Current Savers Blog

So “Lonesome George” might become a Dad?

In lists of endangered creatures such as black rhinos, orang utans, tigers or blue whales, ”Lonesome George” has long had the saddest status as the only one known survivor of the Pinta island species of Galapagos giant tortoise.

That has made him the “rarest living creature” for the Guinness Book of Records.

But now my colleague Alonso Soto in Quito reports that he’s mated with one of his two female companions of a similar species and keepers have found several eggs in his pen. If they hatch, they would at least preserve half of his genes.

Good on you, George! It would be an amazing turnaround after he has kept the species a heartbeat away from oblivion, showing little interest in sex in 36 years in captivity.

The Darwin Foundation has explained his problems by saying “he probably grew up alone and did not learn proper social and mating behaviour” even though he is in his sexual prime for a tortoise, aged about 60 to 90.

I visited the Galapagos Islands on a holiday in the late 1980s and went to Lonesome George’s enclosure –I can imagine that he was put off thinking of anything but survival because tourists were allowed to wander right up to him. The constant disturbances by people trampling around him can hardly have put him in a romantic mood. And maybe he’d been holding out in vain to meet an ideal Pinta mate?

When Al Gore challenged the U.S. to produce all of its electricity from renewable sources in 10 years, his aggressive plan to combat climate change was pitted against another recently-unveiled proposal, from Texas billionaire T. Boone Pickens, to reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil.

 Gore, a former Democratic vice president and Nobel Prize-winning crusader on climate change, announced his plan last week and has since promoted it on U.S. television. Expected to cost between $1.5 trillion and $3 trillion,  Gore advocates investment in wind, solar and geothermal energy, energy efficiency and a national power grid. He also wants to retain energy production from nuclear and hydroelectric power plants, and invest in technology to store and capture carbon dioxide from coal and gas.

Inevitably, though, Gore’s plan has been compared to the so-called “Pickens Plan,” which calls for a massive switch to natural gas as a transportation fuel and a dramatic increase in wind power (Pickens, a legendary oil man, is currently spending $10 billion to build the world’s biggest wind farm — a project he expects will be a big moneymaker). Pickens says his $300 billion plan will reduce the amount of imported oil by more than a third in the next decade.

 With a media campaign funded by Pickens’ vast personal fortune, the “Pickens Plan” has its own commercials running on TV. Gore’s plan is backed by his “We Campaign,” a $300 million effort launched earlier this year to mobilize Americans on climate change.

On NBC’s “Meet the Press” this weekend, Gore said he disagrees with Pickens that natural gas should be the dominant transportation fuel, advocating for electric cars instead.  Pickens, however, has said Gore’s plan doesn’t do enough address the nation’s dependence on oil imports.

So who’s right? It’s clear that there is much that the men agree on, and both plans stand in stark opposition to President Bush’s recent move to increase domestic oil production by lifting the ban on oil drilling along most U.S. coastal states. 

But with a new president on the way who is expected to be kinder to the kinds of plans Gore and Pickens are proposing, which man do you think has the right plan for increasing renewables in the United States and reducing our oil consumption?

The road to Kenya’s Tana River Delta from the Indian Ocean resort of Malindi is a lonely stretch of tarmac punctuated only by road blocks manned by armed police.

Few people from the outside world come this way.

Most foreign and local holidaymakers heading for the popular Lamu Islands prefer to fly rather than use the road.

On either side, grasslands stretch to the horizon. People here live as they have for decades, making a living from grazing animals and fishing.

But a proposed sugar and biofuels project would see 20,000 hectares of the pristine wetland planted with cane.

The plan has sparked anger among some locals and conservationists, who say it is a threat to their way of life and a precious eco-system.

I was given a tour of the area by government officials and the project backers.

View Larger Map

The government is working in partnership with the private sector to grow sugar in the area in a bid to fill an annual deficit, create jobs and latch onto enthusiasm for biofuels in the face of surging oil prices.

East Africa’s biggest economy imports about 200,000 tonnes of sugar every year as its western sugar belt does not produce enough to meet requirements.

But opponents of the Tana project say it will hurt livestock-keeping communities through loss of grazing lands and also threaten hundreds of wildlife species, including birds and rare sharks.

The pastoralists and the conservation groups, which include Nature Kenya and Britain’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, have filed a case against the project in court. Earlier this month, the nation’s high court stopped the project temporarily, pending a judicial review.

Kenya’s Nobel Laureate, environmentalist Wangari Maathai, has weighed in, saying no sugar or biofuel is worth messing with the delta.

Project backers say the area - which has a high rate of poverty and illiteracy - needs new investments as the only route to development.

Danson Mungatana, the local member of parliament, captured hopes of transforming the area when he told constituents they would get satellite TV and other modern amenities when the project is up and running.

But will the plans really benefit locals? Should the government go ahead?

How do you strike a balance between development and environmental protection? Is self-sufficiency in sugar, job creation and energy production a good reason for developing wetlands? What do you think?

The G5 is growing up.

Invited by then British Prime Minister Tony Blair to the 2005 Group of Eight summit in Gleneagles as diplomatic window dressing to show the global scope of climate change, Mexico, India, China, South Africa and Brazil were kept on the sidelines and told what they had agreed to after the event.

Two years later at Heiligendamm in Germany they got the same treatment, being invited into the main meeting and handed the final G8 plus five statement.

This year in Hokkaido, Japan, they finally bit back, calling themselves the G5, issuing their own statement and challenging their rich northern neighbours to do far more on tackling the global warming crisis.

Not only that, but the G5 has also agreed to hold its own regular meetings, carving out its own climate agenda and challenging the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Russia, Japan and Italy to do far more than agree the world should cut carbon emissions by 50 percent — from an undecided base year — by 2050.

“In the climate change perspective it is the last time that the G5 could be regarded as the G8’s former colonies whose interests are subjected or subservient to that of the rich countries. The G5 and the developing countries more and more will decide for themselves,” South African environment minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk said on Friday on a brief stop-over in London on his way back from the summit.

“The G5 put forward a view on long-term commitments and targets and mid-term targets and a base year, 100 percent united on its proposal. On the other side you had the G8 bringing forward a very vague proposal that basically represents the lowest common denominator in their ranks — basically the U.S.

“With regard to climate change I have no doubt that this last week equalled the playing field between developed and developing countries,” he said.

Van Schalkwyk, an ardent environmental advocate and champion of the developing nations, said the rich world which had created the climate crisis had to cut carbon emissions by 25-40 percent by 2020 and 80-95 percent by 2050 — a target that is in another universe from current G8 aspirations.

For their part the developing world would agree to commit to a relative cut in emissions by deviating below business-as-usual projections. That is far short of what the United States in particular has been calling for.

The next 18 months leading up to the United Nations meeting in Copenhagen which is supposed to decide a successor to the Kyoto Protocol should be a fascinating and probably bruising time in global climate diplomacy. The tail is starting to wag the dog.

You know the wind is changing for renewables — so to speak — when the head of Europe’s biggest power producer becomes an advocate — and then even decides to reduce his own personal reliance on fossil fuels by powering and heating his new house with photovoltaic and geothermal energies.

Wulf Bernotat, the chief executive of E.ON, admits he became rather belatedly an advocate for renewable energy, even if his company still gets the lion’s share of its 70 billion euros in annual turnover in 30 countries from burning fossil fuels. The reasons for the change of heart? It’s one answer to climate change, it’s the way the political winds were blowing, and there are profits to be made.

“We had a certain reservation about renewables until about a year ago and then we abandoned those reservations because we recognised that renewables are desired politically,” Bernotat said after a recent presentation to a group of journalists in Berlin. “That’s why it’s the right decision for us to get more actively involved.”

Bernotat also predicted that renewables will replace fossil fuels as the world’s most important energy source by 2050 and possibly even “completely displace fossil fuels by the end of this century.” It was an amazing forecast from a company so closely linked to coal-burning power plants — like a butcher saying everyone would become vegetarian by the end of the century.

Less known is Bernotat’s own personal commitment to renewables — he did not make a big deal about it but had mentioned once in passing in a German TV talk show that he planned to use geothermal power and photovoltaic on his new house. So when I asked him about it, his face lit up like a Christmas tree. He said using renewables made economic sense in the long run despite the heavy initial investment — he had to drill six holes 100 metres deep in his back yard to tap geothermal power for hot water and heating (I wish my wife would let me do that). He said he did it for his daughter, who would be able to reap the longer term return on the investment in renewables — although he too is reaping handsome returns now too. “It’s easier when you build a new house,” he said. “Then it’s easier to reduce CO2. But if you’ve got a house already and the gas-burning furnace is only five or 10 years old, it’s a more difficult matter. Do you really want to replace a furnace like that now?”

When I mentioned to him that a local E.ON subsidiary was buying my 6,000 kilowatts of photovoltaic power off my roof for nearly 3,000 euros each year — and thanked him half in jest for the prompt monthly payments — Bernotat just laughed and said: “Don’t thank me. It’s the other energy users (who pay higher monthly electric bills to subsidise photovoltaic providers like me) who are paying you for that. So thank them!”

The quest for more renewable energy sources recently got a boost that’s out of this world.

NASA researchers this week said they are using global satellite data to create maps of ocean areas best suited for wind energy.

The maps will be useful in planning where to build offshore wind farms that can convert wind energy to electricity, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Islands of floating wind farms have the potential to generate 500 to 800 watts per square meter, according to research conducted by Tim Liu, a senior research scientist at the JPL.

“No group of people have measured the amount of wind power over the entire ocean. Now for the first time we have a map,” Liu said in an interview. “You can actually quantify how much power is in what place. The map gives you this tool for where to place these (wind) farms.”

NASA’s QuikSCAT satellite tracks the power, speed and direction of ocean wind using a specialized microwave radar.  Created in 1999, the QuikSCAT is normally used for predicting storms and checking the accuracy of weather forecasts.

Offshore wind farms are one answer to critics’ claims that towering wind turbines disturb wildlife habitats and spoil landscapes. Also, the wind blows stronger over the ocean because it doesn’t have hills, mountains or buildings blocking its way.

The challenge of moving the electricity from the middle of the ocean to utility customers on land, however, is formidable and costly. A spat over plans to build a wind farm off the coast Massachusetts’ Cape Cod is playing out now, with state and local authorities arguing over a burying the electric cables needed to connect the farm to the power grid.

NASA’s satellite maps reveal that the best areas to construct ocean wind farms are in the mid-latitude regions of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, including off the California coast.

To see an image of the QuikSCAT wind map, click here.

– Reporting by Jennifer Martinez

MARSABIT, Kenya - We are in two Land Rover Defenders, headed north to Ethiopia through one of Kenya’s remotest and harshest areas.

Our route is along the Great North Road, the famed Cape Town-to-Cairo highway on what is said to be the only untarmacked stretch on the whole continent - roughly 550 kilometres from where the highway ends at Isiolo town north to Moyale on the Ethiopian border.  It has all the wildlife and stunning scenery Kenya is world-famous for, but few tourists ever see it.

This is part of the old Northern Frontier District, the arid top half of Kenya which was closed to visitors by the British colonial government because of its inaccessibility, harsh conditions and endless banditry.  Little has changed since independence in 1963.

 To call the wide track of dirt, ruts and rocks a road is an insult to other roads. It demands a four-wheel drive vehicle, and punishes any that comes with an endless succession of shuddering bumps, heat and fine dust that penetrates every corner. It has taken us two days to reach Marsabit, a mere 600 km from Nairobi. But out here, trips are measured by time, not by distance.

We - Reuters TV producer Patrick Muiruri, Reuters photographer Antony Njuguna, navigator Michael Githaiga and mechanics Frederick “British” Gappy,  Lawrence “Jughead” Waithaka and myself - are rolling in convoy in case one vehicle develops a problem. There is another reason to move together - safety in numbers. Cattle-rustling is still a rite of passage for young warriors among the nomadic peoples that roam the dry plains with herds of cattle, goats, camels and sheep. It has intensified in recent decades thanks to an influx of automatic weapons from conflicts in neighbouring Somalia and Sudan.

Violence here is regular and can easily spill over into outright warfare. Banditry has also blossomed in these badlands.

The government presence here is thinly stretched and usually without the equipment needed to police the problem, leaving police and paramilitary soldiers in a reactive position. Electricty, water and functioning telephones are rare sights, and in most places were never brought by the state-owned utilities. Schools are there, but it is difficult for teachers to get students from wandering clans. Most schoolchildren in other parts of Kenya are speaking English and Swahili by the age of 5; here, it is common to find boys of 15 who cannot speak Swahili - the lingua franca of a nation with more than 42 different ethnic groups.

Local people speak of Kenya Mbili - Two Kenyas - the developed southern half, and theirs, the forgotten and neglected one.

“When someone leaves for Nairobi, people say he has gone to Kenya.
There is a sense of being second class, neglected,” said Hussein Sasura, a native of the Marsabit area, told us. Sasura is also the assistant minister in the new Ministry for Northern and Arid Lands, which aims to bring development to this vast region.
He’s optimistic that things are finally changing after 45 years of independence, from which the north has rarely tasted any fruits.

Two big developments are already inching their way north. Chinese engineers are beginning to lay 136 km of asphalt from Isiolo to near the Merille River, the first phase of a plan to finish the road to Moyale. Already, tourist lodges and wildlife managers are planning for an upsurge in tourists to an area that usually is reached by light aircraft or those willing to make the punishing trip to see some of Kenya’s still-unspoiled beauty.

Moving faster is a team of engineers laying a fibre optic cable alongside the road, working under a Ministry of Information and Communication contract to bring internet and telephone service to all corners of the country. Digging with a 10-metre long cable-laying machine, they say they expect to hit the border in about two months.

And oil men from China are already prospecting in Merti, and have plans to look elsewhere in a region rumoured for decades to have oil. All this means more people will be in the district, but will it bring all the attendant commerce and development? Can the highway bring more tourists and help tame the insecurity? Will the road and communications infrastructure finally unite the Two Kenyas?

Leaders of the G8 and the world’s developing nations have agreed a “shared vision” on fighting climate change — but long-standing differences have prevented them agreeing on any specific targets.

The G8 on its own favours a halving of harmful emissions by 2050 but industrialising nations like China and India will not sign up to that goal, arguing that their primary commitment is to improve the living standards of their people.

Without them on board, the U.S. will not ratify any agreement to cut its own emissions.

The “vision” declaration has been hailed by G8 leaders as a useful step ahead of 2009 when they will return to the issue and when America will have a new president with a greater mandate to take action.

But green groups are scornful. The WWF’s Global Climate Initiative calls it “pretty pathetic.”

Should world leaders be trying harder, or have fears of climate change have been overstated?

What’s your view?

It’s summer at the G8 media centre in Hokkaido. Yet underneath the building are tonnes of snow to keep journalists cool as they write about global warming.

Japan budgeted $283 million for security at the summit and $30 million to build a temporary, low-emissions media centre far from where the G8 leaders are meeting in a luxury hotel.

The centre took five months to construct next to a ski resort and the company that built it says 95 percent of the materials will be recycled or reused once the building is torn down in the weeks after the G8 meeting.

During construction, tonnes of snow were scooped up from the resort’s car park and dumped into an insulated area under the floor. Of the 5.5 metres of snow, more than 4 metres remain, which is used to chill the air circulating around the cavernous two-storey building. Large arrays of solar panels also help power the centre and cut emissions.

Journalists can walk over glass panels to see the snow underneath.

 Jun Oishi of Takenaka Corporation, which designed and built the centre, says it will save 6,ooo tonnes of carbon dioxide over its short life compared with a conventionally designed building.

It’s a revelation compared with the media tents at last December’s climate talks in Bali, which were basically sweat boxes filled with large and inefficient air conditioners battling the tropical heat.

Green though the new building is, the fleets of cars ferrying journalists between the airport and Sapparo, both two hours from the media centre, has raised doubts about how much carbon will ultimately be saved. A case of style over substance?

About 1.6 billion people still rely on kerosene lanterns to read, work or study after dark, according to a fledgling company that hopes its LED lights will replace those lanterns, eliminating both pollution and fires. 

d.light design, the brainchild of Stanford Business School graduates Sam Goldman and Ned Tozun, last month began selling its lights in India, where they say 72 million households use kerosene lanterns. 

The company’s products, some of which are charged by sunlight, range between $10 and $30, d.light President Tozun said in a recent interview. The Chinese-made lights all burn brighter than kerosene, and are safer and cleaner, he said.

The problem? Most of the people who use kerosene lanterns earn less than $1 a day, making one of d.light design’s products a seriously big ticket item.

 ”It would be like me buying a car or something,” Tozun said. “It’s a substantial investment for people to make.”

Nevertheless, d.light is betting that people will indeed save up to make that investment, especially with kerosene prices on the rise.

d.light, meanwhile, is keeping its profit margins low to make the lights affordable to more people. The key to making the business a success, Tozun said, is “getting to a massive scale.”

He declined to specify how many lights d.light would have to sell to become profitable, except to say: “Thousands is not going to cut it. It has to be millions of lights.”