A new study that has examined all greenhouse gas emissions created by different modes of transportation concludes that supposedly green methods of travel, such as trains, may actually produce as many or more emissions as flying. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, said that while a large jet produces three times as many greenhouse gases per mile as a train during operation, the two modes of transport actually generate about the same amount of greenhouse gases per mile when the manufacture of steel rails and other train infrastructure is taken into account. Using this measure, cars generally were the highest greenhouse gas emitters per mile, with the exception of off-peak, largely empty buses, which had emissions levels per passenger mile exceeding even SUVs. Reporting their findings in the journal Environmental Research Letters, the scientists said planners should look beyond what comes out of the tailpipe and work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transportation infrastructure by using such materials as low carbon dioxide cement.
The Peruvian government has declared a curfew in its Amazon region after several days of clashes have left more than 60 dead, including 23 policemen and approximately 40 Indians protesting the rapid development of the tropical forest. President Alan Garcia, a free-trade advocate, has been instrumental in allocating more than 70 percent of the Peruvian Amazon for oil and gas extraction, and indigenous tribes are protesting recent decrees that would break up their communal property and sell the parcels for development. Protests turned violent late last week as police and soldiers attempted to reoccupy roads and pipeline installations seized by the tribes. Meanwhile, the Brazilian Congress has approved a controversial law allowing companies and individuals who illegally deforested land in the Amazon before December 2004 to obtain legal title to those holdings. The law, which would bestow title on illegally cleared parcels up to 3,700 acres, has been sharply criticized by environmentalists, who say it will spur further deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon. President Lula da Silva is expected to sign the bill into law.
The United States powered its rise to affluence with fossil fuels, and China resents being told it should not be free to do the same. So as negotiators prepare for crucial climate talks this December, the prospects for reaching agreement remain far from certain.
BY ORVILLE SCHELL
President Obama may attend the global climate negotiations December in Copenhagen, where negotiators will try to craft the successor to the Kyoto Protocol, the U.S. House Majority Leader said Thursday. If he goes, Obama would be the first U.S. president to attend the annual climate talks since President George H.W. Bush in 1992. Just weeks after he was elected, Obama proposed that the U.S. reduce CO2 emissions by 15 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 as part of the U.N. treaty. While some experts have warned against expecting too much of the U.S. because of the struggling economy, Obama said Friday he was hopeful about the prospects of forging a new climate treaty. “I’m actually more optimistic than I was about America being able to take leadership on this issue, joining Europe, which over the last several years has been ahead of us on this issue,” Obama said in Germany.
Preserving Indonesia’s tropical forests by selling credits for the billions of tons of carbon they contain could be as profitable as razing the forests to grow palm oil, according to a new study. The study, published in the journal Conservation Letters, said that saving the forests could generate just as much money as destroying them if a global carbon market is established that prices carbon at $10 to $33 per ton. Under the conservation program known as REDD — Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation — governments, businesses, and investors would buy credits on a global market that would enable them to emit more carbon than allocated under so-called cap-and-trade programs.
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Tom Knudson
The clearing of Indonesia’s forests
The money spent on those credits could be used to pay the Indonesian government or landowners not to destroy tropical forests to grow palm oil, a highly profitable crop. The spread of oil palm plantations has led to massive destruction of Indonesia’s tropical forests. The study, conducted by an Australian biologist, said that 8.2 million acres of forest on Kalimantan on the island of Borneo are soon scheduled to be cleared for palm oil plantations.
MIT Technology Review reports on an Ohio startup that has succeeded in manufacturing thin-film silicon solar cells that can be mass produced in long rolls and installed on roofs and building facades. The company, Xunlight of Toledo, Ohio, has produced solar film affixed to thin sheets of stainless steel that can be manufactured in rolls 18 feet long and roughly three feet wide. Such amorphous thin-film solar cells are highly inefficient, but Xunlight has boosted their efficiency by using three different materials that absorb energy from different parts of the solar spectrum, the MIT publication said. Still, the efficiency of Xunlight’s solar panel sheets is only about 8 percent, compared to the 20 percent efficiency of some conventional solar panels. The advantage of Xunlight’s product is that it can be installed in large quantities on a variety of building surfaces and at a lower price than conventional solar panels, Technology Review said.
The Kenyan Parliament is considering a ban on the highly toxic pesticide, Furadan, used by herdsmen to poison lions and other carnivores. The pesticide, originally manufactured by the U.S.-based FMC Corporation, is cheap and widely available in Kenya and is the favored poison of herdsmen hoping to kill predators threatening livestock. The conservation group, Wildlife Direct, says that at least 60 of Kenya’s 2,100 lions have died from Furadan poisoning in the past two years, and that the death toll may actually be much higher. A large number of other animals have died from eating bait laced with Furadan, a pesticide so lethal that a quarter-teaspoon can kill a human. Wildlife
Wildlife Direct
A poisoned lion
Direct and other groups have been trying to buy back Furadan from herders, but the program has had only limited success. As a result, a Kenyan member of parliament has introduced a bill to ban the substance, which is now being produced by companies in China, India, and Pakistan. Furadan has been banned in the U.S. and Europe.
Freeman Dyson is a renowned theoretical physicist at Princeton University, but since the New York Times Magazine published a controversial profile of him in March, the 85-year-old scientist has become a reluctant symbol of global warming skeptics. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, the first since the Times article appeared, Dyson lays out his iconoclastic views: that there is scant evidence that human activity is causing global temperatures to rise, that climate models projecting dire consequences in the coming centuries are unreliable, and that even if temperatures do increase significantly, it could actually be a benefit to humanity. Most climate scientists say that Dyson’s views — including his claim that warming today is largely confined to the Arctic — are flat-out wrong. But
Freeman Dyson
Dyson, who readily admits that he is not a climate expert, remains undaunted, insisting that his skeptical point of view needs to be heard. One of the chief reasons, he says, is that unfounded action to slash greenhouse gas emissions by cutting coal use could prevent China and India from bringing their populations into the middle class, a phenomenon Dyson calls “the most important thing that’s going on in the world at present.”
Click here to read the full interview.
Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson has been roundly criticized for insisting global warming is not an urgent problem, with many climate scientists dismissing him as woefully ill-informed. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Dyson explains his iconoclastic views and why he believes they have stirred such controversy.
BY MICHAEL D. LEMONICK
A powerful coal-state Democrat has inserted a 24-page provision into the U.S. Congress’s proposed cap-and-trade bill that would create a $10 billion Carbon Storage Research Corporation, including up to $500 million in “administrative expenses” over the next 10 years. The Web site Solve Climate said the institute would be operated by the coal industry and would research methods of storing carbon dioxide underground; it would be funded with a 50-cent-per-month surcharge on the utility bills of all U.S. households. Critics contend that the Carbon Storage Research Corporation is a massive pork barrel project, and say it was included in the so-called Waxman-Markey bill to win the vote of U.S. Rep. Rick Boucher, an influential Democrat from Virginia. Said one analyst, “This is every industry’s dream — to have the proceeds of a monopoly tax dedicated entirely to your interests.”