Tim Jackson | Prosperity Without Growth - Politics Without Creativity Is Not Political | The European Magazine

Tim Jackson | Prosperity Without Growth - Politics Without Creativity Is Not Political | The European Magazine

Round Up of Environmental News for May 17, 2011

Solar farm near Climax losing money because of property taxes

Producing 225,592 kilowatt hours of electricity in its first year of operation, a solar farm in eastern Kalamazoo Coun­ty that went online in early 2010 has exceeded expectations.

Also exceeding expecta­tions is the property tax, said Sam Field, a Kalamazoo attor­ney and one of the owners of Kalamazoo Solar.

The $27,689 tax bill for the Charleston Township prop­erty means that the owners are losing money, even when being paid a premium price of 45 cents a kilowatt hour by Consumers Energy, he said.

Green as a Status Symbol: Why Increased Prices May Increase Sales

The significantly higher price of green products inhibits my, and other consumers, ability to purchase them, but more importantly it creates a divide between consumers that are able to purchase green goods and those that are not. The sentiments associated with this divide are often carried over into the sustainability movement as a whole giving it an exclusionary, or even elitist, vibe. It seems the simple answer would be to find a way to make green products cheaper.

Yellowstone bison get more room to roam

Two extra-wide, ankle-busting, road-blocking cattle-guards; 900 feet of jackleg fencing tied into rock outcroppings and other natural obstacles; a handful of heavy-duty gates: All to ensure that Yellowstone's renowned wild bison can roam more freely than they have in years. Starting in full next winter, the animals will be permitted on 75,000 acres surrounding Gardiner, Mont., between the national park's northern boundary and the brand-new barriers, until May 1. When Yellowstone is buried in snow, bison tend to leave for lower ground in search of food. And for decades, each winter they've been rounded up for slaughter, shot, and, more recently, hazed back into the park with horsemen, vehicles, even helicopters. That's because around half the park's bison test positive for exposure to abortion-inducing brucellosis, which many ranchers fear could spread to cattle in surrounding areas. The Interagency Bison Management Plan, adopted in 2000 by the National.

The rest of this story is behind a pay wall.  I'll probably stop linking to these folks.  But I'm in a hurry this morning and don't have time to find more about the story from another news site.

UK sets new legally binding emissions target

The United Kingdom, the first to enshrine reductions in climate change causing emissions into law, today announced a 2025 target of a 50 per cent emissions cut from 1990 levels.

The target, enshrined in the 4th Carbon Budget for the period 2023-2027, was the minimum level recommended by the independent Committee on Climate Change. 

I'm happy that folks are finally getting on the bandwagon to care about the Earth.  I'm sad that folks are still deluded into believing that reducing carbon emissions will have sort of real impact on climate change . . . which keeps us from taking steps to ensure we adapt quickly enough to protect most humans from the negative impacts to human lifestyles from climate change.

Maine Town Passes Local Food and Community Self-Governance Ordinance, Becomes First in US to Declare Food Sovereignty

The town of Sedgwick, Maine, population 1,012 (according to the 2000 census), has become the first town in the United States to pass a Food Sovereignty ordinance.  In doing so, the town declared their right to produce and sell local foods of their choosing, without the oversight of State or federal regulation. 

What does this mean?  In the debate over raw milk, for example, the law opens the gate for consumer and producer to enter a purchasing agreement without interference from state or federal health regulators.    Read more . . .

The Nichols Solar Concentrating PV Farm

A solar farm using concentrating solar photovoltaic technology, which combines mirrors and solar PV cells, was recently completed in Hanford, Calif. at the Nichols Farms. It’s a 1 MW solar project, using technology from SolFocus, and built by Bechtel and developer Sol Orchard. 

Read more . . .

Now, they need to plant red clover under the collectors and install beehives.  Not only will they be able to collect honey, the bees will pollinate the surrounding fields when the various fruits and veggies are blooming. 

Investments worth trillions at risk from climate change: study

Climate change could put trillions of investment dollars at risk over the next 20 years, a global study released on Wednesday said, calling for pension funds and other investors to overhaul how they allocate funds.

Risks from more extreme weather, continued delay in climate policy by governments and uncertainty over the shape of a new global climate pact were major concerns, while renewable energy, agriculture and infrastructure could be opportunities.

The study, led by global investment consultancy Mercer, describes climate change as systemic risk because it challenges the conventional allocation of assets and requires new ways of assessing climate policy and change risks.

Read more . . .

EU ministers to ban wasteful practice of discarding fish at sea

Reform is expected for the fishing quotas system which requires fishermen to throw away large amounts of their catch

Ministers from across the EU will take the first steps today towards ending the practice of discarding fish at sea, in the most radical change to fisheries policy in 40 years.

At the first high level meeting on the subject, the EU fisheries commissioner, Maria Damanaki, is expected to drive home her message that the current system of fishing quotas must be reformed to spare fishermen the need to throw away large amounts of their catch.

Read more . . .

Coastal flooding expected when king tides and rain storms collide this week

The highest tides of the season will arrive in California this week in tandem with forecast rain, a powerful combination that could lead to coastal flooding.


The so-called king tides occur twice a year when the gravitational forces of the sun, Earth and a full moon align. The ocean is expected to surge starting Wednesday and peak at its highest level Thursday morning.

If the waves meet ocean-bound runoff from the expected rains, there could be flooding.


Read more . . .

WWF calls for 'scaling up' of beef production to combat deforestation in Brazil

In an interview with the Ecologist, WWF Brazil CEO Denise Hamu says increasing productivity can help combat deforestation in the Amazon

More intensive beef production can limit deforestation in Brazil where the space used to rear cattle is ten times what you see in other countries, according to WWF Brazil CEO Denise Hamu.

The majority of deforestation in the Amazon is being driven by the spread of cattle ranches with one report estimating that 40 per cent of Brazil's cattle are currently kept within the confines of the Amazon, where illegally occupied forest land is available cheaply. In total, cattle occupy around 80 per cent of land already in legal use in the Amazon.

Read more . . .

Flying less is more, say businesses

New research published today by WWF suggests that, following the recession, businesses are making a permanent commitment to fly less.

Nearly half of UK businesses said that they had cut business flights over the past two years and, of these, 85% said they don’t intend to return to ‘business as usual’ flying. Together, these findings suggest that future business flying will not return to pre-recessionary levels.

The report, Moving on: why flying less means more for business, found that nearly all companies who have reduced their flying say it’s possible to stay profitable and competitive while flying less.

Read more . . .

Veteran meteorologist: How a warmer Arctic disrupts global weather

As part of a post on the WWF US Climate Blog, meteorologist Dave Eichorn from the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry has explained in a video report how arctic warming is disrupting weather patterns to the south, especially in winter.

Read more . . .

Yep.  Things are changing.  This is probably going to inconvenience a fair number of people . . .to the point of death in some cases, if we refuse to adapt.  But I continue to maintain that we need to stop seeing this as something catastrophic and stoppable.  Climate change is normal.  It really is.  It's been going on for billions of years . . .or we would STILL be one giant swamp full of primitive lifeforms.  Climate is a driver of evolution.  Climate is a cycle that we have had to adapt to for the entire million or so years of being human . . or humanish.

During past shifts, we merely migrated.  North when it go too hot, south when it go to cold.  And that is our problem now, migration is not really an option when there are nearly 7 billion of us and most of the good land is taken.  So this time, we need to hunker down.  But this isn't hard.  We are in the position to evaluate the evidence, find suitable locations away from the most extreme weather (as we are no longer tied to the shores for easy transportation and access to water).  We can build dense metropolises which can house millions and millions of people.  These cities can be green, sustainable and self contained.

And we can stop breeding.  Seriously.  Why is more of our funding not focused on allowing folks to choose when they procreate?  According to one source, 49% of all pregnancies are unplanned, mostly among the poor and uneducated.  And 82% of all teenage pregnancies are unplanned.  We could halve our population growth by just finding a dependable, easy to use birth control and making it freely available.  (For the US that would mean a declining population, in other countries it would just rein in their out of control growth.)

There are many other things we can do to prepare.  But the one thing we can't do is stop it.  Even if magically we could make the carbon offset scam work, the climate would continue to change.  We have millions of years of fossil records that assure us of that.  We have our very existence to assure us that climate change happens, since it was climate change that ended the reign of the dominant lifeforms 65 million years ago, giving rise to mammals and, ultimately, to humans.

So we have two choices: adapt or die

Your Global Warming Scare for Today

Global warming may reroute evolution

(PhysOrg.com) -- Rising carbon dioxide levels associated with global warming may affect interactions between plants and the insects that eat them, altering the course of plant evolution, research at the University of Michigan suggests.

The research focused on the effects of elevated carbon dioxide on common milkweed, Asclepias syriaca. Milkweed is one of many plants that produce toxic or bitter chemical compounds to protect themselves from being eaten by insects. These chemical defenses are the result of a long history of interactions between the plants and insects such as monarch caterpillars that feed on them.

Read more . . .
Here's what I commented on my Facebook.

1. I tried to find exactly how the research was conducted, because it's implied that they just followed normal plants. Could not find what the experiments actually were. In all likelihood they raised these plants in elevated CO2 environments . . .HIGHLY elevated ones. Remember the cancer scare of the 1960s and 1970s with saccharine . . . where it got banned for a couple of decades because it caused cancer in rats. Of course, to get the same results you would have to drink a bathtub full of soda flavored with it EVERY DAY for YEARS. Same deal. The chances our CO2 levels will ever reach that high are practically non-existent as the Earth is a self correcting system and they can't even tell you were all the CO2 goes now, how can we trust ANYTHING these shills for faux green corporations say? We are running out of fossils fuels. Chances don't see very high to me that we will reach the tipping point MERELY because of human activity.
2. The CO2 levels on the earth today are FAR . . really really far . . .from as high as they have ever been. Here's a chart. That means that most current species have had to adapt to lower CO2 levels and have the mechanisms in place to adapt easily. Could the things that eat them have to adapt. Well, DUH . . but any of those things ALSO had to endure previous climate changes.
3. Change happens. Why are modern humans obsessed with halting evolution? Why do they act like the very thing responsible for our existence is bad? Evolution is good. Change is good. We just adapt. Learn new strategies. We could be using this opportunity to test various ways of creating self sufficient communities. Or finding out how human communities are best facilitated in being flexible and supportive of humans. Instead we run around screaming that the sky is falling.

The bottom line here is that governments and corporations don't want real change to our lifestyles. That's bad for the bottom line. They want us to buy more, to create an ever expanding market. Which is why they don't tell you that the BEST thing we could do to lower our impact on the planet is stop breeding. We could stand to reduce our population by about 50% or more. But that means less consumers. Fewer tax payers. Not as many grunts to do the work and support the lifestyles of the rich and wasteful.

I suppose the good news, for the Earth, is that when the combination of human influence and naturally occurring climate change reaches the extremes it has in the past, a lot of humans are going to die. It will be brown people . . .and I continue to believe that those in power understand that and are good with that. As long as rich people (of all colors, rich brown people are no better than the whites assholes in charge) live, who cares about the poor of color?

So . . Which is it going to be?

Here's a 2006 report that echoed the common terrorist threats of AGW cultists in the first part of the first decade of the 21st Century:

Global warming to cause massive drought over next 100 years, say climatologists

Global warming is predicted to be the cause of a massive drought that will threaten the lives of millions and take over half the land surface on our planet in the next 100 years, according to Britain's leading climatologists.


Extreme drought, which makes modern agriculture virtually impossible, is seen by a new study from the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research as possibly affecting about one-third of the planet in the next century. These predictions may actually be an underestimation, said the climate scientists who released the results of the study.

Now, in the first part of the second decade of the 21st Century, they are singing a different tune:

Heavy Rains Linked to Humans


An increase in heavy precipitation that has afflicted many countries is at least partly a consequence of human influence on the atmosphere, climate scientists reported in a new study.
Related


In the first major paper of its kind, the researchers used elaborate computer programs that simulate the climate to analyze whether the rise in severe rainstorms, heavy snowfalls and similar events could be explained by natural variability in the atmosphere. They found that it could not, and that the increase made sense only when the computers factored in the effects of greenhouse gases released by human activities like the burning of fossil fuels.


So which is it?  Are we going to starve to death because there's no rain to grow crops or are we going to drown?  And notice, there's no indication the fearmongers even CARE that we have the power to protect ourselves.  No evidence they understand that there are technologies that could be used to secure our food supply locally and in any eventuality.  No, only the fear . . .only the "omg the world is coming to an end and it's all people's fault . . . only "we have to stop climate change". 


Here's a bulletin, morons.  The climate has changed before, and we adapted as a species.  We are fully capable of adapting again.  So stop trying to sell bogus carbon offsets and faux green goods and start working toward protecting humanity.  Stupid git.

Obama Wants More Nuclear Power. Does that Make Sense?

Clean energy advocates may have noticed that President Obama didn't just tout solar and wind in this week's State of the Union address; he also encouraged the construction of new natural gas, clean coal, and nuclear power sites. Natural gas and clean coal aren't all that clean (that's for another column), but nuclear may be a decent option. Should we be paying more attention to it?


Read more . . .

New Storage Technology: A 100 Million Ton Stone

EscoVale Consultancy Services has come up with a new technology that Archimedes, Barney Rubble or your average Druid engineer would recognize.

The company, based in England, is proposing a sort of upside-down version of pumped hydro storage using a 100 million ton rock. In classic pumped hydro storage, water from an upper reservoir is released to fall into a lower reservoir. On the way down, it flows through a turbine and creates energy.

Read more . . .

My Kingdom for a Moment of Silence

I’m currently reading a non-fiction book titled One Square Inch of Silence, and it’s about how an auditory ecologist (if you can imagine this) who chose one little inch in a national park to protect from sound pollution, why he did this, and what happens next.  This has made me hyper-alert to noise–lawn mowers, traffic, planes overhead, that music blaring from the teen’s car across the street, and the piercing of my quiet moments by the sound of the seemingly-endlessly-repeated question, “Mom?”  If the author of that book can protect his little inch in the world, perhaps I can find a little silence here at home as well.  All roads seem to lead to insulation, don’t they?  But how about a vertical garden to bring “insulation, noise control, and a little urban reminder of the world outside” (as it says on this blog, about the Musee du Quai Branly in Paris, which is pictured).  It’s like a little taste of that national park (and Europe) right on my home. Wouldn’t this be something?

Read more . . .

Environmental News

Humber Gateway wind farm gets government approval

Plans for one of the UK's largest offshore wind farms off the Yorkshire coast have been given the go-ahead by the government.

Energy group E.ON has been granted planning approval for 77 wind turbines five miles (8km) off Spurn Point.

The Humber Gateway wind farm will generate enough electricity to power 150,000 homes a year.

Read more . . .

Jatropha: Green Biodiesel from African Tree

Jatropha has been championed as a major environmental opportunity for developing countries with a semi-arid climate and marginal soil. Scientist Karl Hilding Thunes of the Norwegian Forest and Landscape Institute has been investigating whether this small, hardy and relatively pest-free tree lives up to its billing.

Read more . . .

(I still think we need to use less fuel of every kind, design our cities to allow us to drive less and grow as much of our food locally as possible . . .but that's really not going to happen, is it?)

 2 of the Worst Republican Ideas for the Environment

The latest idea eruption from Newt Gingrich is to can the Environmental Protection Agency and replace it with something called an Environmental Solutions Agency. 

Read more . . .


New melt record for Greenland ice sheet

New York: New research shows that 2010 set new records for the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet, expected to be a major contributor to projected sea level rises in coming decades.

"This past melt season was exceptional, with melting in some areas stretching up to 50 days longer than average,” said Dr. Marco Tedesco, Director of the Cryosphere Processes Laboratory at the City College of New York (CCNY – CUNY), who is leading a project studying variables that affect ice sheet melting.

Read more . . .

Earth Hour 2011: The Big Switch Off

Millions switched off their lights for an hour in 2010 but, this year, the WFF is hoping even more will do their bit for the planet

On the 26th March at 8.30 pm, douse your lights and unplug the TV for Earth Hour, 2011. It’s only one hour but you’ll be joining millions around the world and taking a stand against climate change. The WWF hopes that this year’s event will send a clear message to world leaders: climate change is real, it is happening and we have to do something about it.

Read more . . . 

Are We Already Experiencing the Effects of Overpopulation?

They didn't call Thomas Malthus the "gloomy prophet" for nothing: his visions presaged an overpopulated world wracked with the resulting problems of famine and privation. His theories later fell out of favor, but with some reports tagging the unrest in Tunisia and Egypt to a spike in global food prices, it's worth wondering whether the globe is already experiencing some of the early affects of overpopulation. An article by John Yemma in the Christian Science Monitor points this out, and raises some relevant questions. By 2050, for example, the world population will hit 9.2 billion, according to the U.S. census bureau. "Because of declining birthrates, population specialists believe that will be the peak." But "can the planet carry another 2.3 billion people, the equivalent of another India and China?" And "where will the food come from? Agricultural specialists say that Africa....may be the next breadbasket."

Read more . . .