ECONOMIC GROWTH TO END SOON, FOREVER!!

Peak Oil is the idea that the world’s oil production will soon reach a peak and then begin to decline. This will have epoch-changing effects on a growing globalised world economy where over 60 per cent of energy demand is met by burning oil and gas, and where 95 per cent of transport is driven by oil. Over the last couple of years the status of the peak oil idea has been transformed from that of a Chicken Little conspiracy theory to one commanding the public attention of national governments. The weeks before Easter 2007 were a truly momentous period for the peak oil debate. Highly respected figures in the oil industry, such a energy investment banker Matt Simmons and legendary Texas oilman T.Boone Pickens, abandoned their usually restrained commentary to declare that world oil production was now at its peak and would henceforth fail to meet future demand increases.

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Why global warming has brought the G8 to boiling point

2004, climate change did not even rate a mention in the summary of the Group of Eight (G8) summit at Sea Island, Georgia.

Today, it is the issue that may make or break the rich nations' get-together in Heiligendamm, Germany.

Summit host German Chancellor Angela Merkel faces an unenviable choice. She can insist that the summit endorse an ambitious plan for tackling greenhouse gases, although to do so would dangerously isolate President George W. Bush.

Or she can climb down and submit to a fudge that will badly damage her standing at home and across Europe.

This potential crisis has been brewing for months, driven by science and public opinion, say seasoned watchers of the climate debate.

"The public knows climate change is here, now, and is demanding political leaders to lead by example," Hans Verolme of environmental group WWF told AFP. "Expectations are high."


Here's why climate change is now such a big deal:

-- AN ESCALATING THREAT: This year, the UN's top scientific panel declared climate change was already on the march and the effects would be harsh and, for poor, vulnerable countries, potentially catastrophic.

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Solar could go mainstream as China enters market

Solar power could go mainstream within three to four years as Chinese companies boost production of solar panels and the key ingredient for their function, according a report released yesterday.

Solar accounts for less than 1 percent of the world's electrical capacity, mostly due to the high cost of manufacturing the panels and the scarce availability of their key component, purified polysilicon.

But according to a study by the Worldwatch Institute, the development of advanced technologies and the emergence of China as a low-cost producer could push solar into the mainstream.

Last year, China passed the United States to become the world's third largest producer of solar panels, trailing only Germany and Japan.

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Salvage Logging, Replanting Worse

Contrary to the conventional wisdom, scientists have found that logging big dead trees after a wildfire and planting young ones makes future fires worse, at least for the first 10 or 20 years while the young trees create a volatile new source of fuel.

The findings by scientists from the U.S. Forest Service and Oregon State University raise questions about the long-standing practice of salvage logging on national forests at a time when global warming is expected to increase the size and numbers of wildfires and the annual cost of fighting them is running around $1 billion.

In the first study of its kind, scientists examined satellite images, aerial photographs, and records of logging and replanting to look at areas that burned in the 1987 Silver fire in southwestern Oregon and again in the 2002 Biscuit fire.

"It was the conventional wisdom that salvage logging and planting could reduce the risk of high-severity fires," said Jonathan R. Thompson, a doctoral candidate in forest science at Oregon State, who was lead author of the study appearing this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Our data suggest otherwise."
They suggested that the large stands of closely packed young trees created by replanting are a much more volatile source of fuel for decades to come than the large dead trees that are cut down and hauled away in salvage logging operations.

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Bear Detection Kits Seen as Having Potential To Curb Illegal Trade

"Bear detection kits" may help crack down on an illegal trade in bear products supplied by Asian farms where animals are locked in cramped cages, a conservation group said on Tuesday.

The portable kits, which use technology similar to that in a home pregnancy test, can isolate bear proteins in traditional Asian medicines in five minutes, according to the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA).

The bear detection kits, developed with a forensic group called Wildlife DNA Services, are far simpler and quicker than existing procedures that require laboratory equipment, it said.



"The activity that takes place in bear farms is inherently cruel and unnecessary," WSPA head Peter Davies said in a statement released on the sidelines of a June 3-15 U.N. conference on wildlife trade in The Hague.

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Patio heaters produce more CO2 than a small city

The government should ban patio heaters, say environmental campaigners Friends of the Earth. A recent survey by British Gas suggests there could be a massive increase in the use of patio heaters following the introduction of the smoking ban this summer. (Green Building)

Earlier this year Friends of the Earth revealed that leading garden chain Wyevale are to stop selling patio heaters following concerns about their impact on climate change. Subsequently garden centre chain Notcutts told the environmental campaign group that they will follow suit and "have now elected to sell through current stocks of Gas and Electric Patio heaters and not to stock in the future".

Estimates of the impact that patio heaters have on climate change vary. The Energy Saving Trust has worked out that a propane patio heater with a heat output of 12.5kW will produce around 34.8kg of CO2 before the fuel runs out (after approximately 13 hours). This is equivalent to the energy required to produce approximately 5,200 cups of tea (or 400 cups for every hour of operation)

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Are You Eating Dinner on a Piece of Rainforest?

Love your new dining room table ... but did you ask the salesman whether it's made from chopped up rainforest trees?

A growing number of furniture shoppers are doing just that when they buy new home decor, concerned about the effects of shrinking rainforests on global warming and the extinction of rare species of flora and fauna that inhabit these forests.

"There's a lot of inexpensive places where you can get furniture from, but I ask myself - where is it being manufactured, where does the wood come from?" said Stephanie Zhong, a 38-year-old designer from Los Angeles.

"If people were more aware of it, they would choose to be a little bit more informed about what they are sitting on, the table they are working at," Zhong added.

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Logging May Wreck Orangutan Forests in a Decade, UN Says

THE HAGUE -- Illegal logging could destroy the last forest strongholds of orangutans within a decade and the world should do more to help Indonesia halt smuggling both of apes and of timber, a U.N. report said on Monday.

Burning of forests, sometimes to clear land to grow palm oil for biofuels, was adding to threats to endangered orangutans which live on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra, according to a report issued at a U.N. wildlife conference.

"Indonesia cannot and should not have to deal with this issue alone," Achim Steiner, the head of the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP), said in a statement. He urged more funding for wardens and a global customs crackdown on illegal trade.

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Panel Votes To Ban Bottom Trawling in Northern Bering Sea

An advisory fisheries panel voted Sunday to put 180,000 square miles (466,200 square kilometers) of the northern Bering Sea off-limits to bottom trawling, a form of fishing that conservation groups say is destructive to vulnerable habitat for numerous species.



The North Pacific Fishery Management Council, which advises the federal government on fisheries in federal waters off Alaska, made its unanimous decision Sunday at a meeting in Sitka after asking the public to weigh in with options for about 330,000 square miles (854,700 square kilometers) of the entire Bering Sea. Options adopted now go through the regulatory process with the National Marine Fisheries Service.

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Aborigines volunteer land for nuclear waste

The latest twist in the saga of what Australia's federal government might do with its nuclear waste sees aboriginal people offering a piece of land in the Northern Territories for the job. (EDIE)

Although Australia is rich with uranium deposits which fuel reactors the world over, Australia is not itself a major nuclear player, having a handful of small reactors for research purposes but no large power stations.

However, the question of how to dispose of the waste from these research facilities along with that from industrial and medical sources has been a major headache for central government. But now the aboriginal Ngapa clan has proposed a 1.5 sq km site, part of its 200sq km holding near Muckaty Station, roughly half way between Alice Springs and Darwin in the Northern Territories.

If it gets the go ahead, the site could be used to store both low-level nuclear waste such as contaminated soil and lab equipment and intermediate level waste including that from hospital radiotherapy departments and Australia's reactors.

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Bogus claims lead to 'chainsaw massacre' of London's trees

Up to 2,000 London street trees have been given the chop in the past five years, condemned by usually unwarranted subsidence claims, a London Assembly report has revealed. (Environment Times)In some boroughs as much as 40 per cent of trees removed have been due to insurance claims. Yet the Assembly's Environment Committee heard that barely one per cent of these claims were probably justified. A recent survey showed that, over the past five years, 40 per cent of the 325 trees removed in Hackney, 16 per cent of 1,500 trees in Brent and ten per cent of the 600 trees in Camden have been removed because of subsidence claims. In total London has lost around 40,000 street trees with 48,000 planted over the last five years. However London has suffered an overall loss of broadleaf trees and many of the new trees that have been planted are smaller, ornamental varieties. Ornamental varieties do not have the same environmental benefits as broad leaf trees, which play a vital role in protecting the capital from the effects of global warming.

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Oil companies must pay for spills

The Filipino Government has introduced a law which will require all major companies which ship oil through the island nation's waters to pay into a fund that can be used to tackle future spills. (EDIE)

The Oil Compensation Act has been seen largely as an acknowledgement of criticism over the government's slow response to a huge spill of the coast of Guimaras last year, the worst in the country's history. The spill occurred when an oil tanker sank off the coast of the idyllic island last August, causing extensive damage to both the sensitive environment and the livelihood of local fishermen.

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G8 make historic climate deal

World leaders will work with the United Nations to slash greenhouse gas emissions in a new deal to replace the Kyoto Protocol by 2009. The agreement was sealed at the G8 summit on the Baltic coast, and importantly has the buy-in of the world's largest polluter, the United States, as well as the other members Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia. However the historic agreement falls short of setting hard targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as wanted by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
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Ecuador to world: Help us, and we won't drill in the rainforest

In response to intense pressure from indigenous and environmental organizations opposed to drilling for oil in an Amazon rainforest, this May Ecuador asked the world for financial help, according to the Environmental News Service.
The oil fields under Yasuni National Park are estimated to contain 900 million to 1 billion barrels of oil, about one-quarter of Ecuador's total reserves. In about a year, international oil companies will be allowed to bid for the right to drill.To avoid this fate, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa is asking the international community for about $350 million a year.

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Vatican goes solar

The Vatican City State is to get a solar energy installation, craftily sited on the roof of one its few large modern buildings.

The Vatican's "green" statements of recent months culminated in a speech in April by the Pope urging politicians to "respect creation" while "focusing on the needs of sustainable development".

China unveils climate change plan

Country vows to 'blaze new path to industrialisation' and invest in green energy, without committing to emissions targets.

A pond filled with dead fish on the outskirts of Wuhan, in Hubei province. About 125,000kg of fish have reportedly died in China in the last three days due to water pollution. Photograph: Reuters

But in a blow to efforts to tackle global warming, the world's second biggest producer of greenhouse gases refused to accept binding targets for emissions, saying wealthy developed nations must take the bulk of the responsibility for the problem.

The announcement of the 62-page action plan appeared aimed at deflecting criticism ahead of the G8 plus six summit in Germany this week and a series of key international meetings on the environment.
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U.S. Pressures G8 Nations to Weaken Stance on Global Warming

The United States has been working behind the scenes to stop the next Group of Eight (G8) summit in Germany next month from setting clear goals to fight global warming and from calling for urgent talks to negotiate a new climate strategy to replace the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012, according to documents obtained by Reuters.
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