Environment

Copenhagen Conference Begins

- Adam Clare

Arguably, the most important UN conference started today in Denmark: The Copenhagen Conference to address climate change. This conference sets out to ensure that there will be a place for humans to live healthy and peaceful lives in a sustainable fashion.

Environmental concerns have led to food scarcity issues to potential causes of regional conflict and now countries are doing something about it. Personally, I hope that Canada stops sabotaging international conferences on climate change (like in Bali) and that Canada stops being a second voice of support for the USA’s disastrous climate policies.

Now is the time for real change.

From the AFP:

The meeting will climax on December 18 with more than 100 heads of state or government in attendance.
Opening ceremonies began with a short film featuring children of the future facing an apocalypse of tempests and desert landscapes if world leaders failed to act today.
“There will be hundreds of millions of refugees,” Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN’s panel of climate scientists, said in the film.
“Please help save the world,” said a little girl, plaintively.
Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen told opening ceremonies that the world is looking to the conference to safeguard humanity.
“The world is depositing hope with you for a short while in the history of humanity,” Rasmussen said. Poll: Public want action
“For the next two weeks, Copenhagen will be Hopenhagen. By the end, we must be able to deliver back to the world what was granted us here today: hope for a better future.”

Keep reading about Copenhagen.

Also, The Guaridain is liveblogging the conference..

North American Governments Agree to Protect Wilderness

- Fono

With so many reports of Canada and the US flouting international agreements on environmental reform, it’s nice to see that we care about something. Canada, America and Mexico have just drafted a memorandum of understanding on protecting wilderness areas in the three countries.

The three nations have long cooperated on wilderness management – programs have straddle the U.S.-Canadian border since 1910 and the U.S.-Mexican border since the 1930s. Yet the memorandum of understanding is the first multinational agreement on wilderness protection, according to Vance Martin, president of the Wild Foundation.

“It’s not very easy to do anything internationally, even when the countries are neighbors,” Martin said.

With the agreement, wildlife officials said, ecological monitoring efforts such as migratory species tracking, air and water quality tests, and staff training will be better managed across the seven agencies responsible for such tasks in North America.

Read more at Worldchanging

Brownfields Good for Green Energy

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

Brownfields are spaces that were used for some industrial production which have left the ground useless for nearly everything – even nature. Gas stations, refineries, and other chemical-intensive buildings tend to ruin the ground beneath their buildings once they close. The fields tend to have too high a concentration of heavy metals or other hazards to humans, plants, and animals.

The Obama administration has proposed that brownfields across the USA be turned into places that house green energy production. Since people don’t like cutting down trees for windmills why not put the windmills where the trees can’t grow?

Read more about it at The Daily Climate.

“In the next decade there’s going to be a lot of renewable energy built, and all that has to go somewhere,” said Jessica Goad, an energy and climate change policy fellow for The Wilderness Society. “We don’t want to see these industrial facilities placed on land that’s pristine. We love the idea of brownfields for renewable energy development because it relieves the (development) pressure on undisturbed places.”

There are many contaminated sites nationwide to choose from.
The Environmental Protection Agency and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory have identified nearly 4,100 contaminated sites deemed economically suitable for wind and solar power development, as well as biomass. Similar maps are expected to be released this month for contaminated sites with geothermal-power potential.

Included in the 4,100 sites are 5 million acres suitable for photovoltaic or concentrated solar power development, and 500,000 acres for wind power. These sites, if fully developed, have the potential to produce 950,000 megawatts – more than the country’s total power needs in 2007, according to EPA data.

A Tree Planting Genius

- Adam Clare

SM Raju has found a way to plant nearly one billion saplings in only one day: by hiring people who are below the poverty line in India to plant and then to protect trees. The plan is to pay people who would otherwise be unemployed to plant and grow trees as a family. Each year they would get some money to supplement other income sources.

The BBC has a good article on the smart tree planting scheme.

“The scheme has brought benefits to thousands of families since its implementation,” said a recent International Labour Organisation report.
But Mr Raju says that Bihar – being the poorest and most lawless state of India – has not been able to spend the allocated NREGA funds.
“This is because of a lack of awareness among officials about the scheme,” he said.
The poor monsoon this year has led to lower agricultural outputs, while flash floods in some northern districts has made the situation even worse, he said.
“So the idea struck to my mind, why not involve families below the poverty line in social forestry and give them employment under this scheme for 100 days?
“Under the scheme, each family can earn a minimum of 10,200 rupees ($210).”

Safe Sex is Good for the Planet

- Adam Clare 2 Comments

Researchers at the London School of Economics have released an argument that posits that family planning is one of the best things we can do to fight climate change.

Every £4 spent on family planning over the next four decades would reduce global CO2 emissions by more than a ton, whereas a minimum of £19 would have to be spent on low-carbon technologies to achieve the same result, the research says.
The report, Fewer Emitter, Lower Emissions, Less Cost, concludes that family planning should be seen as one of the primary methods of emissions reduction. The UN estimates that 40 per cent of all pregnancies worldwide are unintended.
If these basic family planning needs were met, 34 gigatons (billion tonnes) of CO2 would be saved – equivalent to nearly 6 times the annual emissions of the US and almost 60 times the UK’s annual total.

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