ENVIRONMENT

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

Peak Soil: The Silent Global Crisis

Stephen 1 Must Read, Africa, Agriculture/Food, CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, ENVIRONMENT, Food, Global Issues and Perspectives, global warming , , , , , , , ,

30% of farmland can no longer grow food

By Stephen Leahy

(First published in the Earth Island Journal Spring 2008)

A harsh winter wind blew last night, and this morning the thin snow cover has turned into a rich chocolate brown. The dirt covering the snow comes from cornfields near my home that were ploughed following the harvest, a common practice in southern Ontario and in the corn-growing regions of the US Midwest.

A handful of this dirty snow melts quickly, leaving a thin, fine-grained wet mess. It doesn’t look like much, but the mucky sludge in my hand is the prerequisite for life on the planet.

“We are overlooking soil as the foundation of all life on Earth,” says Andres Arnalds, assistant director of the Icelandic Soil Conservation Service. Arnalds is an eloquent spokesperson for the unheralded emergency of soil erosion, a problem that is reducing global food production and water availability, and is responsible for an estimated 30 percent of the greenhouse gases emissions.

“Land degradation and desertification may be regarded as the silent crisis of the world, a genuine threat to the future of humankind.”

This article  depends on public support. Click here learn more.

Continue reading →

Arctic Meltdown Signals Long-Term Trend

Stephen Alaska, CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, Energy, ENVIRONMENT

By Stephen Leahy

UXBRIDGE, Canada , Sep 5 (IPS) – Soaring temperatures have led to the collapse of several huge ice shelves in the Canadian Arctic over the past few weeks.

One 50 sq km ice shelf on the northern coast of Canada’s Ellesmere Island simply “vanished” over three days, exposing a coast that lay buried under ice for at least 4,000 years.

At the same time, the Arctic’s thick, year-round sea ice cover has declined to near the 2007 record of 2.6 million square kilometres less ice than the summer average minimum. This year’s ice loss is still huge — an area that’s far larger than the states of Alaska and Texas combined.

“My gut feeling is that the sea ice decline won’t beat last year’s record,” said Walter Meier of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

This year’s sea ice decline is expected to reach its peak in the next few days. “The (2008) decline is already the second largest loss of summer ice on record even though the weather was not as warm as last year,” Meier told IPS. Continue reading →

Flying Blind Into Future Hurricane Seasons

Stephen CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, ENVIRONMENT, Hurricane, Science/Tech

“…New Orleans is at the same risk as it was before Katrina.”
– Stephen Leatherman, director of the International Hurricane Research Center

In just two years from now 40 percent of the current weather and science satellites will be out of service. NASA budget cuts means few if any replacements are on the way. Billions of dollars will go into manned space efforts instead.

“The [George W.] Bush administration has decided going to Mars and the International Space Station is more important,” said Judith Curry, chair of climate and remote sensing at Georgia Tech’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.

“Earth sciences has taken a huge hit at NASA. That’s not a good thing for those of us living on Planet Earth,” Curry said.

“This is a very serious issue.”

For more see:

Flying Blind Into a Monster Hurricane Season

Related stories:

Steve’s Hurricane Handbook 2007

Hurricane Katrina Only Cat 1/2 When It Hit New Orleans – NOAA

Canada, Home of the World’s Dirtiest Oil

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

A new multi-million government PR campaign claims Canada is a “clean energy superpower“. Meanwhile oil production from Canada’s oil sands — the world’s dirtiest oil — is ramping up from 1.2 million barrels a day to 3.5 million. Sadly yet another example of a government resorting to the “big lie”.

By the way virtually all of this oil goes to the US market.

I wrote a series of investigative articles for IPS on the enormous environmental impacts of Canada’s oil sands in 2006. That series has been updated and collected into an e-Book format (download for free).

Here’s an excerpt from Oil Stains in the Boreal Forest: The Environmental Cost of Canada’s Oil Sands

THE ‘RECIPE’ TO MAKE A TANK (75 litres/20 gallons) OF OIL SANDS GASOLINE :

* Dig up two tonnes of earth and rock
* Burn up to 1500 cubic feet of natural gas to boil approx 700 litres of fresh water to process the dirt
* Throw away 950 litres of toxic mine tailings and emit 480 kilograms of CO2, the main greenhouse gas causing global warming

REPEAT 1.2 million times a day (one barrel of oil makes about 75 litres of gasoline)

Note: this analysis does not include local air pollution, impacts on wildlife and local people from oil sands operations and pipelines.

Oil Stains in the Boreal Forest

FREE eBook!! Reveals environmental impacts of Canada’s oil sands industry – the world’s largest industrial project.

Humans Have Halted The Next Ice Age

Stephen CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, ENVIRONMENT, Global Issues and Perspectives, News

Interview with climate expert Sir David King:

Humanity is now the primary driver of our climate

BARCELONA, Spain, Jul 22 (IPS) – Humanity faces enormous challenges at the start of the 21st century, says Sir David King, Britain’s former chief scientific advisor and now director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University in England.

The crises surrounding climate change, population growth, water, food and land are deeply interconnected, Sir David said at the opening of the Euroscience Open Forum in Barcelona, Friday. 

The Forum, known as ESOF, is a biannual gathering of scientists, researchers, policy makers and journalists that has become Europe’s largest scientific showcase. This year, 4,700 people registered for the five-day conference in Barcelona from Jul. 18- 22. 

In his role as chief scientific advisor, Sir David was outspoken in his warnings to political leaders that climate change is a far greater threat than terrorism and that the failure to reduce emissions from burning fossil fuels would make terrorism far worse and create millions of environmental refugees. 

IPS environmental correspondent Stephen Leahy spoke to Sir David at the symposium in Barcelona. 

IPS: Population growth rates are slowing, what is your concern? 

DK: Growth rates are beginning to slow. There are 6.8 billion people now and that will rise to 8 billion in 2028 and then peak at 9 billion in 2050, according to recent projections. However, that number of people will exert an impossible strain on the Earth’s natural resources. 

For example, there isn’t enough fresh water for more than 8.5 billion people at our current average usage. Food production is limited by water availability and the only way forward will be to use genetic modification to create drought-tolerant crops. We here in Europe need to change our minds on GM crops. Those anti-GM attitudes probably crippled research and are responsible for a large number of hunger fatalities in Africa.

IPS: What about the current global food crisis? Continue reading →

Wetlands Loss Fuelling CO2 Feedback Loop

Stephen Biodiversity, CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, ECOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT, News , ,

By Stephen Leahy

Uxbridge, CANADA, Jul 21 (IPS) – Wetlands are dangerous, scientists say, in the sense that they are ticking carbon bombs best left alone. To help stave off extreme climate change, existing wetlands should be enhanced and new wetlands created so they could capture more carbon.

“Wetlands hold massive stores of carbon — about 20 percent of all terrestrial carbon stocks,” said Eugene Turner, a leading wetlands expert at Louisiana State University’s Coastal Ecology Institute. 

However, wetlands, including peatlands, continue to be converted to other uses around the world, resulting in large emissions of carbon and methane, a potent greenhouse gas that has 21 times the warming impact of carbon dioxide. 

By itself, climate change is already degrading wetlands, especially in the Arctic and near Arctic regions where the once permanently frozen peatlands are thawing, Turner told IPS prior to the opening of the Eighth INTECOL International Wetlands Conference in Cuiaba, Brazil on Monday. 

“Researchers have been measuring huge releases of carbon and methane up there,” he said. “It’s crazy to add to that by draining or mismanaging other wetlands.” Continue reading →

Cutting CO2 Only Way to Save Dying Corals

Stephen 1 Must Read, Biodiversity, CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, ECOLOGY, Energy, ENVIRONMENT, Food, global warming, News, OCEAN , , , , , ,

By Stephen Leahy

FORT LAUDERDALE, U.S., July 12 2008 (IPS)

The rapid decline of coral reefs around the world offers a potent warning that entire ecosystems can collapse due to human activities, although there is hope for reefs if immediate action is taken, coral experts agreed at the conclusion of a five-day international meeting Friday.

“Reefs are in serious trouble, but don’t write them off,” Terry Hughes, a marine ecologist at Australia’s James Cook University told 3,000 scientists, conservationists and policy makers attending at the 11th International Coral Reef Symposium (ICRS) in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

“We can save reefs if we take immediate action,” Hughes said.

More than 20 percent of the world’s reefs have died, and large areas are failing due to a combination of climate change, overfishing, pollution and sea level rise. Most of the fabulous corals that attract tourists to the Caribbean are gone and half of remaining reefs in the U.S. are in serious decline.

[Update 08/10 – Here’s a list of Stephen Leahy’s latest articles on corals Coral Reefs and Acid Oceans Series]

“We may be facing ocean deserts in the future,” said Guillermo Dias-Pulido of Australia’s University of Queensland.

Continue reading →