Green News

Even before debate began on Monday on the first comprehensive climate change bill to reach the Senate floor, the White House said President George W. Bush would veto it in its current form. Bush himself slammed the bill, saying it would cost the U.S. economy $6 trillion. His estimate drew quick denials from those who support the legislation, including Sen. Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat and longtime environmentalist.

The Bush administration has consistently opposed economy-wide measures to limit climate-warming emissions of carbon dioxide. The United States is alone among major developed countries in rejecting the carbon-capping Kyoto Protocol, which sets more stringent targets than the bill headed for Senate debate.

He said the bill, known as the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act and set for its first debate in the Senate late on Monday, “would impose roughly $6 trillion of new costs on the American economy.”

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Bush would veto the bill if it arrived on his desk as currently drafted, but added, “It’s very unlikely to pass the Senate anyway.”

Bisphenol-A (BPA), a chemical used to make polycarbonate and epoxy plastics, has come under fire recently for its status as an endocrine disruptor. The chemical is commonly used as an ingredient in consumer products, particularly reusable water bottles, baby bottles, plastic dishware, tooth fillings, and canned-food liners. It also appears in building products, including translucent panels, adhesives, and coatings.

In April 2008, Canada announced a proposal to list the chemical as toxic as well as to ban polycarbonate baby bottles containing BPA, set stringent targets for minimizing leaching of BPA into infant formula from can liners, and develop alternative food packaging. On the other hand, in April NTP, the National Toxicology Program (NTP) in the U.S. found “negligible” concern about birth defects caused by exposures in pregnant women as well as reproductive damage in adults; the brief also notes that there is “minimal” concern about exposure rates in manufacturing workers.

Ninety percent of BPA exposure for the general public is through dietary sources, according to Michael Shelby, Ph.D., director of the Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction at NTP, since BPA leaches from can liners, polycarbonate bottles, and other containers into food. “At present,” Shelby said, “it doesn’t look like there are other significant sources of exposure.”

The risk may be significant at the manufacturing phase, however. According to the NTP report, exposure levels in manufacturing workers are higher than those in the general population. BPA is water soluble, so a likely source for environmental release of the chemical is wastewater from polycarbonate and epoxy manufacturing plants. The Canadian report notes that BPA has been found in surface and groundwater in the U.S. and Canada, and suggests that it is likely being released into the air as well. Although not bioaccumulative—it does not work its way up the food chain—the chemical is toxic to aquatic organisms and is considered by the Canadian government to be “highly hazardous” to the aquatic environment.

More and more countries are banning incandescent light bulbs in favor of energy-efficient compact fluorescent lamps, or CFLs. But options to recycle the mercury-laden alternatives are often scarce. Mercury, a neurological toxin, often leaches into the soil and groundwater beneath landfills, or is incinerated into the air - unless it is recycled.

A variety of European Union recycling regulations make it unlawful for EU residents to dispose of CFLs in the trash. In the United States, some states are following suit, though most localities rely on consumers to voluntarily mail the bulbs back to manufacturers for recycling. In developing countries, recycling is less available, and proper landfills often do not even exist in the event that the bulbs are discarded as trash.

To reduce hazardous waste at its source, leading CFL manufacturers have committed to reduce the mercury content of their products. Martin Goetzeler, CEO of Munich-based Osram, said his company aims to cut the mercury content of its CFLs by half in the coming years. “It should be part of any new technology that hazardous substances are regulated,” he said. “And we should use the lowest levels [of toxins].”

CFLs presently contain between 2.5 and 3 milligrams of mercury, which Osram will reduce to between 1.3 and 1.8 milligrams, Goetzeler said Wednesday during a talk organized by the Worldwatch Institute.

General Electric is investing in lower-mercury CFL technology as well. “If we can get [mercury] down to 1 milligram of mercury, that is a big breakthrough,” Lorraine Bolsinger, vice president of GE’s ecoimagination unit, told reporters last year,

Despite the mercury content, CFLs have emerged as one of the most environmentally prudent indoor-lighting options. They use one-quarter to one-fifth the electricity of incandescent bulbs, and can last about 10 times longer. Switching to CFLs is the most cost-effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to a McKinsey & Company analysis.

By saving energy, greater CFL usage also results in less coal-based power generation. This is important when considering that the roughly 2 tons of mercury contained in the 380 million CFLs sold in the United States last year was dwarfed by the 50 tons of mercury that U.S. coal plants emitted into the atmosphere.

Amazon Indians from one of the world’s last uncontacted tribes have been photographed from the air, with striking images released on Thursday showing them painted bright red and brandishing bows and arrows. The photographs of the tribe near the border between Brazil and Peru are rare evidence that such groups exist. A Brazilian official involved in the expedition said many of them are in increasing danger from illegal logging.

“What is happening in this region is a monumental crime against the natural world, the tribes, the fauna and is further testimony to the complete irrationality with which we, the ‘civilized’ ones, treat the world,” Jose Carlos Meirelles was quoted as saying in a statement by the Survival International group.

One of the pictures, which can be seen on Survival International’s Web site (http://www.survival-international.org), shows two Indian men covered in bright red pigment poised to fire arrows at the aircraft while another Indian looks on.

Another photo shows about 15 Indians near thatched huts, some of them also preparing to fire arrows at the aircraft.

“The world needs to wake up to this, and ensure that their territory is protected in accordance with international law. Otherwise, they will soon be made extinct,” said Stephen Corry, the director of Survival International, which supports tribal people around the world.

Of more than 100 uncontacted tribes worldwide, more than half live in either Brazil or Peru, Survival International says. It says all are in grave danger of being forced off their land, killed and ravaged by new diseases.

The first quarter of this year saw food prices skyrocket, with the World Bank recording a 75 percent increase in its food price index since September 2006. The challenges for policymakers, however, extend beyond the current crisis. Since early 2002, food prices have risen by 140 percent, with the effect falling disproportionately on the poor. Meanwhile, a third of food bought in the United Kingdom is thrown away. There are fundamental problems of distribution and price stability that governments and NGOs must address if we are to repair food production and avoid further crises.

Policymakers are divided on the best way to approach such problems. Many argue that only greater market freedom will lead to lower prices and a fairer distribution of food, and that the current crisis is due to unnatural distortions caused by agricultural subsidies and tariffs. Artificially higher import prices heighten the impact of any national shortages. Further, the lack of competition, with the government in many cases acting as the main purchaser of crops at a guaranteed price, gives no impetus to domestic agriculture to improve efficiency.

Advocates of food sovereignty argue that the majority of the world’s food is produced locally by small-scale farmers, many living in poverty. By focusing on improving the efficiency of these farmers through better technology, firmer institutional support, and protection from harmful dumping, food can be supplied effectively to those who need it most.

Free market measures sometimes hurt these small-scale farmers. A case in point is the experience of Peruvian farmers in the early 1990s following Peru’s shock trade liberalization program. The market became flooded with cheap foreign imports, driving smallholders out of the market. Such policies, groups like la Via Campesina argue, have contributed directly to the current food crisis.

Moreover, the development of effective institutions for managing agriculture has been deeply asymmetrical, with producers in the developed world possessing massive economies of scale that continue to hinder institutional development in poor nations. Structural problems, such as the lack of effective land reform in Zimbabwe, are a barrier to all forms of innovative food policy. Policies aimed at combating such underlying issues, including the reduction of corruption and measures for a more equitable distribution of resources, are clear prerequisites for any significant change in the current food economy.

By now, you’ve all heard of the Carbon Footprint — the measure of the impact human activities have on the environment in terms of the amount of greenhouse gases produced, measured in units of carbon dioxide. Today, KGG sheds light on the other foot; Your Water Footprint.

The Water footprint of an individual is defined as the total water used for the production of the goods and services consumed by the individual. It can be estimated by multiplying all goods and services consumed by their respective virtual-water content.

The water footprint of a nation shows the total volume of water that is used to produce the goods and services consumed by the inhabitants of the nation. The water footprint consists of two parts: Use of domestic water resources and use of water outside the borders of the country. The water footprint includes water withdrawn from surface and groundwater and the use of soil water (in agricultural production).

A Few Facts

Ӣ The production of 1 kilogram of beef requires 16,000 liters of water.

Ӣ To produce 1 cup of coffee we need 140 liters of water.

Ӣ The water footprint of China is about 700 cubic meter per year per capita. Only 7% of the Chinese water footprint falls outside China.

Ӣ The USA water footprint is 2500 cubic meter per year per capita.

Coffee Case Study

Background — Coffee is, in dollar terms, the most important agricultural product traded in the world. Producing coffee requires a lot of water.

Objective — A case study performed by A.Y. Hoekstra and A.K. Chapagain was conducted to calculate the volumes of water required to drink coffee and tea in the Netherlands.
Results — “We found that for drinking one standard cup of coffee in the Netherlands we need about 140 litres of water, by far the largest part for growing the coffee plant. A standard cup of coffee is 125 ml, which means that we need more than 1100 drops of water for producing one drop of coffee. Total coffee consumption in the Netherlands requires a total of 2.6 billion cubic metres of water per year, which is equal to 36% of the annual Meuse flow. The Dutch people account for 2.4% of the world coffee consumption. All together, the world population requires about 110 billion cubic metres of water per year in order to be able to drink coffee. This is equivalent to 15 times the annual Meuse runoff, or 1.5 times the annual Rhine runoff.”

What’s Your Water Footprint?

If you’re interested in finding out your individual water footprint, please use the extended calculator provided by WaterFootpring.org

Flight delays could cost U.S. airlines more than $2 billion in wasted jet fuel this year, according to a congressional report released on Thursday.

The Joint Economic Committee study estimated that flight delays and congestion, especially in the New York region, are squeezing airlines at a time when the industry’s financial condition is deteriorating rapidly due mainly to the unchecked cost of fuel.

“The airline industry is drowning in red ink,” said U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, who introduced the report that more broadly found flight delays severely impact the economy.

Commercial aircraft burned an estimated 740 million gallons of excess jet fuel because of record flight delays in 2007, costing them $1.6 billion. The calculation assumes an average wholesale price of $2.15 per gallon.

Bad weather and airline overscheduling is blamed for most delays. But Schumer and the industry say the aging air traffic control system managed by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the central problem.

Airlines are straining financially under jet fuel prices — now approaching $3 per gallon — that have tripled this decade and currently represent roughly half of operating costs.

A handful of small carriers have ceased operations in recent months, unable to attain financing to restructure in bankruptcy.

Although big airlines have adequate cash for the moment, Wall Street analysts say liquidity is threatened by unabated and sharp increases in fuel, and new bankruptcies are possible if capacity is not cut sharply.

“No one is exempt from the threat,” James May, the industry’s top lobbyist as chief executive of the Air Transport Association, told Reuters in an interview this week.

Schumer said the best thing for the airlines is for oil producers to boost output to lower prices. May agrees and said the Bush administration should release some U.S. oil reserves to ease price pressures.

Moolyankan Diversified Fund (MDF) in association with Corporate Wisdom recently organized an interactive session with Mr. M.R. Venkatesh. Moolyankan, which has recently received many accolades from corporate, is a stock market investing fund house, managed by students of DoMS, IIT Madras. Mr. Venkatesh is a Chennai based Chartered Accountant who addresses the business concerns relating to International trade and business strategies. He is also an accomplished writer and columnist with the Hindu Business Line, Industrial Economist and Rediff. Mr. Venkatesh has authored many books including “A handbook on anti-dumping” and “Global Imbalances and the Impending Dollar Crisis”.

Starting the session, Mr. Venkatesh pointed towards the debate which has been in talk for quite some time. The debate pertains to idea, that fundamental assumptions that have governed the world economy so far, were true of not. The issue before us is so profound that it is impossible to believe that we will have a safe landing. Talking about Global Imbalances, Mr. Venkatesh said, www meant world without walls and with it world looked seamlessly integrated. But then in 1997 Southeast Asian Crisis struck, which was popularized as Southeast Asian currency crisis. But that actually was a political crisis that manifested itself into a currency crisis. Investment from various parts of the world flew to Southeast Asian Nations, whose currency was pegged at a fixed level. But as soon as a few billion dollars were removed, the exchange rates collapsed. Every currency in Southeast started devaluing and moreover, every Nation entered into a competitive devaluation mode to keep its exports going. The result of all this was only one beneficiary, the importer (US in this case).

Indian finance ministers started aligning the monetary and fiscal policies with the global standards and exports were given a boost. But these exports brought US dollars that led to currently accumulated Forex reserves. But our policy makers did not know how to utilize this fund. As a result of which the reserve found its way back again to US in the form of investment in US treasury bills which give paltry return of 2-2.5%. This whole activity was known as Global Flow of Funds. The current dollar crisis first became evident in 2006 when Fed refused to give M3 figures of dollar. Now people are selling dollars buying everything else mainly commodities like Gold, Silver, Tin etc. That is the reason behind strong Gold prices in spite of falling dollars. With outsourcing, even the job of defending the dollar has been outsourced to countries like India and China because these are the countries sitting on huge piles of Forex reserves and a weak dollar could cause substantial harm. India has close to $300 billion Forex reserves and we still want more.

US’s huge deficit, which is close to India’s GDP, is funded by India and China. Americans cannot stop consuming and reason behind this is the ever weakening institution called family in the US society. While on the other hand in India, where family is a very strong institution, we save close to 35% of our GDP. The irony is America has the option of getting the money for its consumption from countries like India and China because we save more then we consume but we do not have other option to park our money. All this is leading to Global imbalances. Mr. Venkatesh said that third world war will not be fought on a battle field but by the click of the mouse in financial markets.

Recently the China has realized the implications of global flow of funds. So in order to keep the Forex in the country, they started increasing the consumption. But this has not been very successful so far. While India, on the other hand, is a consuming Nation by Chinese standard and a saving Nation by the US standard. In India we attach a social stigma to the debt and farmers commit suicides for failing to repay their debt while US seems to be enjoying and flourishing on debt money.
India is a balanced society and that is what going to keep us safe from the turmoil in world markets but that doesn’t mean decoupling theory is correct because if it is then globalization never happened.

Here is a presentation video by Mr.M.R. Venkatesh on Dollar crisis with all the truths and myths on US economy and Asian economy.

Organizations and scientists  from around the world spoke  about their opposition to genetically engineered trees which will be negotiated at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity’s Ninth Conference of the Parties (CBD COP-9).
They are demanding that governments at the UN agree to accept the proposal to suspend all releases of genetically engineered (GE) trees into the environment, due to their extreme ecological and social threats.

“Genetically Engineered trees threaten to contaminate native forests around the world with unnatural and destructive traits such as the ability to kill insects, or have reduced lignin–the substance that enables a tree to stand up straight and withstand disease,” stated Anne Petermann, Co-Director of Global Justice Ecology Project (the North American Focal Point for Global Forest Coalition) and Co-Coordinator of the STOP GE Trees Campaign.

“The CBD should take measures to stop the expansion of large-scale monoculture plantations, and ban both transgenic trees and ‘terminator’ technology. This is the request supported by many organizations around the world as stated in our ‘Open letter to the COP’, ” said Ana Filippini, of the World Rainforest Movement, one of the organizations promoting this initiative.  WRM is the Southern Hub of the STOP GE Trees Campaign.

The STOP GE Trees Campaign will be holding a side event on the Social and Ecological Impacts of GE Trees at the CBD COP-9 on Tuesday, 20 May from 18:15 to 19:45 in the Salon Haydn of the Maritim Hotel,Bonn, Germany .

To view the complete list of organizations involved in the STOP GE Trees Campaign, go to:

http://www.globaljusticeecology.org/stopgetrees_partners.php

Sustainable, eco-friendly materials are the only way to go — they’re better for you, as well as the planet. According to GreenBuilding.com, “the US EPA ranks indoor pollution among top five environmental risks, and unhealthy air is found in up to 30% of new and renovated buildings.”

Marmoleum, a very cool biodegradable product, is produced from natural linoleum (from a flax plant’s linseed oil, mixed with pine rosins) on HDF with a cork/jute layer and comes in approximate sizes of 12”³ x 36”³ panels and 12”³ x 12”³squares. It’s easy to install (no glue required), hygienic (has antimicrobial properties), prevents dust mites, and provides warmth; ideal for kitchen, rec-room and powder room.

Other green choices for living, dining, bedroom, kitchen and just about any room, are floors made from reclaimed wood, or bamboo, cork and other renewable resources (ecotimber.com) or (pioneermillworks.com).

If you prefer to lay down some carpet, check out Bio-floor, a line of completely biodegradable, 100% undyed and untreated beautiful hemp or wool carpets @ earthweave.com. Your lungs will thank you for avoiding benzene and toluene, two VOCs (volatile organic compounds) commonly found in adhesives. Be sure the padding is made of wool or recycled materials that are adhesive-free.

Or consider Interface FLOR for carpet squares that are made from recycled materials and easy to install.

Area rugs may provide the best of both worlds — providing a cushy feeling underfoot and a surround of sustainable flooring.

Related Resources: When It’s Greener to Build

US Green Building Council

carpet-rug.org

American Lung Association Health House Program (tips sheet)