Water Conservation Done Creatively

Creative rain tank (Photo by Buster Simpson)

by Cynthia Barnett, from Orion, UTNE Reader: http://www.utne.com/community/water-conservation-zm0z14jfzwil.aspx

 

Click Link for Slideshow 

 

On a winter’s day in Seattle, a leaden monotony hangs over the Central Business District, dispiriting to this part of downtown.

Contrary to reputation, the urban pallor is not borne of rain, which falls almost imperceptibly from silvery clouds that match the nearby waters of Puget Sound.

Rather, the gloom rises from the cement hardscape.

The busy streets are paved dark gray, the wide sidewalks beside them light gray. The skyscrapers rise in shades of gray. The hulking freeways, ramps, and overpasses: gray. The monorail track and its elephantine pillars: gray.

Trudge the sidewalks northwest to Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood, hang a left on Vine Street toward the sound, and a 10-foot-tall, bright blue rain tank pops from the dullness, tipped whimsically toward a red brick office building.

Atop the tank, green pipes in the shape of fingers and a thumb reach out, the stretched index finger connected to a downspout from the rooftop. Rainwater flows from roof to finger to palm to thumb, from which it pours to a series of descending basins built between the sidewalk and the street. They, in turn, cascade to landscaped wedges growing thick with woodland plants.

For two blocks, as Vine slopes toward the sound, water trickles down a runnel and through street-side planters, shining stones, and stepped terraces, enlivening the roadway with greenery, public sculpture, and the sounds of falling water.

The project, called Growing Vine Street, began as a small, water conservation effort among residents and property owners to turn their stretch of a former industrial neighborhood into an urban watershed.

Twenty years later, it is a big part of the answer to the largest single source of pollution fouling Puget Sound and most of the major bays and freshwater ecosystems of the United States - stormwater.

The gray shellac of a city repels more than the imagination. When rain flows along streets, parking lots, and rooftops rather than percolating into the ground, it soaks up toxic metals, oil and grease, pesticides and herbicides, feces, and every other scourge that can make its way to a gutter.

This runoff impairs virtually every urban creek, stream, and river in Washington. It makes Pacific killer whales some of the most PCB-contaminated mammals on the planet. It’s driving two species of salmon extinct, and kills a high percentage of healthy coho within hours of swimming into Seattle’s creeks, before they’ve had a chance to spawn.

Returning some of nature’s hydrology to the cityscape can make an enormous difference - or could - as more individuals, businesses, and neighborhoods remake their bit of the terra firma.

Washington State University scientists have found that streets with rain gardens clean up 90 percent or more of the pollutants flowing through on their way to the sound. Green roofs reduce runoff between 50 and 85 percent and can drop a building’s energy costs by nearly a third.

Cisterns like the one on Vine Street solve two problems, reducing runoff and capturing water for outdoor irrigation - which in summer can account for half a city’s freshwater demand.

Read more: http://www.utne.com/community/water-conservation-zm0z14jfzwil.aspx#ixzz32pjeBFcp

Healthy Diet, Healthier Planet

Department of Health, CC BY

by Daniel Tan, University of Sydney

The way we currently produce food around the world contributes up to 20-30% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and accounts for 70% of all human water use.

But is it possible to eat well and take better care of the Earth at the same time?

Knowing what’s good for you

The Australian Guide To Healthy Eating recommends eating a variety of nutritious foods including vegetables, fruit, grain and lean meat to achieve a balanced healthy diet.

This guide indicates the need to increase the consumption of cereals, legumes, vegetables and fruit, while consuming meat, fish and dairy products in lesser quantities.

Meat is an important source of protein and certain micro-nutrients, including iron, zinc and vitamins and milk is a rich source of protein and calcium.

That’s why the Australian Guide recommends two daily serves of milk and dairy products, along with two serves of meat, fish and eggs.

Protein intake is important for a balanced diet, as insufficient protein intake can lead to obesity due to excessive carbohydrate and fat intake to meet energy requirements.

Plant foods - including grains, fruits, vegetables and legumes - are also vital for keeping us healthy.

That’s why the Australian Guide To Healthy Eating recommends a higher consumption of plant foods each day, along the lines of seven serves of cereals, five serves of vegetables and legumes, and two serves of fruit.

Doing that can reduce the risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and some types of cancer, and increase life expectancy.

The global impacts of our diet

The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization defines sustainable diets as:

Those diets with low environmental impacts which contribute to food and nutrition security and to healthy life for present and future generations.

In developed countries like Australia and the UK, people tend to consume more meat and operate at a higher trophic level in the food chain.

At the lowest level of the food chain (trophic level 1) are primary producers such as plants, followed by plant-eating animals such as cows, goats, horses and kangaroos. Then come animals that eat other animals, and then the apex or super predators at the top of the food chain (including carnivores like crocodiles, lions and killer whales).

Between each trophic level, there is a loss of energy. That’s why, for example, production of livestock, on average, may require 4 kg of cereal grain for the production of 1 kg of meat.

The rearing of livestock for meat, eggs and dairy also generates 14.5% of total global greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from methane produced during digestion in grazing animals such as cattle and sheep. If people consumed more crops directly, rather than their processing through livestock, there will be a positive environmental impact.

The double pyramid, showing which foods are best for us as individuals and for the environment. Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition, CC BY-SA

The Double Pyramid developed by the Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition in Italy shows the synergies between food that is good for our health and environment.

This model consists of two pyramids: one is the traditional food pyramid similar to the Australian guide, while the other is an upside-down pyramid ranking the environmental impacts of the same foods. In general, foods at the base of the food pyramid are also those with the lowest environmental impact.

Eat your cereal, beans and vegetables

Cereal grain crops are primary producers and have a lower water and carbon footprint.

Legumes such as chickpea and lentil have less than half of the greenhouse emissions of other cereal crops, as they are able to fix nitrogen naturally from the air and do not require any nitrogen fertilisers.

Compared with animal products, emissions from vegetables are lower on a per tonne basis. Most emissions associated with vegetable production come from fertiliser use, electricity use and post-harvest refrigeration and transport.

Even a modest replacement of energy-intensive animal products with less-energy-intensive grains, fruits and vegetables would be significant at the global scale.

Rethinking healthy diet advice

Given that fewer than 3% of people in Australia and the UK are vegetarian, it’s unrealistic to suggest a meat-free diet for everyone.

Instead, it may be more realistic to encourage people to replace quantities of red meat and processed meat with lean, less environmentally-harmful meat options such as chicken, and plant-based proteins such as legumes.

In Australia and New Zealand, grazing animals are mainly grass-fed rather than grain-fed (more common in the US), which may play an important role in soil carbon sequestration in grasslands, which reduces greenhouse gas emissions.

If a healthy and sustainable plant-based diet is better for our health and environment, why is it that consumption of plant foods in many developed countries does not meet recommended levels?

In Victoria, for example, fewer than 8% of adults consume the recommended daily intake of five or more serves of vegetables, and fewer than 46% eat the recommended daily intake of two or more serves of fruit.

The recent Australian Health Survey found that one in four adults were eating no vegetables on an average day and only 7% were eating the recommended five servings.

An energy-dense diet made up of refined grains, added sugars and added fats may also be more affordable than a healthy and sustainable diet based on fruits and vegetables and lean meats.

Australian governments could help promote a healthier diet by considering educational and policy measures, such as reinstating the healthy-food star rating systems and restricting junk food promotion.

Given the rapidly rising costs to all Australians of our growing waistlines - 25% of us are now obese, one of the highest rates in the world - failing to act is already proving extremely expensive, in both personal and economic terms.

It’s also up to each of us to make healthier choices, for our own sake, as well as for the environment that our children will inherit from us - and that starts with the food we eat today.


Daniel Tan receives funding from the Cotton and Grains Research and Development Corporations. He is President of Ag Institute Australia (NSW Division).

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Solar Streets: New Roadways May Ditch Asphalt for Energy-Generating Sunshine Collectors

by Kristina Bravo, TakePart: http://www.takepart.com/article/2014/05/18/solar-roadways

Kristina Bravo is a Los Angeles-based writer. She is a fellow at TakePart. full bio
 

As a kid in the 1960s, before most people had even heard of solar power, Scott Brusaw imagined “electric roads.” 

Almost five decades and two government-funded prototypes later, the electrical engineer from Ohio is on his way to raising $1 million to start producing solar panels for our streets and highways.

Not to power the light, mind you - to function as streets and highways. Soon you may be driving on solar panels that power the buildings you’re passing by.

“We can use [photovoltaic panels] to create roads, parking lots, tarmacs - anything under the sun,” Brusaw says. “All of the current asphalt and concrete currently soaking up the sun can be covered with our technology to turn that sunlight into clean, renewable electricity.”

The biggest challenge Brusaw faced was engineering a case to protect the fragile solar cells. He began by researching the technology used in black boxes for airplanes and ended up using thick hardened glass.

It sounds fragile, but after impact resistance and traction testing, it has proved able to handle trucks weighing several times the legal limit. A prototype solar parking lot in Sandpoint, Idaho, has been successful as well. If Brusaw’s crowdfunding campaign reaches its goal, production of the roadway panels could begin within a few months.

It may take some time to see them on highways, though. Neil Fromer, executive director of the Resnick Sustainability Institute at the California Institute of Technology, says installing solar power on large structures will take a lot of testing and paperwork.

“The regulatory challenges of putting solar panels on rooftops were significant over the last 20 or 30 years,” Fromer says. “It’s only an avalanche [of effort] that managed to get it really working, so doing the roads would be a big challenge.”

Electric safety concerns would also need to be addressed, he says, considering that the road is not controlled. But the end product might be well worth it.

“The tremendous amount of solar energy that hits the earth’s surface in an hour is enough to power the planet for a year,” Fromer explains. “So when you think about renewable energy in the long term, solar is a huge part of that.” Considering that pavement covers as much as half of many U.S. cities, a lot of electricity could be generated by covering it all with solar panels.

Brusaw’s project could have a huge impact - if it overcomes the many challenges to getting it out into the real world.

“I think this is pretty cool, and I don’t want to sound too pessimistic about it,” Fromer says. “It’s really just a question of integrating [solar energy] into our existing electrical system. Roads are great surfaces to try it ... technology innovation always helps.”

Building Resilience to Environmental Change by Transforming Gender Relations

Report from International Institute for Environment and Development, Relief Web: http://reliefweb.int/report/world/building-resilience-environmental-change-transforming-gender-relations

 

Download PDF (92.76 KB)

Making gender equality a global and local reality

The UNFCCC has taken significant steps to promote women's increased participation in the global climate change negotiations process.

It's a gain for gender equality, but gaps remain.

In 2012, the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) recognised the need for a more balanced representation of men and women in the climate negotiations.

They adopted a decision to promote the goal of gender balance in negotiating bodies and in country delegations [PDF] at the Doha climate change conference and added the issue of 'gender and climate' as a standing item on the agenda of their annual meetings (gender equality issues were previously only considered under 'Other Matters').

Promoting gender equality to get climate change policies responding to everyone's needs has become a unifying issue in an otherwise difficult negotiating atmosphere.

The importance of women's active participation, leadership, freedom of choice and voice is increasingly being recognised in development-related fields.

For example, at the Rio+20 conference on Sustainable Development, world leaders recognised gender equality as a vital aspect of sustainable development, reaffirming women’s critical contribution. Women were seen as actors, not just as victims or vulnerable beneficiaries.

In other areas too, from REDD+ to what should be on the UN post-2015 development agenda and in Sustainable Development Goals, gender equality is becoming more prominent. You can read about the discussions we had in the report of the Wilton Park conference on post-2015 development framework: priorities for the least developed countries).

Bearing the brunt of climate change impacts

While efforts to increase the level of women's participation globally in the UNFCCC and other global bodies and conferences are important, girls and women living in countries affected by climate change are feeling the brunt of its impact on their lives.

Climate change often makes existing social inequalities worse. As the primary collectors of food and water in many parts of the world, for example, women and girls are having to spend more time on this task. This burden is likely to increase, reducing the time they have left to go to school, visit their doctor or carry out income-generating activities.

Climate change affects women and men in distinct ways. How individuals cope with the immediate and longer-term impacts of climate change depends on their livelihoods, access to resources, job opportunities, education, health services, skills and capabilities, and socially ascribed roles and responsibilities, among other things.

Gaps and challenges

A great deal of progress has been made in bringing gender equality issues to the forefront of the global climate change response. But what gaps and challenges remain?

One key message to come out of a recent IIED workshop on integrating gender into environment and development work was that measures should aim to correct the inherent causes of gender inequality in order to be truly transformative.

Other important messages from the workshop were:

• Look at power relations and inequality. Consider how power relations and gender inequalities intersect with other forms of inequality (created by factors such as social status, class, ethnicity, age, and health) to identify who is vulnerable and build 'resilience' to climate change (and other impacts of environmental change)
• Think local. Rio+20 and UNFCCC rhetoric focuses on the global context, directing attention away from the local, but gender relations are affected by the local environment and other factors. Look at the local context and all aspects of environmental change to understand and address inequality
• Evidence. We need to develop a more robust evidence base with sex-aggregated data. Data is not just about counting the number of women present at a meeting; it's about measuring inequality gaps between women and men in a variety of contexts, and progress in narrowing these gaps
• Act. This analysis needs to be backed up by a strong commitment to address the structural foundations of inequality. When we do act, we must be wary of seeing women as resources (for instance as additional labour) to reach an environmental goal (such as responding to climate change), adding to their already onerous responsibilities.

The policy briefing from the workshop explores these issues further.

Pay Up, BP: It’s Outrageous for the Company to Wriggle Out of the Settlement for the Gulf Coast Oil Spill

by John Culhane, Slate.com: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2014/05/gulf_coast_oil_spill_settlement_bp_should_pay_up.html

Gulf of Mexico in June 13, 2010.

Photo by Sean Gardner/Reuters.

In the four years since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, BP has gone from eating crow to crowing.

In a recent op-ed, John Mingé, the chairman and president of BP America, celebrated the end of the company’s cleanup operation in the Gulf.

“No company has done more to help a region recover after an industrial accident,” he claimed.

Meanwhile, in court and in other media outlets, including 60 Minutes, BP is trying to get out of the terms of the mass settlement the company entered into back in 2012, when it was still humbled by the disastrous spill.

BP’s change of heart is, frankly, outrageous. And what’s at stake isn’t just the company’s obligation to pay an untold number of businesses as promised, but the integrity of other settlements like this one.

If BP gets to wriggle out of the terms it agreed to, future plaintiffs negotiating the resolution of a group lawsuit (called a class action) will be less likely to trust such agreements.

And that would be a shame, because settling big cases is in everyone’s interests: defendants, their investors, and claimants all benefit from the certainty the settlement of a class action brings.

That settlement BP signed in 2012 requires the company to compensate those who suffered business losses after the spill, as long as they were located within a broad geographic area (stretching all the way to the Tennessee border).

BP now claims that this allows recovery to all kinds of businesses that don’t seem at all connected to the spill. It shrewdly offers colorful examples - a five-figure award collected by George Morris, the owner of a high-end shoe store in Sarasota, and an award to an escort service.

But claims like these were always part of the deal. BP agreed to broad terms to gain predictable, easy-to-administer results. There was good reason for the company to choose that.

It’s true that economic loss claims - as opposed to claims for personal injury - are much harder to prove than the typical personal injury case.

Who knows whether a distant hotel, or even a retail store nearby, lost business because of the oil spill or for any of a zillion other reasons - sick employees, the bad economy, changing tastes in shoes. On the other hand, defendants worry that, given the ripple effects of a major disaster, too many people will be able to prove their losses were caused by the bad conduct.

What did BP get for agreeing to the terms it is bound by? Clear limits.

Shortly after the spill, BP, under heavy pressure from the White House, agreed to establish a compensation fund. It was run by Kenneth Feinberg, whose track record as a fund guru is unparalleled.

The complexity of dealing with economic loss claims meant that Feinberg proceeded on a case-by-case basis, shelling out an average of $26,000 each to about 240,000 people.

It’s impossible to know whether any particular claimant would have done better by going to court, but $26,000 isn’t a lot of money, and many people and businesses recovered nothing. Plus the whole process lacked transparency.

So many claimants chose instead to opt out of the fund and proceed in the old-fashioned way: by suing BP. When they settled in 2012, the terms were these: whether or not a business could prove that the spill caused a loss in revenue, it was entitled to recover if its financial pattern was in the shape of a V - revenue went way down after the spill and then rebounded strongly.

Of course, again, businesses fall and rise for all kinds of reasons. But until recently, BP had no problem with paying claims according to this formula. In late 2012, BP lawyer Mark Holstein even acknowledged that the settlement contemplated “false positives.”

Now, though, BP Senior Vice President Geoff Morrell is saying: “No company would ever agree to a settlement that compensates people who were not harmed by their actions and we most certainly did not agree to such a settlement.”

That’s just wrong. In order to settle disputes, companies routinely agree to pay dubious claims. That’s why BP has gotten nowhere in court.

In a decision in March, a federal appeals court held the company to the plain language of the settlement: as Judge Leslie Southwick wrote: “There is nothing fundamentally unreasonable about what BP accepted but now wishes it had not.” 

What did BP get for agreeing to the terms it is bound by? Clear limits. 

Alongside the people who seem to be getting money for free are those who probably should be eligible to recover, but can’t. One plaintiff’s attorney said he’s had to turn away most of the folks that come to him seeking representation, because they can’t pass the V-test. 

For example, a marine construction business lost huge amounts of revenue right after the spill, when all the boats it would usually have worked on left the area to participate in the cleanup. But then the business didn’t bounce back quite enough to reach the top of the V.

That’s how it goes with settlements like this - you pay out for some cases where you shouldn’t, but you don’t pay out in other cases where you should. Investors go for it, because, all told, they see a better outcome than years of litigation, appeals, and uncertainty.

As John Goldberg, a law professor at Harvard who has followed the BP case closely, reminded me, after Merck agreed to shell out almost $5 billion to settle claims that its painkiller, Vioxx, caused heart attacks and strokes, the company’s stock actually rose. That testifies to the value investors place on finality and certainty.

Corporations everywhere should hope that BP loses its misguided bid to undermine both of those values.

Slate thanks John Goldberg for his expert help with this article.

John Culhane is professor of law and director of the Health Law Institute at Widener University School of Law and co-author of Same-Sex Legal Kit for Dummies.

2nd Edition of M&E for CC (Climate Change) Adaptation and Resilience: A Synthesis of Tools, Frameworks and Approaches

app.nccs.gov.sg

by Climate-Eval: http://www.climate-eval.org/news/2nd-edition-me-cc-adaptation-and-resilience-synthesis-tools-frameworks-and-approaches

In announcing this second edition, one of its co-authors Dennis Bours, Team Leader of SEA Change CoP said “with this report we aimed to compile a comprehensive collection of monitoring and evaluation tools, frameworks, and approaches".

"In this updated second edition, a good number of newly-published frameworks and tools have been added, and attention was given to the changing focus from adaptation towards resilience.”

Dennis goes on to explain this tool is intended to help program managers, policy-makers, and researchers easily identify which materials would be most useful to them.

“The report extends the kind of adept guidance and spot-on analysis that helps development professionals do their jobs. At the same time, it identifies gaps and challenges that need to be addressed by technical specialists in the rapidly-evolving field of climate change adaptation.”

“It is essential to recognize, incorporate, and act upon local knowledge and strategies to achieve resilience. The next challenge for us is to be better at identifying and communicating what works so that lessons can bring benefits to many others” Dennis adds.

Monitoring & evaluation for climate change adaptation and resilience: A synthesis of tools, frameworks and approaches - 2nd edition is the joint work of Dennis Bours, Colleen McGinn and Patrick Pringle.

Cooperation is Supporting Wilderness Conservation in Italy

by Vlado Vancura, European Wilderness Society: http://wilderness-society.org/cooperation-supporting-wilderness-conservation-italy/

The European Wilderness Society is partnering already for several months with the Association of Friends of National Park of Casentinesi Forests, Falterona Mountain and Campigna!

http://www.crinalidilegno.it/

The Association is a non-profit organization formed by volunteers who dedicate their free time to the protection and promotion of the natural environment of this unique “wild” territory. Here is a short introduction of this entity committed to support wilderness in central Italy:

Our role is to support the Park, both for practical activities and also for both naturalistic activities, such as environmental monitoring. The particularly important is ongoing wildlife monitoring (mapping, tracking and distribution).

Currently we are also engaged in collaboration with the Park and the University of Perugia on a study to investigate the presence, and areal distribution of small carnivores animals like wild cats and martens.

The rare Temporaria frog

Wolf monitoring in NP Casentinesi Forests

Important part of our work is monitoring of distribution, presence, and territory use of two wolves inside the park, using the technique of snow-tracking. We carry out this work since March 2014.

We also carry out together with the Park, and other associations, a thematic exhibition on the presence of the wolf in central Apennines (including the territories of the Casentino Forests). 

Wolf is dweller of the Casentino Forests already for decades and was present here in a small number. It is estimated that in 1970 they remained only 100 individuals of wolf - Canis Lupus Italicus. 

The situation slightly changed in the mid-eighties of the last century when wolf began the re-colonization of the new territories and started to expand to the north. This allowed the recovery of wolf population in the Alps and the south east of France!

We are very happy and honoured to be able to cooperate with the European Wildness Society and communicate uniqueness of our park

Through this Europe wide network, our intention is to establish a fruitful cooperation for the benefit of conservation of the European wilderness. We deeply believe that NP Casentino Forests has all attributes and quality to contribute to the European Wilderness Preservation System!

Born in 2010, How Much is Left For Me?

by Visually: http://visual.ly/born-2010-how-much-left-me

Explore more visuals like this one on the web's largest information design community - Visually.

Billions Axed in Clean Energy: Renewable Target is Next

by Alan Pears AM, RMIT University

Broken promises on renewable energy (Lukas Coch/AAP)

There are billions of dollars of broken promises in the Abbott government’s first budget for low-emission and renewable energy programs - and wiggle room to break even more in the next few years.

Among last night’s surprises was that government has budgeted to spend just A$1.15 billion, or less than half of its centrepiece A$2.55 billion Emissions Reduction Fund over the next four years.

Environment Minister Greg Hunt says the full amount could still be spent, with funds to “be allocated flexibly over time”. But anyone with a long memory will be watching this very closely: under the Howard government, more than $360 million was budgeted but not spent on climate programs.

Going, going, gone

Gone are the Coalition’s promises for one million more solar roofs across Australia and at least 25 solar towns, for which the Environment Minister was promising A$100 million each as recently as six months ago. Those programs have been respectively abandoned and slashed.

In the case of the Solar Towns scheme, it will offer a total of A$2.2 million over the next three years to community groups, in barely more than a handful of electorates, several of them marginal seats like Corangamite in Victoria and Moreton in Queensland.

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), set up to support new and emerging renewable technologies into production and deployment, including funding world-leading solar research, is set to be scrapped, a cut of A$1.3 billion. That’s despite the Coalition’s repeated pre-election promises to keep it.

ARENA’s axing is on hold for now, because the government needs support from other parties in the Senate to shut it down.

The same applies to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, an independent investment body that’s already mobilised A$2.5 billion of mostly private funding for low-emission energy and agriculture projects, which is set to make a profit for the government if allowed to continue.

A bill to close down the CEFC has already been knocked back once in the Senate. But until they are officially axed, the heads of ARENA and the CEFC have pledged to keep working.

Other axed industry and community clean energy programs include the Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund, the National Low Emission Coal Initiative, Energy Efficiency Programmes, the National Solar Schools Plan, Energy Efficiency Information Grants and Low Carbon Communities.

While the axing of so many renewable and low-emission programs was predicted, it is significant. The Australian government cuts to programs driving greater renewable and low-emission energy use come just as we’re being advised to do precisely the opposite by global experts.

As Renew Economy has reported, this week a new report from the traditionally conservative International Energy Agency (of which Australia is a member) shows that the world’s electricity mix needs to switch from 68% fossil fuels now to at least 65% renewables by 2050, if we’re hoping to limit the rise in global temperatures to no more than 2 degrees this century.

All eyes on the target

After this budget, all eyes will be on the Renewable Energy Target (RET) review now underway.

At risk are up to 18,400 additional renewable energy jobs and A$14.5 billion of investment, on top of the A$20 billion already invested under the RET scheme. Public submissions on the renewable review close this Friday at 5pm AEST.

There is room to improve the Renewable Energy Target, as I’ll explain. But after this budget, it’s now the last major remaining piece of federal government policy that supports ongoing investment.

As for big power generators' calls for it to be cut back to a “true” 20% target by 2020 - that’s a stunning reversal from their past position. And I know, because I was there.

Will lobbyists get what they want again?

The Renewable Energy Target has traditionally had bipartisan political support, as a policy started by the Coalition and expanded under Labor. It’s led to A$20 billion of investment, while reducing the greenhouse intensity of the Australian economy and positioning us for future economic success.

The so-called 20% renewable energy target for 2020 is actually 41,000 gigawatt-hours of Large Scale Renewable Electricity (known as the LRET) and a complementary Small Scale Renewable Energy Scheme (SRES) that uses a similar certificate trading mechanism, but actually has no fixed 2020 target.

Big power generators and other industry are now calling for the LRET not to aim for 41,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity, but instead be set at 20% of whatever actual electricity consumption is in 2020 - which is expected to be far lower.

They have justified this position by claiming they need “certainty”, and that excess renewable energy generation is cutting into their revenue.

Yet that’s not what they said more than a decade ago.

The original Mandatory Renewable Energy Target was developed from John Howard’s 1997 Safeguarding the Future speech just before the Kyoto Climate Conference. The original proposal was for 2% additional renewable energy (relative to 1997 generation) by 2010.

In intense negotiations, the electricity industry argued strongly for a shift from a percentage target to a fixed amount of generation - 9,500 GWh, in 2010. This rested on their need for “certainty” so they could plan to meet their compliance obligations.

I was involved in these negotiations, and even co-facilitated a four-day workshop in late 1998, in which many issues were addressed.

The industry’s underlying reason for the change was that it thought the official electricity forecast on which the 9,500 GWh “effective 2% extra” target was based underestimated likely 2010 consumption. So the shift was likely to reduce their RET obligation.

They also recognised that predicting electricity consumption even a year or two in advance is difficult, and would create real uncertainty.

The 2020 41,000 GWh LRET target was based on electricity forecasts of 2007, which were themselves based on data provided by the electricity industry.

But now the industry is seeing unexpected ongoing decline in electricity consumption, so it wants to switch back to a target as a percentage of actual consumption. It argues it needs this for planning “certainty”.

Of course, certainty is a relative concept. For the renewable energy industry, a fixed 2020 generation target does provide certainty, while a percentage target creates uncertainty for everyone, as it is very difficult to predict consumption, even a year or two ahead.

A better plan for the renewable target

The objectives of the Renewable Energy Target are to grow Australia’s renewable energy industry and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A 2012 review by the independent Climate Change Authority found that it was, in fact, doing that fairly effectively.

So if we don’t want to see major new renewable energy projects cancelled across Australia, and lose renewable expertise overseas, the best thing we could do is leave the Large Scale Renewable Electricity Target (LRET) as it is at 41,000 gigawatt-hours of power by 2020.

In contrast, we could improve the complementary Small Scale Renewable Energy Scheme (SRES).

The SRES has been affected by years of chaotic state and federal government policy on rooftop PV, as well as a complicated revolution related to declining PV panel costs, emergence of new technologies such as storage, and smart demand management.

But its cost is declining, and it has been widely embraced by Australians, with research for the federal government late last year showing that outer suburbs and regional areas have led the way in going solar, as the maps of Australia and Brisbane on the right show (you can see detailed city and state maps at the end of this report).

With all that in mind, the government should maintain SRES as it is while implementing a more comprehensive, inclusive policy discussion to deliver a predictable, long-term policy for small-scale distributed energy.

As a side note, the Abbott government and the Productivity Commission both support a trend towards privatisation of the energy sector.

And the Renewable Energy Target has actually been a key driver of privatisation already: around 1.4 million Australian households are now private electricity generators, while the renewable energy industry is privately-owned and operated. So the RET should be seen as entirely consistent with the Coalition’s approach to energy.

Why should Australians reward bad business practice?

Australia’s electricity industry is beginning to confront the kind of change that Telstra’s landline business has had to deal with. Electricity consumption is declining. For a capital-intensive industry that has long-lived assets, this is very uncomfortable.

Major coal and gas generators now seem to see the RET as a focus for blame for many of their problems, particularly their loss of revenue.

But as explained on The Conversation before, the biggest factor driving uncertainty in the need for generation capacity is the trend of falling demand, which is not related to the LRET. The electricity industry has failed to invest sufficient effort to plan for and now understand that trend.

I know of no other large industry that knows so little about how its customers think and behave. Power generators got what they asked for more a decade ago with the design of the Renewable Energy Target - and now they want it changed again, at the expense of renewable investors.

As Treasurer Joe Hockey might put it, it’s time to end the age of entitlement.

Editor’s note: Alan will be on hand for an Author Q&A session from 11:30am to 12:30pm AEST tomorrow (May 15). Have any questions about the state of renewable energy in Australia? Post them below.


Alan Pears has worked in the sustainable energy and environment fields since the late 1970s, and been an expert adviser to federal, state and local governments across Australia, as well as community groups and the private sector. He is an honorary adviser to the Energy Efficiency Council, Climate Alliance and Alternative Technology Association.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Working to Save the Raptors

by Zoltan Kun, European Wilderness Society: http://wilderness-society.org/working-save-raptors/

The LIFE programme is the EU’s funding instrument for the environment. 

The general objective of LIFE is to contribute to the implementation, updating and development of EU environmental policy and legislation by co-financing pilot or demonstration projects with European added value. 

The ‘Save the Raptors‘ project, which is co-funded by the LIFE programme, aims to conserve Imperial Eagle and Saker Falcon in key Natura 2000 Sites in Bulgaria.

There are various actions taken within the framework of the project for instance eliminating one of the most serious conservation problems facing the globally threatened imperial eagle: electrocution.

This caused 67% of juvenile mortalities within the breeding territories of 30% of the Bulgarian eagle population, concentrated in Sakar ‘Special protection area’ (SPA), between 2009 and 2013.

The project is of the highest importance, not only because Bulgaria harbours some 10% of the EU population, but also because this viable population is the only one within the EU that carry ‘Anatolian’ genes, which make them unique.



There are various direct project actions, which includes the following:

1. Purchase pastures with souslik colonies and land plots, in which imperial eagle nests are found (situated) to ensure their adequate protection

2. Protect nests of imperial eagle and saker falcon to allow for tranquility (to prevent disturbance) during the breeding season and monitor the population

3. Manufacture (build) artificial nests for imperial eagle and saker falcon and place them in appropriate breeding sites

4. Plant trees, characteristic for the region in the sites where riverine forests have been eradicated and there are no trees (poplar trees), suitable for nesting of the imperial eagle

5. Provide supplementary feeding during the breeding period and in winter to increase breeding success

6. Insulate the most dangerous electricity poles within 5 km radius of the imperial eagles’ nests

The project managed to secure 595 hazardous electricity poles along 59 km, and as a result, no electrocuted eagles have been recorded recently, which contributed to an observed 25% increase in the number of breeding pairs. 

 The project has recently been shortlisted for the award of the Best LIFE project in 2014. More information about the shortlisted projects is here.

The Animals of Chernobyl

by Jonathan Crow, Open Culture: http://www.openculture.com/2014/05/the-animals-of-chernobyl.html

Jonathan Crow is a Los Angeles-based writer and filmmaker whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hollywood Reporter, and other publications. You can follow him at @jonccrow.



On April 26, 1986, the number 4 reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant blew up in what is now the Ukraine.

The site spewed a cloud of radioactive material that spread over much of Europe. The area immediately around Chernobyl received more than 400 times the radiation as Hiroshima and won’t be safely inhabitable for about 20,000 years.

The government set up a 1,000 square mile exclusion zone around the site. While short visits to the zone are possible without too much danger, living there is not advisable. Cancer is a real problem for the couple hundred elderly stalwarts who still make the zone their home.

Within the zone, nature has taken its own course, dismantling the Soviet-era brutalist tenements of the surrounding abandoned cities and turning it into what at first blush looks more and more like a prelapsarian Eden. The truth proves to be more complicated.

Dr. Timothy Mousseau, a biologist from the University of South Carolina, has been examining the wildlife around Chernobyl for fifteen years. He’s discovered that the radiation that has been bathing the area for almost 30 years is changing nature.

As you can see in the New York Times Op-Doc video above, birds are developing tumors, bugs have abnormal spots and spider webs seem much more free-form than usual. Get more on the story over at the Times.

Germans Love Wilderness: Majority of Germans in Favour of Protected Nature

by Max A.E. Rossberg, European Wilderness Society: http://wilderness-society.org/germans-love-wilderness/ 

Germans love wilderness, are for natural forests and floodplains and they reject genetic engineering. 

Federal Environment Minister Hendricks: "Wild nature is indispensable not only for animals and plants, but also for us humans".

"Germans are in general  nature lovers. This gives us support for our objective to  increase the wilderness areas in Germany to meet the CBD objectives".

The study also shows how important for the general population natural flood plains, meadows and pastures are. This is one more reason for us to protect these habitats, which in addition to their beauty bring us many other eco-system services such as clean water, biodiversity or reduction of the effects of climate change. 

What the Germans rightly do not want are genetically modified organisms. 93 percent are of the opinion that nature should only be used so that the diversity and habitats are permanently saved.

Nearly two thirds of Germans like wilderness the wilder it is. There is a strong desire to enjoy and experience wilderness: Four out of five people want the wilderness to be accessible.

At this point in time only a few areas in Germany are certified wilderness areas according to the European Wilderness Quality Standards. 

The is a general consensus that wilderness, especially if situated in National Parks, will create new jobs and enhance a region. Only 21 percent see a risk for the forestry sector and only 16 per cent see wilderness as a threat to the agricultural sector.

The State of Australia: Our Environment

AAP Image/Dean

by Ian Lowe, Griffith University

In the lead-up to the budget, the story of crisis has been hammered home, but there’s more to a country than its structural deficit. So how is Australia doing overall? 

In this special series, ten writers to take a broader look at the State of Australia; our health, wealth, education, culture, environment and international standing.

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The state of Australia’s environment is a real worry - and we have the report cards to prove it.

For the past two decades, successive federal governments have received a series of independent, five-yearly State of the Environment reports.

I was appointed to chair the first national assessment, which delivered its findings in May 1996. And what we concluded then - a lifetime ago for an 18-year-old reading this today - is even truer now:

Some aspects of Australia’s environment are in good condition by international standards … unfortunately, [this] report also shows that Australia has some serious environmental problems.

How we’re doing now

Whether you read the latest 2011 State of the Environment report, or the first from 1996, many of Australia’s biggest environmental problems have remained the same. But what has changed is the scale and speed of action now needed to fix them.

Some of those persistent problems include:

• worsening traffic snarls in poorly connected, sprawling cities;
• population pressures along our much-loved coastline;
• degradation of productive rural land;
• major declines in native wildlife;
• the growing global challenge of rising greenhouse gas emissions; and
• major gaps in our knowledge and monitoring across many areas. As any management expert will tell you, you can’t properly manage what you don’t measure.

While most advanced nations have recognised the need to protect productive land, we continue to lose it to urban expansion, a direct consequence of the high rate of population growth, compounded by urban development policies encouraging further sprawl.

That sprawl in turn contributes to one of key factors causing Australians to have the highest rate of greenhouse gas production per person of any affluent country.

The very low population density of our urban areas gives us extremely inefficient urban transport systems, with inadequate public transport and a high dependence on private cars.

Pressures on coastal areas also continue to be driven by our unusually high rate of population growth, augmented by social and economic changes that are driving people from inland regions.

Despite the recent expansion of renewable energy systems, we still get most of our electricity from burning high-emissions fossil fuels, as shown below. Overall, our dependence on coal has fallen, but gas use has risen rapidly.

What’s powering Australia? 2013 Australian Energy Update, CC BY

And there has been no observable slowing in the rate of loss of our biodiversity, largely because the main causes have not been addressed: loss of habitat and introduced species.

Our inland rivers remain a concern, especially the Murray-Darling system, largely because of the past enthusiasm for allowing extraction of river water for irrigation.

So if we’ve known for decades that all of these areas need to improve, why haven’t we done more about it?

How we got here

During the last decade, national governments have given some attention to the symptoms of our environmental decline. The state of the Murray-Darling system is one example.

Although the previous government backed away from the original plan, which would have given the river system at least a fighting chance of recovering its health, the revised document at least stopped further deterioration.

In the case of our greenhouse gas emissions, the mix of policies adopted by the Rudd and Gillard governments produced a measurable reduction and we did actually meet our Kyoto target, although that is mainly because the Howard government had demanded a goal that was uniquely generous and clearly out of line with our global responsibilities.

But the underlying problem is a failure to recognise and address the driving forces of environmental decline.

The 1996 State of the Environment report found that the problems we faced stemmed from a growing population, increasing consumption, lifestyle, and technology choices.

Yet we continue to have a rate of population growth higher than that of much poorer countries. Consumption per person is still increasing. And we continue to use outdated technologies like coal-fired electricity and large, inefficient cars.



The Rudd and Gillard governments did little to address these underlying drivers of environmental problems. That was bad enough.

Now, the Abbott government appears actively hostile to environmental protection. It has abandoned its responsibility for approving major projects by passing the job to the states, is trying to roll back the policies that cut greenhouse gas emissions, has reduced funding for bodies that actively protect the environment and is proposing an absurd “direct action” scheme that is not seen even by its supporters as an adequate response to climate change.

The government also continues to promote ridiculously high rates of population growth, distracting attention from its policy by demonising the relatively small number of people who seek asylum here.

How Australia’s population changed between 2000 and 2010. State of the Environment 2011, CC BY

Just as the Rudd and Gillard governments did, the current government is ignoring the consequences of rapid population growth.

That growth is a factor in high unemployment levels. It’s also causing chaos as state governments struggle with the spiralling costs of urban infrastructure: roads, public transport, water, power and waste treatment.

Our domestic greenhouse gas production is now swamped by our exports of fossil fuels, but the government continues to promote further expansion.

The underlying issue is the ideology of the government, an obsession with economic growth and a studied refusal to recognise what science has been telling us for at least 40 years: it is not possible even in principle to have unlimited growth in a closed system. The continuing attempt to pursue growth at all costs will inevitably have very serious consequences.

The next ten years

The next State of the Environment report is due in 2016. What will it conclude? I wish it weren’t the case, but I suspect it will keep repeating what has been said before in 2011, 2006, 2001 and back to 1996.

Australia is still blessed with many beautiful, unique places, plants and animals, including natural wonders from the Kimberley to Kakadu, and the Great Barrier Reef to Tasmania’s wilderness. Yet as a nation, we’re still not acting to conserve the natural fortune we’ve inherited for generations well beyond the next decade.

For at least the next few years, the prospects for environmental leadership from the current federal government look bleak.

Nearly a generation ago, I signed off the first State of the Environment by stressing that while we had found Australia faced serious environmental challenges, most of those problems did have solutions. Today, that’s still true.

But environmental organisations are increasingly seeing it as futile to attempt to persuade closed minds in Canberra. Instead, they are putting more effort into engaging with community groups and concerned citizens to change the political framework in which governments operate.

Solar isn’t just for the rich. The five areas of Australia with the largest number of solar systems – Bundaberg and Hervey Bay in Queensland, Mandurah in WA, and Werribee and Hopper’s Crossing in Victoria – all have below state average income levels. REC Agents Association/Renew Economy, CC BY

Ordinary people are voting with their wallets to install solar panels and save more energy at home.
Movements like Lock the Gate are the mood of the future, uniting rural producers, scientists and environmentalists to protect productive land. In the absence of national leadership, people across Australia will have to lead instead.

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Further reading: The State of Australia series


Ian Lowe was president of the Australian Conservation Foundation for a decade, from 2004 until last month.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Support “Green Reads,” a Program That Finances Libraries by Distributing Used Books in Eco-Friendly Vending Machines

by Dan Colman, Open Culture: http://www.openculture.com/2014/05/green-reads.html

Green Reads has launched a crowd funding campaign on IndieGogo to build 15 eco-friendly, used book vending machines.

Invented by Dana Clarke, the machines require no electricity and they’ll allow libraries, charities, and book retailers a way to sell used books and create a sustainable source of revenue.

Green Reads is looking to raise $75,000 ($5000 per machine) by May 19.

Once operational, the machines will be donated (not sold) to libraries and charities.

You can get a lot more information and contribute to this worthy campaign right here.

Resilience as a Driver of Change

ccap.org

by Alex Wilson, Brattleboro Reformer: http://www.reformer.com/columnists/ci_25702204/resilience-driver-change

Alex Wilson is the founder of BuildingGreen, Inc. and the Resilient Design Institute (www.resilientdesign.org), both based in Brattleboro. 

Send comments or suggestions for future columns to alex@buildinggreen.com.

Readers of this column have heard me argue in the past that resilience can be a motivation for taking actions that will not only make us and our families safer, but also help to mitigate climate change. Let me lay out that basic argument again.

Last week, I wrote that climate change deniers seek to seed doubt about the realities of anthropogenic causes of climate change - and whether global warming is even happening.

As the title of the 2008 book on this tactic, Doubt is Their Product, points out, if these industry-funded "experts" can convince enough people that the causes of a particular problem (whether climate change or hazards of tobacco or toxicity of flame retardants) are in doubt, policy makers can be convinced to hold off on imposing regulations that will cost industry money to implement.

They have succeeded admirably in that tactic with climate change: a large percentage of the public and the majority of legislators from a certain political party believe that the jury is still out.

With decision-making based on science seemingly impossible and new extraction technologies enabling us to extract ever-harder-to-reach oil and gas, what should we do to slow our greenhouse gas emissions? How can we convince people to take action?

The case for resilience

As defined by the Resilient Design Institute, "Resilience is the capacity to adapt to changing conditions and to maintain or regain functionality and vitality in the face of stress or disturbance. It is the capacity to bounce back after a disturbance or interruption of some sort."

Designing houses and apartment buildings to achieve resilience will keep people safer in the event of a disaster of some sort - whether a hurricane that might be more intense because of a warmer ocean, an earthquake that has nothing to do with climate change, or a power outage caused by terrorists hacking into our power grid controls.

You don’t have to believe in climate change to want to create safer homes for your family. It’s not a Blue State argument or one that is owned by Democrats.

Indeed, I’ve observed that Tea Party libertarians are sometimes the most receptive to the resilience argument. They want to be free from the tyranny of big government, but some of them also want to be less dependent on those systems that are controlled by government - like electricity distribution and national transportation networks.

Low-energy buildings are more resilient

Nearly nine years ago, following Hurricane Katrina, I began advancing the idea of "passive survivability": ensuring that buildings will provide livable conditions in the event of extended loss of power or interruptions in heating fuel. That remains a key tenet of resilience and what I have been advancing through the Resilient Design Institute.

To create a building that will maintain livable (or habitable) temperatures if it loses power or suddenly finds itself without heating fuel requires an extremely well-insulated building envelope.

The house that my wife and I recently renovated - with R-45 walls, an R-60 roof, and really good windows, along with some passive solar gain through south-facing windows - will probably not drop much below 50°F even if there’s an extended power outage in the middle of winter, and keeping a fire going in our small wood stove during a power outage will be enough to keep us fully comfortable.

In hot climates - whether or not one believes that all climates will be getting warmer - the same argument applies.

Energy efficiency measures help to keep homes and apartments from getting too hot if they lose power and air conditioning can’t be used.

Overheating in passively operated buildings is admittedly a bigger challenge than keeping them reasonably warm in the winter, but passive survivability in hot climates relies on such strategies as keeping direct sunlight out (especially on the east and west), reflecting sunlight off the roof, and slowing conductive heat gain through the walls and roof.

Safer buildings that mitigate climate change

The same strategies that keep us safe during power outages or interruptions in heating fuel result in dramatically lower energy consumption during normal operation.

Our house in Dummerston is heated with a single 18,000 BTU/hour air-source heat pump - a small enough power draw that we can provide that electricity, on an annual basis, with a modest solar electric system.

We can build or retrofit to these "passive survivability" or "resilience" standards for safety reasons and, in doing so, we’re doing a great deal to mitigate climate change - but you can disregard that last benefit if you don’t believe that climate change is happening.

Resilience makes sense whether or not climate change mitigation is a goal. I’ve often said that it will be a huge success of the Resilient Design Institute if our arguments are touted by Rush Limbaugh in his radio program - probably unlikely, but not out of the question.