Current Savers Blog

In a global stunt, a U.S. environmental activist is poised to lodge a $1 billion damages class action lawsuit at the International Criminal Court (ICC) against all world leaders for failing to prevent global warming.

Activist and blogger Dan Bloom says he will sue world leaders for “intent to commit manslaughter against future generations of human beings by allowing murderous amounts of fossil fuels to be harvested, burned and sent into the atmosphere as CO2″.

He intends to lodge the lawsuit in the week starting Sunday, Dec. 6. 

The prosecutor’s office at the ICC, the world’s first permanent court (pictured below right) for war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity, says it is allowed to receive information on crimes that may fall within the court’s jurisdiction from any source.

“Such information does not per se trigger a judicial proceeding,” the prosecutor’s office hastened to add.

The question is: will or should the prosecutor take on the case?

One might argue in defence that world leaders are in fact trying to impose climate-saving measures. In Vienna last year, almost all rich nations agreed to consider cuts in greenhouse emissions of 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. Talks on a new climate treaty will be held in Poznan, Poland, from Dec. 1-12.

Rajendra Pachauri, head of the U.N. Climate Panel, says the cuts are needed to limit temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius, an amount seen by the EU, some other nations and many environmentalists as a threshold for “dangerous” climate change.

Granted then that there is growing consensus that climate change poses a real threat, is it not only world leaders who are failing to prevent global warming?

Perhaps the global collective of individuals, governments and industry is to blame and the ICC lawsuit a valid publicity stunt in the constant battle to raise awareness and prompt action?

Because it’s action we need — and now, right?

 The Vatican (left) is going green from today with a new solar energy system on some roofs to help boost renewable use.

If Pope Benedict can have solar panels, are they something for the White House (right), after Barack Obama takes over as President on Jan. 20?

Former President Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House during the oil crisis of the 1970s — his successor Ronald Reagan took them down when the roof was being repaired in 1986 (…a year when oil prices tumbled to below $10 a barrel).

When he got the panels installed, Carter said:  “a generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken, or it can be a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people; harnessing the power of the sun to enrich our lives as we move away from our crippling dependence on foreign oil.”

So should Obama, who spoke of a “planet in peril” in his victory speech and who says climate change will be a priority, start by bolting on a few solar panels at his new home?

Cave bears (left) would have been fearsome neighbours in the Stone Age — weighing up to a tonne or about 200 kg bigger than the modern heavyweights, the polar bear or the Kodiak bear.

But it turns out that they were largely vegetarian and went extinct earlier than expected as the Ice Age spread over Europe about 28,000 years ago.

Many of them apparently froze to death as they hibernated. Brrrr!  Or imagine waking up in spring to find a thick ice sheet has formed over the entrance to your cave home and trapped you inside.

So natural climate change wiped them out, rather than human hunters often blamed for killing them off about 13,000 years later, according to a study in the journal Boreas today.

Almost all extinctions since the Ice Age have been put down to human activities — and humans are now causing a global warming that U.N. studies say will cause the worst spate of extinctions since the dinosaurs vanished 65 million years ago.

 Another study this year suggested that climate change drove woolly mammoths to the brink of extinction about 6,000 years ago and then humans finished them off.

It’s reassuring to find cases like the cave bear where people weren’t to blame.

But can you think of many other examples?

(Picture of the cave bear courtesy of N. Frotzler, University of Vienna. Reuters News pictures of a Kodiak bear, above right, and of a polar bear, above left)

Kenyan blogger Juliana Rotich is the editor of Green Global Voices, which monitors citizen media in the developing world, and is a regular contributor to this page. Thomson Reuters is not responsible for the content - the views are the author’s alone.

Genetically Modified foods have been a concern for many environment bloggers in South Africa and other parts of Africa. On this post we check in a handful of bloggers who’ve recently written about genetically modified (GMO) foods and seed.

UrbanSprout points to a report in Mail Online article that indicates lower fertility in mice fed on GM (Genetically Modified) maize.

Dr Jurgen Zentek, Professor for Veterinary Medicine at the University of Vienna and lead author of the study, said a GM diet affected the fertility of mice.
One of the studies was a reproductive assessment by continuous breeding (RACB) trial, in which the same parent generation gave birth to several litters of baby mice. The parents were fed either with a diet containing 33per cent of GM maize, a hybrid of Monsanto’s MON 810 and another variety, and a normal feed mix.
The team found changes that were ’statistically significant’ in the third and fourth litters produced by the mice given a GM diet. There were fewer offspring, while the young mice were smaller.

Prof Zentek said there was a direct link between the changes seen and the GM diet.

Regarding Monsanto (a major producer of GMO seed) UrbanSprout deadpans…

Perhaps this is the environmentally friendly benefit of using GM seed that Monsanto has been touting - they’re unwittingly helping to reduce population growth!

On Relax with Dax, the blogger contemplates the topic of GM foods as a solution to world hunger. He is very careful to see all sides of the issue. He says:

We all suffer from confirmation bias to some degree, but being aware of it can help us to avoid it at least partly. I actively try to expose myself to both sides of the story, especially topics which I feel strongly about. I feel very strongly that GM foods are a danger to our future, but I try to expose myself to the other point of view. For this reason I attended a presentation at the UCT Graduate School of Business which was pro GM. It was an interesting presentation and those who attended were enthusiastic in their support (except me).

Dax gives more information about the presentation he attended, and directly challenges Prof Chassy’s assertions.

Prof. Chassy himself made the point strongly that all people who are against GM foods are just uneducated rabble who have no idea what is going on and those who are pro GM foods are very intelligent scientists. Not only is this an appeal to authority, it is also completely and utterly untrue. There are more scientists than I can count who are anti GM foods. Remember, we are not talking about research into genetic modification, we are talking about allowing GM foods to be released into the environment and eaten.

Prof Chassy spent some considerable time explaining to us that we will in the future be unable to grow enough food to feed the world’s population, a fact I can agree with. However, his proposal that GM foods will allow us to grow enough food, I do not agree with. In fact this is what this post is about. I want to show that contrary to Prof. Chassy’s comment that no scientists are anti GM, it is actually scientists who are saying that GM is not a solution to the impending food crisis and that in fact, organic and sustainable farming methods are a better option.

He lists links to reports by other scientists, and concludes by saying:

If one takes the time to do some research, it becomes evident that there are many scientists which do not see GMOs as the solution to our food problems. Activists are just the people who have taken on the task of informing the public.

UrbanSprout posts an in-depth documentary review of the film ‘World According to Monsanto’

I have watched a lot of documentaries on GM foods and Monsanto and although they each have their own style and there is always some new information, they generally cover a lot of the same material. This recently released documentary is not like that. It takes a very different angle, looking at the history of Monsanto and the way it operates, rather than focusing specifically on GM foods.

The blogger asks some pertinent questions and posts a link for others to watch the film online.

So after seeing all this evidence of Monsanto’s lying and test fiddling, one has to ask the question: When they say GM foods are thoroughly tested (which they are not), does that actually mean anything? Even relying on social conscience would be dangerous. Surely they wouldn’t let GMOs be released if they knew there were harmful effects? Well, if they can watch people dying from exposure to PCBs outside their factory, while they continue to manufacture and pollute, then they are capable of doing anything.

The very interesting thing is this, when it comes out that GM foods are responsible for environmental problems, and human health issues, guess who is going to pay to fix it? The taxpayers, that’s who. Monsanto will just carry on making money while we pay to clean up their mess.

How does this make you feel?
Watch online here.

 

(The picture at the top shows a farmer with a genetically engineered cotton plant in South Africa in 2003: when about 90 percent of the 3,000 small-scale cotton farmers in the area were using the insect-resistant Bt cotton variety. The cotton has been genetically modified to be resistant to the cotton bollworm pest, by engineering it to contain a naturally-occurring pesticide. )

New York’s famed Broadway lights are getting a green tint. Not literally, of course, but this week the Big Apple’s iconic theaters vowed to make their “Great White Way” shine with more energy efficient bulbs.

The industry has already changed 10,000 interior and exterior bulbs, and that’s just the beginning.

Broadway theaters are also washing costumes in cold water and said they are breaking down sets in a more environmentally responsible manner. For more Broadway’s pledge to “go green,” check out our full story.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) said on Tuesday that several leading scientists have called on Florida Governor Charlie Crist to curtail the commercial hunting of freshwater turtles in his state.

“Florida’s freshwater turtles are being harvested at an unsustainable rate to supply East Asian food and medicinal markets. New rules recently implemented by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) do not resolve this issue,” the scientists said in a letter.

In September, the FWC had voted to allow commercial fishermen to catch 20 softshell turtles a day.

“Although this was an improvement, as previously there were no catch limits, the limit is still too high,” said Anders Rhodin, Chair of IUCN’s Tortoise and Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group. “Two fishermen working five days a week could take 200 animals or three-quarters of a ton of turtles a week. That is not adequate protection for Florida’s wild turtle populations.”

The 32 turtle experts recommended that the FWC makes a rule that allows individuals to take no more than one turtle a day from the wild.

The FWC maintains that most turtles exported from Florida are farm raised but experts say many wild-caught turtles wind up in shipments to Asia, where rapid ecomomic growth has stoked demand for a range of wildlife products from ivory to fish.

We have reported before on the plight of freshwater turtles in Texas, which are also harvested for markets in Asia, where the meat is highly prized and is believed to have medicinal benefits as well. Last year the Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife estimated that over 90,000 turtles a year were taken by dealers, mostly for export outside the state. In Texas experts have warned that overharvesting could lead to the collapse of the populations of some species – just as unsustainable catches have decimated a number of fisheries.

Texas has many man-made dams so its wild turtle population may be artificially high, but overall the critters in the U.S. South and globally face many threats, ranging from pollution to development. Human harvesting adds more pressure to their numbers not least because they are generally easy to catch.

What do you think? Should there be bans on the commercial harvest of freshwater turtle populations in America and elsewhere? Or should the wild harvest be strictly regulated? Or is that possible to enforce?

 The car is king in Southern California, so what better place for stressed out auto executives to blow off some steam and take a break from their considerable recent troubles?

That’s exactly what they did this week at the Los Angeles auto show, where many car manufacturers laid out plans for electric, fuel cell and diesel cars that they say are key to reviving the ailing industry.

Volkswagen’s clean diesel Jetta TDI made the biggest splash, taking home the coveted “Green Car of the Year” award. It was the first time a diesel car has taken home the industry’s top environmental prize.

“It’s no longer an option for automakers to address the efficiency and environmental impact of new models – it’s an imperative,” Ron Cogan, editor of Green Car Journal, the trade magazine that awards the “Green Car of they Year” prize, said at the show. “It’s easy and justifiable to point the finger at the auto industry, but it’s also time for us to take responsibility for the choices we make as consumers.”

Among the other clean, green cars on display at the show were BMW’s all-electric Mini E, General Motors’ plug-in Chevrolet Volt and Hyundai’s Sonata hybrid sedan.

Which one is your favorite?

SolarWorld chief executive Frank Asbeck raised eyebrows by announcing plans to bid for the German plants of General Motors’ Opel unit.

Here was a small 10-year-old company specialising in producing photovoltaic systems with 2,000 employees and annual sales of 700 million euros preparing the stage for a seemingly audacious takeover of a legendary 146-year-old German company with 25,000 employees and more than 60 million cars sold since the first vehicle was made in 1899.

What does solar power have to do with the car industry? Not much at this point.

Yet after the initial laughter finally died down, Asbeck explained the vision linking renewable energies to the car industry. The 49-year-old solar power baron told Reuters that he wanted to make Opel the first “green” car company in Europe.

“Opel has truly modern policies on car models,” said Asbeck, a maverick in Germany who started the fast-growing company only a decade ago. “It’s got the potential to become a truly ‘green’
carmaker, switching over from the ‘automotive’ sector to the ’sun-motive’ or ‘electro-motive’.

“The public and the markets are demanding new products,” he said. “No one will be able to negate a 25-percent decline in sales with green, electro cars or hybrids overnight. But the development is extremely interesting. There will be a new cliental and new green market demands that have to be met.”

There have been rapid advances in energy storage technologies in recent years. Some believe that millions of battery-driven cars could be a major breakthrough for renewable energies — a vast depot for storing wind and solar power.

While the supply of the wind and sun far exceeds humanity’s needs it doesn’t necessarily match the time when people need it: the sun may not be shining nor the wind blowing when we need to cook dinner or have a shower — or drive cars. Soaring production of solar panel and wind turbines has been now spurring a race to develop the winning energy storage technologies which will drive the electric cars and appliances of the future.

Asbeck’s idea to meld cars and solar together sounds crazy, but his audacious gamble for Opel has put the idea in the spotlight. Let’s see where it goes from here.

There’s more bad news on the fish front.

According to a new report the advocacy group California Trout, 65 percent of the state’s native salmon, steelhead and trout species may be extinct within the next century. To see the whole report click here. It was written by Dr. Peter Moyle of the University of California, Davis.

“The report’s findings indicate that the state’s native salmonids are in unprecedented decline and are teetering towards the brink of extinction - an alarm bell that signals the deteriorating health of the state’s rivers and streams that provide drinking water to millions of Californians. It’s also a sign that fish are likely to be struggling nationwide in this era of global warming, water diversions, and rapid development into previously uninhabited areas,” the organization said.

Salt and freshwater fisheries almost everywhere are in decline. Overharvesting, poor management of commercial fisheries, habitat destruction, climate change, dams – you name it, the inhabitants of our aquatic ecosystems are in trouble.

Anadromous fish such as salmon — which spawn in freshwater but spend most of their adult lives in the sea — have nowhere to run (well, swim). They get hammered by trawlers at sea and by pressure on their spawning grounds when they return to freshwater. The salmon’s life-cycle is one of the most arduous but compelling narratives in nature, from its birthplace in streams to the open sea and back again. It is a journey that is increasingly fraught with danger from California’s coast to the Baltic Sea.

But the report also highlights the success of restoration efforts which show that when blocked flows are reinstated and migration barriers removed, native fish stocks show signs of recovery.

– Amanda Williams Palmer is the editor of Reuters’ European Venture Capital and Private Equity Journal (EVCJ). The opinions expressed are her own. —

Steel giant ArcelorMittal has shut down furnaces at a dozen sites across Europe for at least six months as its customers, mostly automakers, downsize because of the economic downturn. While environmentalists crack into the bubbly, serious polluters realize that carbon is about to get a whole lot cheaper. And cheap carbon is only bad for the environment.

ArcelorMittal and many other industrial manufacturers are busy selling surplus carbon credits in order to raise short-term cash, flooding the market where polluters trade EU Carbon Allocations (EUAs). Under the Kyoto agreement, companies need a certain number of EUAs in order to pollute. So ultra dirty European utilities, which face huge carbon shortfalls and have been slow to adopt cleaner methods, are buying those credits for a song.

EUA prices have fallen from their 1 July peak of €29.33 ($37) to a low on 28 October of €17.40 ($22), said Alessandro Vitelli, director of strategy at IDEACarbon, a carbon finance ratings agency. “The price implications of the recession are already being seen,” he said.

The low price of carbon also discourages hedge funds and private equity funds from investing in companies that reduce emissions. These funds aim to profit from a type of carbon credit called a certified emission reduction (CER). CERs are issued by the United Nations to developing world companies that are removing pollutants from the environment.

Many of these companies are backed by private equity and hedge funds and it is this type of business which may suffer most in the downturn because CERs typically trade at a €1 to €2 discount to EUAs.

The Carbon Asset Fund, backed by Carbon Capital Markets, is one such fund. It invests in projects across the developing world, especially in Central and South America and South East Asia. The companies that it supports specialize in destroying methane created by landfills by flaring it or turning it into energy. These companies are rewarded with CERs by the UN.

“There is always the fear that in the current financial situation the instinct is to ignore the environmental problem,” said Nick Eagle, the director of sales and trading for Carbon Capital Markets. “But the current credit crunch is short term in comparison with the issue of global warming.”

That may be, but for some financial sponsors, the price falls have only underlined their concerns about carbon investing. Impax, which runs a green hedge fund and a private equity fund, has shied away from investments in CER businesses because “we’ve seen a waterfall of risks including the most recent fall in the price” said CEO Ian Simm.

Despite some short-term carbon emissions cuts, the domino effect the economic downturn will have on the cost of carbon credits threatens the long-term health of the environment.

(Pictured above: Smoke is emitted from a factory at Keihin industrial zone in Kawasaki, south of Tokyo October 22, 2008. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon)