about 70 percent less energy than conventional properties.

Despite proven environmental, economic and health benefits of green buildings they only account for 2% of all new commercial buildings and even smaller percentage of new homes. 

See full article:

Cut Energy Costs 70%: Save Money, Live Better, Help the Climate 

Coming Clean on Carbon Emissions

Stephen CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, economics, Energy, News

By Stephen Leahy

JOHANNESBURG, Apr 30 (IPS) – Thousands of companies supplying some of the world’s largest corporations know climate regulations are coming and are agreeing to measure their emissions of climate-altering greenhouse gases.

“Companies, including those in least developed countries, are worried about the risks of extreme weather, water shortages and so on that climate change poses,” said Paul Dickinson, CEO of the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), an independent not-for-profit organisation in Britain that is coordinating the effort.

Multinationals like Tesco and Unilever may not generate huge amounts of carbon emissions from their own stores or head offices, but their suppliers — which number in the thousands and are located all over the world — certainly do. It would be foolish to pretend these were not part of a corporation’s carbon footprint, Dickinson told IPS. Continue reading →

Soaring Energy Costs May Force Low-CO2 Living

Stephen CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, economics, Energy, ENVIRONMENT, News, sustainability , ,

By Stephen Leahy

Jun 5 (IPS) – Climate change is a global problem but individuals and communities can take simple measures to cut their carbon emissions in half, experts said Thursday on World Environment Day.

The U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) launched a “Kick the CO2 Habit” campaign in Wellington, New Zealand today to encourage low-carbon lifestyle choices at home and when travelling.

“The public have the power to change the future — have the power to personally and collectively influence economies to ‘Kick the CO2 Habit’,” said Achim Steiner, UNEP executive director.

UNEP released a kind of “Rough Guide” to low-carbon living, entitled “Kick the Habit: The UN Guide to Climate Neutrality“, which is available free online.

The knowledge and technology to dramatically reduce carbon emissions already exist, mainly through improvements in energy efficiency. What have been lacking in most countries are incentives to make changes. Now the hard stick of high energy prices has given the public new interest in reducing energy costs, which also reduce carbon emissions. Continue reading →

Greed Stalls 21st Century Bio-Economy

Stephen Biodiversity, ECOLOGY, economics, ENVIRONMENT, Global Issues and Perspectives, News, Science/Tech, sustainability ,

By Stephen Leahy

BONN, May 31 (IPS) – The world community took some ever-so-careful steps towards slowing the biodiversity crisis at a major U.N. meeting in Bonn, while emphasising the need for urgency and action.

Agreement on the need for more protected areas in tropical forests and oceans was universal, but only Germany offered any new funding. On the contentious issue of biofuels and their impacts on food and biodiversity, members agreed at the last minute that biofuels production ought to be environmentally sustainable and not impact biodiversity. There was also an agreement on a de facto moratorium on ocean fertilisation schemes.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel pledged $785 million a year to protect forests.

And, after 16 years of meetings, the 168 nations that have ratified the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) agreed to a final two-year timetable to establish an asset and benefit sharing (ABS) regime.

ABS is about access to biodiversity and equitable sharing of benefits resulting from its use. The intent is to end “biopiracy” — the exploitation of indigenous plants and animals for profit without permission or compensation — and reverse countries’ denial of access to any native species for scientific or commercial purposes. Half of all synthetic drugs have been derived from plants or insects.

“This is a real breakthrough. This agreement is a detailed framework on how to put ABS into place,” said German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel, who is also the president of the CBD for the next two years.

It might seem strange that delegates enthusiastically cheered this “Bonn Mandate”, an agreement to have two more years of meetings. But in fact, Japan, Canada, New Zealand and Australia have fought hard against anything resembling a legal obligation to compensate countries in the developing world for the use of their genetic resources, a delegate from Malaysia told IPS:

“They don’t want to share any money they’ve made from using our biodiversity.” Continue reading →

Economics Killing Mother Nature

Stephen Biodiversity, ECOLOGY, economics, ENVIRONMENT, Forests, News, OCEAN

For 40 years some economists have known boosting GDP was perverse and suicidal — i.e. Hurricane Katrina was great for the US economy — and is laying waste to the planet’s ecosystems

By Stephen Leahy

BONN, May 30 (IPS) – The global biodiversity crisis that threatens life on Earth is driven by economic policies that fail to value nature, a new report finds.

It took the 2006 Stern Review to convince business and governments that combating climate change would be far less costly than ignoring it. Now another “Stern-like” report pegs the ecological damage to the planet’s land areas every year at 78 billion dollars due to ongoing loss of biodiversity.

“The developing world will never catch up with the developed world at the current level of biodiversity loss,” said Pavan Sukhdev, the lead author of the report and head of Deutsche Bank’s global markets business in India. Continue reading →

Food Crisis is “Manufactured” – UK Expert

Stephen Africa, Agriculture/Food, Biodiversity, developing world, economics, News, Organic

By Stephen Leahy

Rising fuel and transportation costs could force governments to return to local production of food, scientist Michel Pimbert says in a Tierramérica interview.

LONDON, May 19 (Tierramérica).- The current food crisis has revived the myth that the world doesn’t produce enough food for its six billion people, according to Michel Pimbert, author of a new study that highlights local production as a potential solution.

It is a “manufactured crisis” that is the outcome of a market-driven, global food system, says Pimbert, director of the agriculture and biodiversity program at the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).

That system needs to evolve towards localized food production that allows people to improve nutrition, income and economies, starting at the household level and through the regional level, he says. Continue reading →