So it’s back to square one again! When the G8 nations were just looking like taking the climate issue seriously, the developing nations decided to play the spoilsport. Actually, the major developed and developing nations had agreed and pledged to work towards the climate change and other environmental issues during the recent meet in Tokyo that went side by side with the G8 summit. But they shied away from any concrete declarations yet again!

The G8 nations in fact had agreed on halving the greenhouse emissions by 2050. But some of the developing nations, whose names were not disclosed, expressed their concerns regarding the specified limit and the language used. Although the U.S. led, 17-member group issued the final statement emphasizing on sustainable growth, they failed to specify any strict target. Critics feel that without any targets this declaration is meaningless. Another point drawing criticism is the grouping of nations thus excluding some smaller and seemingly unimportant nations which are likely to be hit the most by the climate change.

The paranoia of certain developing nations might have arisen from the fact that the developed nations themselves are not having a very clean record as far as the environment is concerned. The Kyoto protocol itself has failed to deliver due to such stubborn stance by certain nations. Secondly they are not willing to sacrifice the newly achieved economic momentum by pressurizing their industries with such emission cuts. But we will have to see how far they can continue like this. The UN has also endorsed even deeper cuts and possibly a midterm goal by 2020 as 2050 might be too late. Some developing nations are also supporting this notion and we can only hope that the others will also join the bandwagon forgetting short term benefits and will provide us some clean air to breathe.

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Source Yahoo

The data collected regarding the dust particles in Beijing air reveals serious facts about present condition. There are many scheduled events like run and cycling which may get adversely affected by this highly polluted air. The WHO pollution-test was based on airborne particles known as PM10 – it’s a source of much of this city’s pollution. The test was conducted on a week-long period, from 1st July to 7th July. Except one day, all the other six days disqualified for the Olympic event. Even on one of these days, the pollution reading was seven times over the WHO’s air quality guideline. Report says that if the air is still bad during the Olympics, some endurance events might have to be postponed or delayed. That’s really shocking, for the players as well as for the millions of audience all around the world.

China has already been criticized by the environmentalists for its unchecked atmospheric pollution. The fast growing manufacturing companies are causing huge Carbon emission, because of coal as its major energy source. The dust particles in the air are generally caused by traffic, manufacturing works, building sites and factory etc. Of course, Beijing has taken necessary emergency action against this air-pollution. It includes ban of cars on the city-road and temporary postpone of construction works.

Let’s hope that Beijing will fulfill its commitment to achieve clean air, made at the time of bid for the Olympics, that was in 2001. But think for a moment, when the whole world is worried for how to control the environmental pollution within 20 years, is it possible that Beijing will control its air-pollution within a month?

Source: bbc

The great apes, namely the gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and the orangutans are our closest genetic relatives. But that didn’t stop us from slaughtering them as usual! Now, reports suggest that orangutans are likely to be the first ones to bid adieu to this planet.

The recent report by the conservation journal Oryx speculates that the orangutans are declining very fast in numbers as their natural habitats are continuously shrinking at the hands of ever expanding human population. This species once inhabited the entire South East Asia. But they are now confined only to the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Borneo. While the ones in Sumatra are already critically endangered, the Bornean ones have also declined fast in the recent years. Incessant logging, deforestation and mining have shrunk their habitat drastically. In fact the new revised figures have shown that the situation is far graver than what was initially assumed.

While the awareness regarding the conservation issues are gradually increasing, the palm oil industry is coming up as the biggest threat to the orangutans. Malaysia and Indonesia produce 80% of the palm oil of the world. So this booming industry is freely moving ahead with their activities that are destroying the forest cover at a very fast rate and due to the economic benefits, no one is stopping them. While the economics part is understandable, the far reaching impact of the same in the ecosystem is something they need to ponder about!

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Source TreeHugger

After resolving to radically decarbonise California, the lawmakers there are going to enact a new law to prepare a defense against global warming and a sustainable tomorrow. The law will make it mandatory for new cars to be labeled with global warming scores. It is expected to be effective from the start of next year for all 2009 model cars. While the government has won some kudos from environmentalists for such efforts, and a similar law is slated to take effect in New York for 2010 model year vehicles, people do not seem to have taken it all in a jolly way. Especially, the monetary cost planned for their vehicular emissions.

The labeling law makes cars for sale to display a global warming score, on a scale of one to 10. The score takes into account emissions related to production of fuel for each vehicle as well as the direct emissions from vehicles.It will be displayed next to the already-required smog score, which also rates cars one to 10 based on their smog-forming emissions. For both scores, an average vehicle will have a score of five. It has a parallel in a proposed law in the European Union that would require EU public sector bodies put a price on emissions. This law has been endorsed by the European Parliament’s Committee on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety. It would make governments put a monetary cost on the emissions of vehicles they plan to purchase, and add that to expense calculations.

Source: GreenBiz

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The G-8 leaders are going to have a meeting in the next week, in Japan. Next to the global warming issue, rising oil-price is the most challenging problem before the leaders. They are also requesting to OPEC to produce more oil. They have tried to blame speculators for bidding the price up. It seems that this situation have been created by poor management between demand and supply. But if it’s a matter of imbalance in supply, than why things are getting out of control?

In stead of trying to make a balance between demand and supply, the leaders of big nations are making policy that allows the market to co-operate the fast rising oil-prices. They have a higher rate of oil consumption, with compared to that of the others. G-8 oil consumption appears to have peaked at 1681 million tones in 2005. It seems that they are not ready to make compromise in this regard. It is therefore the conscious decision of the developed countries to progressively deny poor people, access to oil and to energy in general. In a way, they are creating a new impoverished underclass, which is going to have dire consequences for our society. This is the outcome of G-8 policy and the leaders must bear responsibility for these consequences.

If the present situation continues to exist, than many more problems will also crop up. Production charges of all the commodities will rise further, charges of energy invested in farming will also rise. A much bigger food crisis is coming soon. Unemployment problem will rise and that will further widen the distance between earning capacity and spending capacity of people. The leaders are concentrating only on economic prosperity of the nation. They have a very narrow vision to foresee the consequences of increased oil-prices.

The solution seems to lies in reducing the use of oil in various sectors. There are some emergency actions required to reduce demand for oil and energy immediately. The voluntary reduction in demand should lower prices, reduce inflationary pressures and provide a few years breathing space. At least this will provide some time to make plans for reconstruction of power generation systems.

Source: theoildrum

The G8 Climate Scorecards 2008 was released on Thursday, declaring how practically all the great eight nations are dealing with the problem. According to this Scorecard, U.S. has done almost negligible for the cause of global warming. On the other hand, Britain is ranked at the top, for the British government has done the most to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and reach targets set by the Kyoto Protocol. Next to the list are France and Germany. Among the G8 countries, U.S. is the highest emitter of CO2 with the highest per capita emissions and an increasing trend in total emissions.

Canada and Russia are also placed at the bottom of the Scorecard, just above the U.S. Canada is second with a very high per capita emission and a steadily increasing trend in total emissions. In Russia, Carbon emission is increasing steadily since 1999, and the government has hardly any policy to check it.

Regine Guenther, director of the World Wildlife Fund says that if we don’t follow any rigid policy to check the CO2 emission now, no one can imagine what will happen to the world after 20 years. To speak the truth, none of the eight countries have done remarkable to control the climate change. Though Britain has reached the target set by Kyoto Protocol, still it was criticized for deriving only a small share of its power from renewable sources.

Lots of discussion have been done, many policies are made, many meetings have been organized; but yet no reduction in the Carbon emission. At this time, we need some rigidity, some sacrifice and some mutual understanding to give effect to the plans.

Source: msnbc

The data revealed by the research team is a big headache indeed. The amount of carbon dioxide emissions by the UK consumers have been increased by more than 115 million tones, that is from 646.8 million tones to 762.4 million tones. This is a result of overall increase in the amount of products consumed, as well as because of the shift of production from UK to other countries where production involved a higher carbon output such as China. This is largely due to the manufacturing process and transport of products such as electronic good, clothes, and use of gas and electricity etc. Carbon footprints at all the places production and consumption were taken into consideration. Carbon emission in the UK that was measured under the UN’s Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gases decreased by 5% from within these 12 years, but on the other hand, consumer-related emissions rose 18%.

What we need at this time is, a well-planned manufacturing process that would require less CO2 emission. But each country needs to cooperate in making it meaningful. All the resources are not equally available in all the parts of the world. For example heavy manufacturing work of clothes goes on in China, but that requires more CO2 emission to the environment. According to Thomas Wiedmann, the research associate at the Stockholm Environment Institute at York University,

In an increasingly globalised market all economies need to play their part in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

We hope that this sort of view, if made effective can bring some pause in the rapid emission of Carbon into the environment. After all, we have only one world to live in. Then why not share our part of responsibility in keeping it clean.

Source: independent

So we don’t bother about the rising temperature, the polluted air or the forests getting turned into deserts. We would still like to believe that this entire issue of global warming is blown out of proportion and is nothing more than a sci-fi story. But now here is something that is even more terrible!

According to reports the rising temperature has been inversely affecting the sex ratio of the Tuataras. These reptiles are known as the ‘living fossils’ due to their antiquity. They have been here since the time of the dinosaurs. Although they have survived the most difficult times of the planet, now they are falling prey to global warming.

Like several other reptile species, the sex of a tuatara offspring is determined by the level of temperature. But this rapid rise in temperature around its habitats are now resulting in only male offsprings! So it would soon turn into a male only community incapable of reproducing. Not to mention that they are already very less in numbers and can be found only in certain islands of New Zealand. Their official conservation status is vulnerable and such developments definitely spell doom for them. According to some calculations if this trend continues, they will disappear by 2085!

Some ideas like putting shades around their nests to keep the temperature down have been suggested. But we have to see how many of them we can cover. Anyway, it is not just a case of one secluded reptile species. This is only an example of the totally unforeseen phenomena that can take place due to climate changes and threaten any species! What if similar thing happens to us tomorrow? We would probably devise some artificial ways to keep it going, but life would never be the same again!

Source Nature

In a shocking find by scientists, the methods used to determine when endangered species will die out has found to be not upto-date and that species which were calculated do die out in a few years could possibly die out in a few months. Thus the speed at which the endangered species can die out has been underestimated.

These findings, presented in the journal ‘Nature’, suggest that animals like the western gorilla, the Malayan sun bear, Sumatran tiger, may be extinct much sooner than what was expected. Ecologists Brett Melbourne, at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Alan Hastings at the University of California comment that the models used to predict extinction of a species must be updated more frequently because there all always new factors coming up which contribute to deaths of species, which range from new diseases, natural calamities, freak deaths like the falling of a tree to even the mating and sex ratios of those concerned species.

This warning is meant to be heard more importantly by IUCN - International Union for Conservation of Nature which prepares annually a list of animals under the threat of extinction. The models used by the IUCN covered most of the factors responsible for dwindling numbers of species, but they failed to include other vital factors the male and female sex ratios, the difference in the age of a female and male of that species, the reproductive success of individuals in that group and the number of offsprings. These factors matter a lot because they can result in sudden increase in the numbers of the concerned species. Researchers say that for species like the Western Gorillas, individuals of that group could be monitored and this information could be put in those models to get more realistic results.

Craig Hilton-Taylor, who manages the IUCN red list in Cambridge, agrees that the extinction estimates are often inadequate but cites the reason that out of more than a 1.8 million species they have only able to assess 41000 species. He also said that such findings would help them only more to create even more evaluated extinction lists. It is shocking that 1 in every 4 mammal species, 1 in every 8 bird species and 1 in every 3 marine species are threatened, the total count is 16000 species.

Source: Guardian

Images: CuriousAnimals, ABC News

We are really far away from understanding the seriousness of environmental pollution. Martin O’Brien is the author of A Crisis of Waste? Understanding the Rubbish Society. He urges the government and common people to consider the matter. We need to understand what the statistics on waste actually tell us, and work accordingly. Awareness among citizen is also required to minimize the household waste. Our landfill sites will be completely full within a very short period, say within the next eight to nine years. But recent statistics say that it would be full even earlier that that. So what next? Now days of easy waste disposal are over and it seems households need to mine their own waste for potentially valuable resources and then deliver these for exploitation by private companies.

The sad thing is that, every government is planning to find out ways to develop markets for waste: to make it easier for private companies to trade waste for profit. It’s not a sort of environmental awareness, but a thought of marketization of waste that is driving us to consider that matter. Because of this, big plans are made but all in vain- just to increase the complexity of household waste management. Recycling has been increased, but we can do even more than that. Why not reuse the materials in stead of exporting it to distant land.

The problem of waste materials has been largely ignored, both by the government as well as by us. We should consider it from the environmental point-of-view. Then only we can minimize the fast-increasing bulk of garbage on the earth.

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Source: guardian

The golden eagle is the second largest bird of prey in Scotland after the sea eagle and is protected by law. However, only three out of 16 regions in Scotland considered in the report had stable, or expanding populations of the Golden eagle. In the remaining areas, the population of golden eagles was rapidly declining even though the habitat of the regions was suited to the bird. The central and eastern Highlands, are the worst affected where the existing populations of eagles is in decline.

The main reason cited for the decline of the golden eagles is the use of illegal poisoned baits. The report gives proof that the illegal use of poisoned baits continues to blight Scotland. This is a deeply disturbing report because the golden eagle is one of the top predators of the Scottish moorlands and a decline in their number is bound to have serious implication on the ecological balance of the region.

via: bbc

Magellanic penguins live off the coasts of Chile and Argentina and also on the Falkland islands. There was a time when they were in huge numbers, but today their number is only dwindling. P. Dee Boersma, a biologist at the University of Washington, has been observing the Magellanic penguins present in Punta Tombo, Argentina, for almost 30 years and she bears a mute witness to the gradually lessening numbers of these majestic creatures.

Apart from the fact that we are losing out on such wonderful sea creatures, an issue that is more concerning is that the dwindling numbers of Magellanic penguins who are also regarded as the ‘Marine sentinels’, only suggests that there is something grievously wrong with our Marine environment.

Over fishing, uncontrolled dumping of toxic wastes, oil spills and garbage dumping in the ocean and the drastic climatic changes have perhaps made life only more difficult for these little penguins, which grow up to 27 inches on an average and weigh close to 11-12 pounds. These penguins can swin close to 100 miles per day, but because of food shortage, these birds have to swim some 40 miles farther from their nest. It is because of such harsh conditions that even the penguin parents, who lay two eggs, have to prefer the first hatched one in trying times.

The Punta Tombo colony is home to 200,000 breeding pairs of Magellanic penguins. Thus this place becomes possibly the largest colony of the Magellanic penguins. P. Dee Boersma, along with her graduate students and volunteer assistants have banded more than 50,000 birds in this colony.

Graham Harris, a conservationist who heads the Wildlife Conservation Society programs in Argentina, commented that changes in these penguins relative feeding patterns could reflect some major changes in the marine environment.

Source: IHT

Rainfall, flood and earthquake have already destroyed a lot in the China. 200 people were killed in flood few months back. Earthquake in Sichuan province took away 80,000 lives, leaving millions to strive as homeless. Tropical storm and floodwater have been very devastating in places like Guangzhou and Jiangxi and Baiyun district and many such places. Even unusual rainfall in a regular basis has claimed many lives in different places. But we should not forget that the actual data is always much more than the recorded or revealed data.

Next G-8 meeting is going to be held in Hokkaido. Global warming would be of prime importance in this meeting and we hope that some sort of action must be taken by the cooperation of all these big nations. The matter is something, that is related to all the human beings, animals and plants living on this earth. We have no time to waste in taking decision, in fact we have little time left to do anything. The question is how soon we can make some changes. All the big nations should sincerely try to reduce the Carbon emission. Recycling of resources, increasing forest coverage, optimizing energy use and finding out water resources scientifically will help us to bring some positive changes.

China calls for the help of other nations to cooperate her in fighting out the global warming. Even if we can’t control the situation anyway, we hope to hold it from being getting worst.

Source: reuters

The most ironical aspect of the pollution in many countries is that the government agencies themselves are involved in many occasions and they simply refuse to accept the responsibility citing various excuses. This time it is none other than the Pentagon itself which is facing the ire of the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) of the United States. The Superfund program was initiated by the congress in 1980 to clean up certain critically polluted sites and the Pentagon actually owned a bulk of them. But while other federal agencies like NASA and the nuclear department have agreed to the terms readily, Pentagon has always created obstacles. This time round they are supposed to clean up several of their military bases which are threatening public health by polluting the drinking water and soil also.

The threat comes from the lethal chemicals that are dumped in those bases. Some of these toxic chemicals can even cause cancer and several other health problems. In fact there are several other such bases yet to be considered and it might take billions of dollars and decades of effort to clean them up completely.

The EPA has a final weapon to force Pentagon. It is authorized to have the final say and impose fines on non complying agencies and that seems to be the only solution remaining now. The Pentagon, given its importance in national security, is trying to throw around its weight and avoid the clean up. It has failed to understand how far reaching the consequences can be and just looking at the monetary aspect. It might be having a tacit understanding with the superior administration riding on which it is refusing to sign the legitimate agreement, but it would definitely realize the costs of this mistake after a few years!

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Source: MSNBC

There is also the proposal of redirecting our energies to improve our technology and the vast source of nuclear energy. We have shunned it in fear of a holocaust and consequently, research in that field suffered. But if properly harnessed, it opens a great arena with an infinite potentiality. There is enough energy in one gram of radioactive substance to provide electricity to a city like Mumbai for one day!

The pressure on these nations from the international community of environmentalists is also an added impetus for a positive outcome of these discussions. Mikhail Gorbachev did not know that he was making history when he dismantled the U.S.S.R.; we are also in such a position. It is up to us and our elected leaders to build a green and clean planet for the generations to come, or procrastinate the decision and create a desert for our children.

Source: Reuters