National Trust puts 3.5m members in front line against climate change

It controls 900-square miles of land and 710 miles of coastline and has far more members than the armed services, the teaching profession, the prison population, environmental groups and political parties combined.

Now the National Trust is hoping to become a new green army. To mark membership in England, Wales and Northern Ireland reaching 3.5 million - equivalent to the population of Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow and Sheffield (Britain's four largest cities after London) - the trust yesterday declared that it wants to become "the largest green movement in the world".

In what the the conservation charity calls one of the most fundamental shifts in its 103-year history, the trust announced the intention to mobilise this vast public support "to drive conservation and quality of life agendas, and in particular to combat climate change".

From now on, said director-general Fiona Reynolds, the trust will advise people how to adapt their lifestyles to climate change and challenge government to be more ecologically aware. "If we think that public policy is not right, then we will say so."

In a strategy document, the trust said it was in a unique position to help counter climate change. "The biggest challenge of our time is climate change," said Ms Reynolds. "We are like a miner's canary anticipating the effects that others will feel. Our practical experience ranges from coastal erosion and 18th century drainpipes being overwhelmed by heavier rainfall, through to book collections damaged by pests now surviving warmer winters."

The trust is already confronting BAA on plans to expand Stansted airport in Essex on grounds of noise pollution, but declined to say on what else it intended to campaign. As Britain's biggest landowner it is known to want to influence agriculture to reduce damaging emissions.

"In the past we have been cautious about expressing our voice loudly. Now we recognise that we have to engage in public debate on a very wide scale. If our knowledge tells us, say, that expanding airports leads to problems, then it is right we should say so," said Peter Nixon, the trust's director of conservation. "If you have 3.5m members you can go to government with a different kind of authority."

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London councils push for plastic bag ban

London shops could be banned from handing out plastic bags under a new law intended to make the capital more environmentally friendly.
Council leaders have suggested an outright ban on the bags, or the introduction of a 10p levy, in a bid to reduce the waste going into landfill.
The measures, proposed by the capital's 33 councils in a new London local authorities bill, will be put before MPs in November.
Merrick Cockell, Conservative leader of the London Councils organisation, said:

"The proposals for a plastic bag levy underline our commitment to addressing these concerns. We hope Londoners will join with us in commending these proposals to parliament to create a greener, safer city."

Source: http://environment.guardian.co.uk/waste/story/0,,2125825,00.html

McDonald's goes green - but not all customers are lovin' it

McDonald's is a company on a mission. Tired of being held up as an example of corporate evil and greed, the fast food chain has been hitting out at critics with a series of environmental and social initiatives designed to prove that it cares.
Not content with that, the company is also going through a full makeover, redesigning some of its restaurants in a way that it hopes will revitalise the sites and attract more customers.

On Monday, the group announced its latest initiative: to turn its spent cooking oil into biodiesel fuel to power its vans in the UK.
This is the latest in a series of environmental and health moves. Recently, for example, the group swapped over to non-hydrogenated cooking oil in its restaurants.



The menus have changed to varying degrees over the past few years, with the introduction of sustainably grown coffee, organic milk and toasted deli sandwiches.

In the UK, a sheet of paper on customers' trays shows a photo of George Horton, a 43-year-old farmer in Wiltshire and a McDonald's supplier, who produces the food they eat. Even Greenpeace, which has worked with McDonald's on making sure the soya they source from Brazil is produced by companies that do not destroy the rainforest, says the company has been progressive. Pat Venditti, forest campaigner at the charity, says: "What we've seen is that they have taken a very good leadership role in terms of how they approach environmental issues."



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Temperature rises 'not caused by sun'

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Claims in a controversial Channel 4 programme that recent rises in global temperatures have been caused by the sun have been disproved by scientists.
The programme, the Great Global Warming Swindle, claimed that instead of greenhouse gases from human activity being to blame for a recent surge in temperatures, a change in solar activity was responsible because it influenced the number of cosmic rays that strike the Earth.

The film presented such changes in the sun as a viable alternative explanation for rising temperatures, and was widely cited in discussions of a recent poll that showed 56% of the UK public doubted the scientific cause of climate change.


But the new analysis, to be published in a Royal Society journal on Tuesday, shows that global warming since 1985 cannot have been caused by an increase in solar radiation or by a decrease in cosmic rays.
Mike Lockwood, a physicist at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK, said: "It is absolutely clear that the sun is nothing to do with the recent warming.


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Why rock won't save the planet

This Saturday, Live Earth, a series of huge concerts around the world, will use music and modern media, in the words of the organisers, to "trigger a global movement to solve the climate crisis".
I sincerely hope that it works, but I fear that our refusal to acknowledge climate change has very deep roots - too deep to be addressed by feel-good concerts. After all, we have known about climate change for a surprisingly long time. The first serious warnings came in 1965 and climate change has been at the top of the political agenda for 15 years.

For years, the assumption has been that if people only knew more about the seriousness of the issue, they would act. We have had a decade of terrifying research, voluminous reports, portentous political statements, interactive websites, Sunday supplement pull-outs, and screaming banner headlines.


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Analysis: Behind China's smokescreen on climate change

The Chinese government's irresponsible stance toward mitigating climate change, based on its developing country status, is increasingly untenable. China is the world's fourth largest economy and, according to a new report, is now the top emitter of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas heating up the planet.

Global warming is an unintended consequence of the global trading system. Now is not the time for finger pointing between the developed and developing worlds: CO2 and other gases are nearing cumulative crisis levels. Culpability for shifting polluting industries from rich to poor countries goes to both sides, and demonstrates that a favorable investment environment does not promise investment favorable to the environment.

China continues to be both a beneficiary of globalization, with capital and technology inflows creating jobs for its massive population, and its benefactor, providing markets with low-cost products. This process began nearly 30 years ago when China abandoned Maoist principles in pursuit of profit as the guiding ideology for its political economy.

The policy of economic reform and opening to the outside world permitted foreign investors and hardworking individual Chinese new opportunities to generate wealth, raising the collective level of prosperity and taking hundreds of millions of people out of absolute poverty at the expense of the world's ecosystem.

President Hu Jintao heads a communist coterie reared in the ethos of an authoritarian one- party state, lacking accountability and with a deeply entrenched sense of entitlement to dispensation regarding global obligations. Neither view helps Hu and crew meet new challenges such as acknowledging China's role in the greenhouse gas problem and taking the lead in searching for a solution.
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Surge of Dead Seabirds Alarms Scientists

Hundreds of dead seabirds that washed up along the Southeast coast in recent weeks apparently starved to death, but experts don't know why.

The deaths of the birds -- similar to gulls and called greater shearwaters -- have wildlife officials worried about possible changes in the ocean that could have affected the fish that the birds usually eat.

"It's got a lot of folks talking and wondering," said Jennifer Koches, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "Is this a canary in the coal mine issue? Is there something that serious going on out in the ocean that it should be causing us serious alarm?"

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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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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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NASA Administrator Not Sure Global Warming A Problem

Michael Griffin NASA Administrator has told America's National Public Radio that while he has no doubt a trend of global warming exists "I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with." In an interview with NPR's Steve Inskeep that will air in Thursday's edition of NPR News' Morning Edition, Administrator Griffin explains: "I guess I would ask which human beings - where and when - are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that's a rather arrogant position for people to take."

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Source:terradaily.com

New energy rules could unleash an economic boom and help quash climate change

In 1997, as the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change was being negotiated, the U.S. Senate voted, 95-0, to reject any agreement that "would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States." The senators were acting on the widespread fear that the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy would hurt American businesses and cost millions of jobs. Those were the beliefs and the politics of the times.

Ten years later, it's increasingly clear that it will be more costly not to act on global warming than to act. Clean, renewable, efficient energy will not be a burden but a boon -- the next in a series of revolutions, beginning with telecom and digital that have invigorated our economy with new ideas, new industries, and new jobs.

Voters, investors, activists, business leaders, and policy experts are pushing for clean energy to create jobs, limit climate change, and reduce America's dependence on foreign oil. And yet, progress is slow: oil imports and carbon emissions continue to rise. Why?

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Carbon emissions have sped up since 2000

World emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide increased three times faster after 2000 than in the 1990s, putting them at the high end of a range of forecasts by an international climate change panel, scientists report. Carbon emissions grew at a 3.1% annual rate between 2000 and 2004, compared to 1.1% per year in the previous decade, according to the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Lead author Dr Mike Raupach, from Australia's CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research and the Global Carbon Project, says that nearly 8 billion tonnes of carbon were emitted globally into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide in 2005 compared with 6 billion tonnes in 1995.

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Aquarium fish 'threaten biodiversity'

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The millions of exotic fish imported each year to fill Australia's aquaria and ornamental ponds are a ticking time bomb for the continent's biodiversity, say some experts.

And they say Australia will find it hard to protect itself unless international trade laws are reformed.

"There is no doubt that aquarium fish that are being imported into Australia every week carry pathogens that have the potential to cause severe ecological impacts," says the University of Sydney's Professor Richard Whittington, a specialist in the health of aquatic animals.


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Antarctic reveals treasure trove of life

Carnivorous sponges, 585 new species of crustaceans and hundreds of new worms have been discovered in the dark waters around Antarctica, suggesting these depths may have been the source of much marine life, European researchers report.




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online directory for australian enviro-friendly products

Green Pages is the new mecca for envirofriendly products in Australia.

this is the online directory of business that we might need on an everyday basis, but with a twist: it only features enviro-friendly products.

"Green Pages Business is the vehicle that will put big business in touch with the innovators working in environmental sustainability, The Green Pages Business directory lists companies involved in energy, finance, consulting, architecture, construction, office supplies, recycling, media, packaging, transport and water, who are leaders in sustainability."
"We believe Green Pages will dramatically increase the market share of sustainable business. We've created a first in Australia, if not the world." says Katie Patrick , the founder of Green Pages.

click on this link to explore:green pages

Green roofs: Why are green roofs important to our future?

Even though a green roof is an ancient concept, many of us fail to realise the importance of green roofs and what exactly they are. We are constantly bombarded with messages telling us that our climate is dramatically changing and that we need to do something about this. Green roofs are a solution. So, why should we go green?

Most of us live in the concrete jungle, what is also referred to as an urban environment: a nice and sophisticated term for something rather dull. We have been living in such an environment that we forgot what a green space is, and we find it more difficult to understand the significance of having a green space. That is my opinion anyway…

So why a green roof?

· Green roofs improve insulation: reduce heating and cooling (green roofs could decrease urban temperature)
· Green roofs are known for their ability to reduce storm water run off: storm water run off carries contaminants, including hazardous heavy metals from paved surfaces and rooftops. Storm water run off has been identified as a major source of water pollution.
· Filter pollutants and CO2 (carbon dioxide) out of the air
· Green roofs can even lengthen the life span of roofs resulting in decreased maintenance and savings in replacement costs (economic benefit)
· Green roofs reduce the Urban Heat Island Effect: Conventional building materials absorb the sun’s radiation and reflect it back as heat, making cities hotter than surrounding suburbs. Reductions of the Urban Heat Island Effect will also minimise the spreading of dust and production of smog. This, in turn, can potentially reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
· A green roof provides habitat for plants and animals
· Leisure facility for building users
· Sound insulation
· Aesthetic appeal
· Green roofs can increase the value of the property and marketability