T5 Adapters — Calex Global

Rumour has it that Brad Pitt is going into the Amazon.

He will play out the story of an enigmatic explorer in search of his personal El Dorado.

The explorer in question was Colonel Percy Fawcett, a highly resilient English surveyor who set off almost 85 years ago on his final expedition into the Amazon.

Fawcett, a celebrated veteran of many journeys into the unknown, secretly believed he had discovered scientific evidence of a lost civilisation within the vastness of what today is known as the Xingu, in north-eastern Brazil.

Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, he remained resolute and journeyed repeatedly into the forest, determined to find it.

Newspapers published despatches detailing his quest for many months, but then all news ceased.

Like Livingstone 50 years before him, Fawcett had vanished into a dark continent; only this time, no-one ever found him.

‘Impossible dream’

After three decades at the conservation frontline, much of it now encased in concrete jungles searching for a seemingly impossible solution to inexorable rainforest destruction, I am beginning to feel a little bit like Percy Fawcett.

Perhaps I am on the trail of an impossible dream.

Fawcett gave his elusive goal the cryptic name of “Z”.

The same could equally apply to the El Dorado that I and many others have been searching for: an economic argument to convince governments that the standing rainforest could be worth more alive than dead.

The fact that tropical forests continue to go up in flames, contributing seven billion tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually (more than all the world’s cars, ships and planes), suggests that my Amazonian “Z” may not exist.

Unless, that is, a completely new way to discover it exists.

A clutch of events last week offer several apparently contradictory clues as to how my El Dorado might be found.

At the UN Forum on Forests (UNFF), currently in session in New York, the International Union of Forest Research Organisations (IUFRO) released a report on Adaptation of Forests and People to Climate Change.

It contained the projection that rising global temperatures may condemn forests over the next century to become fire-strewn savannahs, whatever efforts governments may take to conserve them.

This resonates with the finding, recently published in the journal Science, that the Amazon’s trees capture a whopping two billion tonnes of CO2 annually; but that during the devastating Amazon drought of 2005, they released five billion tonnes back out again.

Some journalists have asked in response: “What’s the point in saving the Amazon, if it’s doomed anyway?”

Our common reaction in the face of these uncertainties is to believe that the risks of doing nothing are less than any remedial action we could take.

In this case, the reverse is almost certainly true.

Take cover

Oliver Phillips – the lead author of the Science paper – Yadvinder Malhi of Oxford University, I and others have indicated that halting deforestation may increase the forest’s resilience to climate change.

So, my view is that far from reducing efforts to halt deforestation, we should redouble them.

Let me put it another way: if a person has malaria and you want to save their life by keeping their temperature down, surely the worst way to do it is to keep kicking them in the stomach or even amputating their legs.

At the Summit of the Americas last week in Trinidad, a Blueprint for a Sustainable Energy Partnership for the Americas was presented to the many heads of state who attended the summit.

One of its three components was a new “vision for the Amazon”. But what has the Amazon got to do with energy?

Brazil is a leader in green power, with 40% of its cars being run on bioethanol from sugarcane and 70% of its electricity sourced from hydropower.

Even in the Sao Paulo hotel where I am writing this, lights in the corridor only come on when I walk through.

The connection between energy and the Amazon is water.

The evapotranspiration of the Amazon’s trees, which generates billions of tonnes of water each day, may significantly underpin food and energy security in the region.

Dr Jose Marengo, a scientist at Brazil’s space research agency (INPE), has postulated that a proportion of this moisture is carried south on a low-level atmospheric jet stream across southern Brazil and down to the La Plata Basin.

If so, this vast volume of water helps sustain a trillion dollar agricultural industry, feeds hydropower, and could prove to be essential to Brazil’s booming biofuel industry.

It seems to me that a new way of looking at the Amazon is to consider it as a locally owned “eco-utility”, which is providing ecosystem services across regional and global distances that currently no-one pays for.

It is likely that these services are potentially worth a great deal to those who deliver them and to businesses whose prosperity depends on them.

A 10% fall in rainfall over time – less than some conservative predictions – could deliver a 40% drop in river flow, for example.

Perversely, beneficiaries such as Brazilian beef and soy farmers are at the same time potentially undermining their future success. through their expansion into the forest.

An international bank investing in agriculture and hydropower in the region might legitimately ask if the former investment is, in fact, weakening the latter.

Could the beneficiaries therefore be persuaded to pay a tax to maintain the services?

Doing so might make the Amazon worth more standing up than cut down. This would help sustain global food and energy security, worth billions to national economies.

Hidden value

The question that businesses and policymakers will want answered is whether continued deforestation could make the giant soy fields of Mato Grosso dry up or the lights go out in Buenos Aires.

At INPE last week, I was privileged to join some of the region’s leading scientists, economists and community development specialists to brainstorm the idea of valuing the Amazon as an “eco-utility”.

The meeting was funded under an innovative new UK government programme called Ecosystem Services and Poverty Alleviation (ESPA).

We concluded that we can’t really be sure where the rain goes, and argued over its possible reduction, ranging from a lot to a little.

Yet we were convinced that a new positive incentive system was needed, and that a year of effort lay ahead to figure out how it might work.

Our scientific caution is understandable; but for a policymaker, is it really the point?

As Dr Antonio Nobre, a leading forests and climate scientist, told the INPE meeting: “If you were in charge of a departing flight in which the captain announced the destination was uncertain but the engineer said there was a 10% chance of the aircraft crashing, would you recommend that everyone happily remain in their seats whilst an argument ensued over probabilities?”

I believe the credit crunch, climate change, and consumer appetites are creating a crucial tipping point in this historical debate, which will determine how the world’s political process deals with the erosion one of the greatest natural capital assets on Earth.

If I can echo Einstein: it is unlikely that Amazonian nations will be able to solve this problem with the same thinking that caused it.

Although the Amazon belongs to no-one else but these nations and their people, how it fares affects us all, and so is a scientific, political and economic intelligence test for everyone.

Fawcett’s ecological ignorance hid the Amazon’s true value, which was all around him.

His El Dorado exists today as the vast Xingu Reserve, a land of forests quietly maintaining our resilience because the indigenous communities have maintained theirs.

But will the forests Fawcett once journeyed through disappear?

Will my “Z” in the Amazon become a romantic metaphor for an ineffective environmental Zeitgeist?

I do not know; but expecting science to offer a certainty that it can never deliver excuses inaction and stokes risk.

As Dr Nobre observed, who among us has refused to buy insurance because we cannot know accurately when our house will burn down or exactly when our car will be stolen?

Paying a premium to prevent the loss of the Amazon could be one of the best insurance policies planet Earth has on offer.

Vested interests have tried to spread misinformation about global warming, but scientific evidence shows urgent action is needed.

Many people ask how sure we are about the science of climate change. The most definitive examination of the scientific evidence is to be found in the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its last major report published in 2007. I had the privilege of being chairman or co-chairman of the panel’s scientific assessments from 1988 to 2002.

Many hundreds of scientists from different countries were involved as contributors and reviewers for these reports, which are probably the most comprehensive and thorough international assessments on any scientific subject ever carried out. In June 1995, just before the G8 summit in Scotland, the academies of science of the world’s 11 largest economies (the G8 plus India, China, and Brazil) issued a statement endorsing the IPCC’s conclusions and urging world governments to take urgent action to address climate change. The world’s top scientists could not have spoken more strongly.

Unfortunately, strong vested interests have spent millions of dollars on spreading misinformation about climate change. First, they tried to deny the existence of any scientific evidence for global warming. More recently, they have largely accepted the fact of anthropogenic (man-made) climate change but argue that its impacts will not be great, that we can “wait and see,” and that in any case we can always fix the problem if it turns out to be substantial.

The scientific evidence does not support such arguments. Urgent action is needed both to adapt to the climate change that is inevitable and to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, especially CO², to prevent further damage as far as possible.

At the Earth summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, the world’s nations signed up to the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC), the objective of which is “to stabilise the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at a level that does not cause dangerous interference with the climate system … that allows ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, that ensures food production is not threatened, and that enables economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner.” Such stabilisation would also eventually stop further climate change.

It is now recognised that widespread damage due, for instance, to sea level rise and more frequent and intense heat waves, floods and droughts, will occur even for small increases of global average temperature. Therefore it is necessary that very strong efforts be made to hold the average global temperature rise below 2C relative to its preindustrial level.

If we are to have a good chance of achieving that target, the concentration of CO² must not be allowed to exceed 450 parts per million (it is now nearly 390 ppm). This implies that before 2050 global emissions of CO² must be reduced to below 50% of the 1990 level (they are currently 15% above that level), and that average emissions in developed countries must be reduced by at least 80% of the 1990 level. The UK has already committed itself to a binding target to reduce emissions by that amount, and President Barack Obama has expressed intention that the United States should also set that target.

One clear requirement is that tropical deforestation, which is responsible for 20% of greenhouse gas emissions, be halted within the next decade or two. Regarding emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, the International Energy Agency (IEA) in its Energy Technology Perspectives has set out in detail the technologies and actions that are needed in different countries and sectors to meet these targets.

For the short term, the IEA points out that very strong and determined action will be necessary to ensure that global CO² emissions stop rising (the current increase is more than 3% per year), reach a peak by about 2015, and then decline steadily toward the 2050 target. The IEA also points out that the targets can be achieved without unacceptable economic damage. In fact, the IEA lists many benefits that will be realised if its recommendations are followed.

What is required now is recognition that anthropogenic climate change will severely affect our children, grandchildren, the world’s ecosystems, and the world’s poorer communities, and that the severity of the impact can be substantially alleviated by taking action now.

John Theodore Houghton, a former professor of atmospheric physics at Oxford University, and founder of the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, was the co-chair of the IPCC’s scientific assessment working group and lead editor of its first three reports

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2009.

The British government needs to follow the lead of Germany by investing in renewable energy to stimulate the markets.

This is the claim of a new report published by the Renewable Energy Association (REA) in the run up to the budget.

According to the report backing renewable and energy efficiency could lead to a trade balance benefit for the British economy of up to £12.6bn per year by 2020.

It would also go some way towards reducing the reliance on energy imports and thus provide greater energy security.

Speaking at an REA press conference in Westminster on Monday, Martin Kremer of the German Embassy outlined how a cost/benefit study into his government’s renewable nergy programme had predicted net savings for industry and households of 5 billion Euros by 2020, as fossil fuel imports drop.

Philip Wolfe, director general of the REA said of his organsiation’s report: “We hear a lot about the cost of renewables, and not enough about the upsides. This report shows how investment in sustainable energy leads to huge and increasing savings for the UK economy through avoided fossil fuel imports.

“Politicians say we cannot afford not to go green – this report helps spell out why. On top of the employment and export benefits, the energy balance of payments is yet another reason why investment in renewables is essential for the economy, as well as for the planet.”

The full report can be found on the REA website.

Here’s an intriguing story: a link between obesity and climate change.

A paper in the International Journal of Epidemiology by Phil Edwards and Ian Roberts shows that heavier populations increase emissions for two reasons: they consume more food and they require more energy to transport.

This became “Fatties cause global warming” on the front page of the Sun today.

I’m sure it’s true: the more we consume of anything, the greater the impact will be. But it’s not clear that there’s anything that can be done about it: hardly anyone is overweight by choice. If people can’t stop themselves from overeating for the sake of their health, they won’t be able to stop for the sake of the biosphere.

A more realistic approach is to persuade people to switch more of their consumption from animal to plant-based food: that way you can eat just as much, with a smaller impact on both the environment and food security.

In fact the paper wasn’t about individual fat people, but populations. Most people in the rich world carry more weight than they need. Many of those who aren’t overweight still consume more calories than they need, but burn them off in the gym. Almost everyone in countries like the UK consumes too much of everything, including food.

So, while we should accept and understand these findings, let’s not use them as another stick with which to beat fat people. They have a tough enough time already.

Competition between mobile phone companies is wasting almost 300 GWh a year due to duplication of telephone network equipment, says a new report from the Green Party.

According to the report, published Monday 20 April, the amount of energy currently wasted by the mobile phone networks would be
enough to:

Run almost a third of the London Underground
Power seven Docklands Light Railways
Keep the Blackpool Tramway going for 137 years
Meet the electricity needs of around 68,000 homes
The report, Better Together, argues that mobile phone companies must cooperate to cut the industry’s emissions as part of Britain’s fight against climate change.

Darren Johnson AM, the Green Party’s spokesperson on trade and industry, commented today:

“The government should require mobile phone operators to share facilities.”

“They would save money, cut CO2 emissions and provide the same level of signal cover with fewer masts.”

“In the short-term operators could be required to share base stations at times of low demand. The government should direct Ofcom to ensure that the sharing of the new 800 MHz frequency band is done in a way that is energy efficient.”

“Ultimately they could build new shared infrastructure. They could cooperate on a ‘super-network’.”

He concluded: “With the climate crisis deepening, Britain can’t afford this amount of gratuitous waste.”

http://tinyurl.com/cpphr7

The messages come from everywhere: Save the planet. Reduce your carbon footprint. Be eco-wise.

But how do consumers decide which product or action is healthier or more environmentally friendly? Sometimes the choices are clear; other times they’re more murky. Here are some examples:

– Paper v. plastic.

Both can be made from recycled materials and are recyclable. Paper is made by cutting down trees — which help absorb greenhouse gases — but then again, they’re renewable. Plastic bags are often made of polyethylene, produced from natural gas, which is abundant but not renewable.

But it takes more water and energy to make paper bags than it does to produce plastic bags. Neither breaks down particularly fast in a landfill, though paper is compostible; plastics don’t biodegrade easily.

An alternative is taking your own reusable cloth or plastic bag to the store. But consumers shouldn’t stress too much, as long as they’re recycling or reusing store bags, whether by filling paper with newspapers for recycling or carrying their lunch in plastic, said Chris Newman, an environmental scientist with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

– Compact fluorescent light bulbs v. incandescent.

CFLs last longer and use less energy, but also are more expensive and contain toxic mercury. That means consumers must be careful how they clean up the bulbs if they break and dispose of them properly.

But mercury also is a byproduct of burning coal. And the extra electricity needed to power incandescent bulbs often comes from coal-fired power plants. The toxin, which can cause neurological damage in children, can get into the food chain after settling into lakes and streams.

Eventually both CFLs and incandescent bulbs probably will be replaced by solid-state, or LED, lighting. But until then, environmental groups generally advocate consumers use CFLs, though people with children will want to take extra caution.

– Organic v. conventionally grown food.

It’s true that organic food, grown or raised without pesticides and herbicides, could be better for your health and the ecosystem. But if it is shipped from thousands of miles away, there is an environmental tradeoff because of the pollution caused by trucks traveling cross-country.

Some experts say you might want to consider passing on organic produce, for example, if it has a thick skin, like bananas, or outer leaves, like corn. Or you could make a point of buying locally grown food.

– Pesticides v. doing nothing.

Bugs in the house aren’t just creepy and crawly. In the case of cockroaches, they can cause asthma in children. But spraying pesticides is not necessarily great for little lungs, either, and it’s often just a matter of time before the critters return.

A better alternative is using baits — the roaches eat the poison, then take it back to their families, helping to end the roach life cycle, according to Tom Neltner, of the National Center for Healthy Housing and founder of Indianapolis-based Improving Kids’ Environment. But parents have to be careful that children and pets don’t come in contact with the baits, he said.

– Drive-thrus v. getting out of the car.

Idling a car engine for more than 10 seconds emits more pollution than turning it off and back on again. So if you’re able, environmentalists recommend that you park your car and walk into the fast-food restaurant or the bank. Many cities recommend that drivers avoid idling as much as possible, especially on days when alerts are issued because of ground-level ozone and soot.

Or better yet, walk to the restaurant. If you can safely walk or bicycle, there is no environmental or health downside. And riding the bus or train helps take cars and trucks off the road, cutting down on tailpipe emissions, which account for a large percentage of air pollution in most urban areas.

– Cloth v. disposable diapers.

Disposable diapers are convenient, but can be costly over time and raise heath concerns over absorbent chemicals used to keep infants dry, such as sodium polyacrylate (SAP).

But cloth diaper services can be harmful to the environment because of chemicals used in laundering and carbon emissions released in pick-up and delivery. However, if laundering at home cloth diapers can be a cost-effective option.

Also efficient are all-in-one or “hybrid” diapers that usually consist of a washable cotton pant and a disposable diaper refill that can be flushed or used as wet compost. Organic disposable diapers offer an eco-friendly alternative to plastic, non-biodegradable ones left in landfills indefinitely.

Many parents use a combination of cloth and disposable diapers, depending on the circumstance and time of day.