September 2007 Archives

Climate change is not some future abstraction that can be put off with a bit of piddling about now, it is here and killing now. Australia is undergoing one of its most severe droughts ever [search]; as agriculture is failing, whole towns are abandoned, and the government pays farmers to leave their land. Meanwhile in Africa, massive floods are washing away crops and entire villages [more], as the poor pay the price for over-development by others as basic needs go unmet.

Climate Ark has obtained exclusive video showing President Bush is poised to demonstrate bold climate change leadership [windows video | original version] with dramatic new proposals at this week's Bush sponsored climate talks [search]. It appears the Toxic Texan has fundamentally changed his opinions regarding climate change. Thus, it is time to forgive old transgressions regarding Bush's long-standing obstruction of domestic and international policy [search] needed to address global heating -- the gravest ecological emergency the world has every seen. As the video shows, clearly President Bush has looked deeply into his soul, surrounded himself with the very best climate policy advisors, and shaken off the leash of the oil industry oligarchy. Given this bold, decisive shift in leadership; Ecological Internet would like to endorse proposals to remove Presidential term limits. The United States of Oil has the President it deserves ;-)

A new BBC poll finds 2 out of 3 respondents from 21 countries including big polluters such as the U.S., India and China believe "major steps starting very soon" need to be taken to combat global warming. Further, 8 in 10 accept that "human activity... is a significant cause of climate change." What is needed is not simply action, but radical action; policy adequate to save the climatic system and heal the biosphere. This will require massive reductions in energy use and emissions, achievable only by shrinking human populations and total consumption (but more equitable); as well as an end to coal burning, primary forest logging and reductions in aviation. The being held in New York is rife with calls for action [news search]; but of the posturing and greenwashing sort. Who will lead, truthfully and wisely?

Climate Ark and Ecological Internet are pleased to once again support "Step It Up" climate protests, a national event on November 3, 2007 to call for U.S. leadership on global warming. There are a few things we particularly like about these events. Firstly, the message is just right for American society -- emphasizing (1) no new coal plants, (2) 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050, and (3) 5 million new green jobs. Secondly, Step It Up is about action, not endless discussion. Last April we joined many thousands creatively protesting U.S. climate obstructionism. And lastly, Step It Up is so good at being inclusive -- they are a positive unifying force for climate action based upon good science and collaboration. We urge you to participate. See http://www.stepitup2007.org/ and the press release below for more information. Indeed it is time to step it up and take climate action to the streets.

Shockingly, a new scientific study finds that two prominent biofuels release more total greenhouse gases (GHG) [more] than burning comparable amounts of oil and petroleum. This is because their release of nitrous oxide -- a particularly potent GHG -- has been vastly underestimated. Corn based biofuel [search], prevelant in the United States, was found to release up to 50% more GHGs than oil; and rapeseed based biofuel [search] which is the norm in Europe was found to release as much as 70% more GHGs. This finding highlights the fact that carbon is not the only GHG to be considered in fuel emissions.

Agrofuels produced by burning food crops have been tauted as a climate change solution with great economic benefits. In fact they have intensified deadly climate change and terrestrial ecosystem decline. Major concerns have emerged regarding food based biofuels and resultant increases in food prices [search], human rights issues [search], and loss of rainforests [search] and other natural habitats. And now we find it was all a lie that these biofuels protect the climate.

This current finding further illustrates the extent to which failure to reduce energy consumption through conservation and efficiency has lead to half-assed measures to try to maintain our wasteful levels of energy consumption that are doing more damage than good. We need real efforts to dramatically reduce the use of energy and resultant GHG emissions now if advanced human and natural systems are to survive.

TAKE ACTION: Selective logging diminishes primary and old-growth forests' carbon stores, ecosystems, and biodiversity; and has no place in proposed carbon market payments for rainforest and climate protection

The concept of "avoided deforestation" -- whereby countries are paid to protect forests -- is the most promising rainforest and climate change policy development in years. It fights climate change at a low cost while preserving other ecosystem services, safeguarding biodiversity and improving living standards for some of the world's poorest people. Unlike other proposed forest conservation solutions, such as "certified" forest logging of ancient forests (primary and old-growth forests), it has the potential to maintain standing rainforests in an intact, fully functioning condition; while meeting reasonable local development needs...

For the first time a grouping of tropical rainforest rich countries, called the "Forestry Eight" and controlling over 80 percent of the world's tropical rainforests, agree and are proposing a plan to be paid to protect their rainforests and thus reduce global warming... Troublingly, many crucial details regarding how avoided deforestation payments would work remain undefined...

Let the "Forestry Eight" know that in order to ensure carbon payments for rainforest and climate protection are rigorous and maximally effective, they must be made to avoid both rainforest deforestation AND diminishment, which excludes ANY industrial development. Only equitable payments for strict preservation will maximize climate, ecosystem, biodiversity and local benefit. Anything less is greenwashing and will not solve anything. TAKE ACTION:

Scientists at Britain's MetOffice Hadley Centre have confirmed what many of us suspected. Given continuing delays in real efforts to decrease greenhouse gas emissions, the world will almost certainly exceed two degrees Celsius of warming above pre-industrial levels, the point near where it is generally considered global heating will become particularly dangerous. And this does not fully factor in the potential for high impact events with greater levels of current uncertainty such as the melting of Greenland's ice [search], melting permafrost [search], rainforest die-back [search] and/or melting ocean methane [search] to cause abrupt, run-away climate changes [search].

Global warming's impact is expected to be like a nuclear war, yet where is the urgent policy response? The world is decades behind the curve in instituting actual actions to reduce emissions, and yet the world's leaders still dither. Global climate leader Germany informs us it will take time to achieve a successor Kyoto deal. Fighting for his political life, Prime Minister Howard of Australia achieves "aspirational goals" rather than binding commitments for emissions reduction [search] during their hosting of this week's APEC meetings. International policy responses to climate change continue to limp forward as global warming tightens its grip upon the Earth, her ecology, and her humanity and species.

Emission reductions must commence with all haste in late 2007 in Bali, Indonesia, if the human family is to have any chance of maintaining the Earth's climatic and biosphere systems.

TAKE ACTION! The Colombian government is embarking on a massive expansion of oil palms, sugar cane and other monocultures for agrofuels and other markets at the expense of rainforests, biodiverse grasslands and local communities... Palm oil expansion is linked to large-scale rainforest destruction and to serious violence and human rights abuses. NGOs have documented 113 killings in the river basin of Curvaradó and Jiguamiandó, in Chocó region at the hands of paramilitaries who are working with plantation companies to take over land which legally belongs to Afro-Colombian communities... The Chocó forests which are being destroyed by palm oil expansion are some of the largest remaining coastal lowland rainforests on the Earth and are amongst the most biodiverse forests on Earth. They are home to 7,000 to 8,000 species, including 2,000 endemic plant species and 100 endemic bird species. Even before the current palm oil and agrofuel expansion, 66% had been destroyed. Please write to the Colombian government and ask them to protect the rights of indigenous, Afro-Colombian and peasant communities affected by large-scale monoculture plantations, to stop further deforestation for oil palm plantations, impose a moratorium on further palm oil expansion and on the country’s biofuel programme, which is a major cause of monoculture expansion, and to protect the land rights, the food sovereignty and the environment on which local communities depend. This email alert is supported by the Inter-Church Commission for Justice and Peace (Comisión Intereclesial de Justicia y Paz) in Colombia. TAKE ACTION!