Ecological research cuts to go ahead 15 March 06

I hope Mark won’t mind me using this page to post a link to an urgent email alert, from Friends of the Earth Scotland.

This Friday will be the last chance for the UK’s Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Bill to succeed. Mark previously posted about this bill. It is the only substantial piece of legislation currently before Parliament which would really help to reduce our emissions.

Two Conservative MPs used the whole session last Friday to sabotage the bill and to talk it out. One of them was quoted before as saying the Kyoto agreement was nonsense. They are acting against their own party’s position. The Bill will have just 5 hours left, otherwise it will fall.

Friends of the Earth Scotland are asking people to write to David Cameron and ask him to take action against the MPs in question, and to write to their MPs and ask them to attend – the more MPs attend the better the chances of success.

here is the link:

http://www.foe-scotland.org.uk/cyberaction/cyberaction_200603.html

Almuth Ernsting

Livingstone, Lovins and Porritt

Here’s a question for you all. What do these three have in common? They have all, very clearly, declared themselves to be against more nuclear. They are a diverse bunch.

Ken Livingstone is leader of the Greater London Authority (GLA) and responsible for appointing Allan Jones (ex-Woking) to set up and run the London Climate Change Agency. Ken has announced today, not before time it has to be said, the setting up of a £25m EDF sponsored project to pursue CHP and other measures. He was interviewed on the Today programme here http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/listenagain/index.shtml this morning. Lovelock was referred to by the interviewer (in the usual reverential way). Ken batted this diversion aside successfully.

Amory Lovins is well known to visitors to this site and features in the new edition of Green Futures. He argues that “Investing in nuclear power … is the worst thing we can do for climate change.” This links to the article http://www.greenfutures.org.uk/features/default.asp?id=2479 It may be behind a subs barrier. Go here http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid1151.php for something similar from the RMI site.

Jonathan Porritt chairs the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC). This has just issued a report rejecting new nuclear on the grounds of waste, cost, inflexibility, security and efficiency. See press reports here http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1725322,00.html and here http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article349711.ece subs barrier I’m afraid.

The Indy piece by Michael Harrison and Michael McCarthy quotes Porritt on the pro-nuclear Lovelock thus “No one person should be accorded that overarching credibility in the face of the evidence before us”. I also heard Porritt on Radio 4 when he was doing the rounds last week sounding exasperated when Lovelock’s stance was put to him by the interviewer.

I hope that what is emerging here is a really significant weight of opinion which prevents more nuclear. There are clear alternatives and it is encouraging to note how much attention is being paid to decentralised distribution and CHP. See this http://society.guardian.co.uk/societyguardian/story/0,,1730598,00.html by Stephen Tindale of Greenpeace.

Douglas Coker

Guess it means they don’t really want to know how bad things are getting (can’t see that it’s a financial issue in such a big over all economy—the money could be found simply by making the government more energy/resource efficient).

But it still doesn’t come close to how bad we “shoot the earth first, ask questions later” Americans are. “Smoke the earth out!” as so&so might say….

So, this is how it is: England will do something at a meager level to reduce GW & environmental problems, but doesn’t want to know about it. America will keep destroying the earth lickity-split, but wants to know more & more, but then will throw the science reports away (or suppress scientists from speaking about them), whereas we could have addressed the problems AND saved lots of money.

Why don’t we just burn money in one big heap & streamline the process?

Consider what could happen if the integrity of the Earth were accorded the kind of pre-eminent consideration and support that is provided to the world economy in our time. Then, politicians would be much LESS inclined to support whatever the interests of their business as usual benefactors in the here and now. Instead, the professional political types would think and act more ably with regard to the wellbeing of Earth as a fit place for habitation by future generations. The environment not the economy would be what was of utmost concern. Rather than a US President warning other countries, “not to do things that adversely impact economic growth,” we would hear a President authorize, “business interests to cease and desist production activities that lead to the extinction of biodiversity or the degradation of the ecosphere.”

As things stand, it is as if the potential looming threat posed to the future of life on Earth by certain distinctly human “over-growth” activities (i.e., propagation, consumption and production) are everywhere ignored. The unbridled expansion of the predominant political economy is everywhere embraced as if it were reality itself. The hoarding of seemingly endless wealth rules. The surface of Earth is commandeered for a playground by the rich and powerful.

I have had a cursory look at the Wade study, on which Greenpeace base their strategy. It is here: http://www.localpower.org/documents_pub/reporto_greenpeace_modelrun.pdf

Just looking at the graphs, I see that

1) Decentralisation of a substantial part of the energy production is a very good idea and will reduce energy demand and therefore emissions.

2) The two Greenpeace scenarios see gas as supplying over half of our electricity supply, with coal supplying a much lower but no negligible amount.

3) Biomass is to become a major energy source, equalling or even surpassing coal.

Greenpeace say that their scenario would cut CO2 emissions from the power sector by 30% by 2023. The question is – is that enough? I fear not.

The biomass element, however, terrifies me. I am looking into this in a lot of detail just now. Some interesting findings are: If the EU was to supply 10% of transport fuels from home-grown biomass, then 40% of all EU cropland would need to be used for growing biofuel crops. It is three times more efficient to grow biofuels in the tropics – that’s why tropical oil plants are becoming more and more of an issue. In the tropics, however, they will either displace food crops or, increasingly, rainforests and other sensitive ecosystems. Are the palm oil plantations and catastrophic peat forest fires linked to them in Indonesia and aberration? I fear not. Now, Greenpeace say that we should have a high component of biofuels in transport fuels, as well as a growing biomass compnent in power production. Could this mean the death blow to the Amazon as well as the forests of Borneo (and, as a result, to our climate)? The assumption that biofuels are carbon-neutral is plain wrong and dangerous – some are, some are far worse than the dirtiest coal. If we increase the sector really fast, we will end up with more that are worse than coal. I hope I am wrong and have misunderstood this, but there are disasters unfolding linked to biofuels right now – I hear biomass in so many of the interviews about our renewable future and fear the worst.

Almuth Ernsting

Almuth – That’s very interesting. Do you have a reliable source for the figure on cropland use which would be needed in Europe for biofuels? I’d be curious to see it.

Incidentally, I was at the Greenpeace business lecture last night in London, given by Mayor Ken Livingstone, which was about why decentralised energy (mainly CHP) is better than nuclear. But Stephen Tindale of GP also said that they want to see some kind of certification scheme for biofuels to make sure that food/rainforests are not being displaced.

Cheers, Mark

I found one interesting 2002 study done for the European Commission.

It found that, in terms of fuel volume, 2.3-5.9% of EU road transport fuel could come from biofuels produced in the EU. This could happen if all 5.6 million hectares of set asides were used to intensively grow energy crops.

The net effect would be a saving of 0.6% of the crude oil used in the EU. The CO2 saving would amount to 0.3% of the EU’s total emissions or 1.5% of the EU’s transport fuel. Those figures, however, exclude (potentially large) CO2 emissions from the soil and the IPCC data which show that biofuel production leads to very high N2O emissions also linked to global warming.

So, taking away 5.6 million hectares from wildlife already in decline and putting it under intensive agriculture, with vast increases in N2O emissions (and one article in the New Scientist recently warned that the N2O cycle being disturbed by humans could potentially cause as many problems as the CO2 increase) – to save 0.3% of the EU’s CO2 emissions.

There is uncertainty in the data, there are slightly more optimistic studies but I don’t think there is a huge error margin.

See: http://www.senternovem.nl/mmfiles/26601_tcm24-124161.pdf

Almuth