Australian farmers have teamed up with environmentalists to create the Agricultural Alliance on Climate Change, a group that wants to cut emissions up to 60 percent by 2050.

Although they may not agree on all environmental issues, climate change is problem that they know requires immediate action and can be slowed. Farming groups like the South Australian Farmers Federation and Agforce are on the front lines of having to adapt quickly to a changing climate and risking their livelihood in the process. Some farmers also feel that they haven’t received the recognition they deserve for fighting global warming. The Alliance acknowledged as much in a statement:

Australia is tracking close to its Kyoto target due largely to the efforts of Australian farmers reducing emissions, particularly from practices such as minimum tillage and ceasing broad-scale land-clearing, while emissions from most other sectors have continued to increase.

The group seems to be rather light on specific policy initiatives or technology recommendations, while their ultimate aims include creating “effective and sustainable economic drives” from harvesting renewable energy, providing social and physical infrastructure and services to rural Australia, and providing information and tools to rural Australians to help them prepare for some of the unavoidable impacts of climate change.

Here in the U.S., farmers have joined with clean energy organizations and traditional environmentalists to push a common agenda as well. While they may not agree when it comes to party politics, issues like clean, efficient, and homegrown energy have clearly crossed party lines in many areas.

Organizations like the 25x’25 initiative were started by farmers with a vision of 25 percent renewable energy by 2025, and farmers unions are working at all levels of government to push for policies that support local, renewable power. Wind energy and biofuels are common grounds for collaboration, as so much farm land is also in some of the most wind-rich areas of the country, and as the potential for biofuels that go (and grow) beyond corn continue to hold great promise as a clean, reliable source of fuel.

Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Australian Conservation Foundation

Prince Charles has cut his global warming emissions by 9 percent in the past year, according to an annual review (printed on recycled paper with vegetable-based ink) of the prince’s accounts. Charles has been carbon neutral since 2005.

More trains trips, less plane trips, and a Jaguar and Land Rover that run on cooking oil have sliced his footprint. He also farms organically, and gets electricity from renewable sources at his Highgrove estate.

Charles and his wife, Camilla, have promised to cut emissions even further. Future plans include converting the royal train to biodiesel fuel (Europe’s first biodiesel-powered passenger train – Virgin Trains – left the station earlier this month, a project of Virgin’s Sir Richard Branson).

Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the Earth, praised the prince’s leadership:

"The fact that he reduced his carbon emissions by 9 percent in the last year alone highlights the potential for making rapid cuts in the nation's contribution to climate change.”

Others are more critical. Charles took heat a few months ago when he flew to New York to receive an environmental award. The prince’s principal private secretary, Sir Michael Peat, explained that Charles uses carbon offsets like funding tree planting or renewable energy projects to balance out the travel. “We’re doing it the best way we can at the moment,” he noted.

CNN

Late last week in a vote of 65-27, the Senate passed an energy bill that made progress in some areas but was stripped down in others.

The crown jewel was certainly a near-40 percent increase in fuel efficiency requirements for vehicles by 2020. For the first time, SUVs, vans, and small trucks fall under the same regulations as passenger cars. Each vehicle group must achieve a 10 miles per gallon (mpg) increase in fuel efficiency by the target year, with an overall average requirement for the manufacturer’s fleet increasing from 27.5 mpg to 35 mpg. The current requirement has not changed in nearly 20 years.

Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) fought the standards and wanted to instead pass a more auto industry-friendly fuel requirement. But he admitted that one reason for his effort’s failure was the growing concern over global warming. From the Associated Press:

“‘The public wants action, rightfully so, on global warming,’ Levin said in an interview. And he added, the auto industry is ‘a juicy target.’”

Although an improvement in fuel efficiency is a long-overdue step forward, some perspective is required. Watthead over at Cleanergy.org points out the 35 mpg standards by 2020 is about where China and Japan are today, where the European Union was five years ago, and where states that adopt California’s tailpipe standards will be in five years.

Other achievements in the energy bill include:

• A 36 billion gallon by 2022 renewable fuels standard, including the specification that at least 60 percent of the requirement must be met by “next generation” biofuels like cellulosic ethanol. Cellulosic ethanol is not made from corn but rather other plant materials like switchgrass.

• New appliance and lighting efficiency standards, as well as a requirement that the federal government accelerate the use of more efficient lighting in public buildings.

• The development of an action plan (but not a requirement) to cut oil consumption by 2.5 million barrels per day by 2017. That’s roughly the same as the total current imports of oil from the Middle East. The Office of Management and Budget is responsible for the plan.

Here’s what didn’t make it in the energy bill:

• No support for coal-to-liquids synthetic fuel production and no support for expanded coal, nuclear, or oil use. So although some key pieces of progressive clean energy legislation were left out, at least we’re (so far) not expanding more of our dependence on dirty fossil fuels.

• No package that would have extended production tax credits and other financial incentives and offsets for renewable energy. The $32 billion package, previously approved 15-5 by the Senate Finance Committee, also included a repeal of tax credits for major gas and oil companies' domestic manufacturing activities.

• No national renewable energy standard that would have required 15 percent of our energy to come from clean, renewable sources by 2020.

The Senate energy bill now awaits action in the House. The House Ways and Means Committee passed a tax provision last week that includes support for wind and biodiesel. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Representative Edward Mackey (D-MA) have both agreed that gasoline use must be more efficient and plan to work to ensure that the House’s action mirrors the Senate’s.

Associated Press, via CIO Today
BioCycle
Cleanergy.org
Sioux Falls Argus Leader

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is the true-life chronicle of author Barbara Kingsolver’s decision to move to an Appalachian farm and eat locally produced, organic goods for one year. She explains that her highest shopping goal was to “get our food from so close to home that we’d know the person who grew it.” Her husband and two daughters joined her on this journey.

The family raised an astonishing array of vegetables, fruit, meat, and eggs. They did buy supplies like flour, coffee, and olive oil from the grocery store, but they were able to grow the vast majority of their food at home or buy from locals. Besides Kingsolver’s accounts of the ups and downs of pulling weeds or dodging testosterone-crazy roosters, husband Steven L. Hopp provides fascinating food facts sprinkled throughout the book. He explains that if we all ate just one meal each week made of locally raised organic meat and produce, we could reduce our country’s oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil per week. Kingsolver’s nineteen-year-old daughter Camille offers sidebars of meal plans and recipes (my looming zucchinis thank her for the zucchini chocolate chip cookie recipe).

Steven and Camille’s practical commentary provide a good balance to the author’s more subjective arguments for eating seasonally. For example, Kingsolver implies that the reader will have a greater appreciation for food if they can’t eat apples in January, or that hours spent in the kitchen canning vegetables with the family is a happy time that brings you closer. It sounds great to me, but other readers may be swayed less by a touch-feely argument, and more convinced by the scientific health arguments for organic foods and the greater energy independence local foods bring (a typical meal travels 1500 miles to a dinner table). At times, I did get a bit tired of seeing Kingsolver’s world though the rosiest of glasses. Everything appears to be perfect, lush, beautiful, the most delicious, faster, stronger, healthier. I don’t doubt the superior taste and nutrition of locally grown, organic products, but I was waiting for another side to the story – some sort of significant downside or obstacle they had to overcome. The author admits this herself when she recounts telling a friend about a tranquil summer evening spent with Amish friends on a farm. The friend remarks, “What, not even a mosquito to bother heaven?” But perhaps Kingsolver’s point is that it is easier than we think to eat locally. In spite of the endless positive spin, her humor and thorough research were inspiring enough to get me to contemplate making my own mozzarella.

A thought-provoking surprise was Kingsolver’s adamant argument for eating meat – specifically locally bred, organic meat. She aligns herself with a vegetarian position, she says, except that she eats meat. She points out that “every sack of flour and every soybean-based block of tofu came from a field where countless winged and furry lives were extinguished in the plowing, cultivating, and harvest…To believe that we can live without taking life is delusional.” She goes on to explain that the oft-repeated argument that it takes ten times as much land to make a pound of meat as a pound of grain only applies to the kind of land where rain falls abundantly on rich topsoil. Cultures that live on less productive land like the Navajo, Mongols, Lapps, and Masai would starve without their animals. The argument for eating locally produced organic meat is perhaps a more realistic option for individuals who care about where their food comes from and its environmental and energy consequences, but who aren’t going to stop eating chicken or burgers tomorrow.

In the end, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle has a little bit for everyone. For those ready to set the loftiest goals, take the Kingsolver challenge of canning all fall and making meals from home seven days a week. For someone like me who has a love of food, gardening, and cooking, but who isn’t prepared to give up Cheerios (are they local if General Mills is located 20 miles from my house?), I walked away with a renewed dedication to my farmers’ market, an intensive search for local foods at my grocery store, and the knowledge that buying food that grew up continents away is as much of an energy decision as leaving the lights on.

Erik Blachford is the new CEO of TerraPass, a carbon offset company. When a consumer buys a carbon offset to offset the emissions from their driving, a trip, or even a wedding, TerraPass uses that money to fund renewable energy products.

Erik has never been a full-time environmentalist, although he is member of a few national organizations. In a former life he was the CEO of Expedia, although he left the company before its partnership with TerraPass was established. Erik is excited about the new venture, explaining on a recent blog post,

“Back in Internet pre-history, at the dawn of online travel, nobody knew you could even check airline ticket prices online, much less book tickets. Now almost half of all travel is booked online. I think we’re at the beginning of another explosion in consumer awareness, this time in the voluntary carbon markets.”

I spoke with Erik by phone on May 25th.

Green Options: How do you respond to carbon offset skeptics? For example, the argument that offsets are just an easy way for people to pay off their pollution without much sacrifice.

Erik Blachford: I hear that argument a lot, but it’s not accurate as to what TerraPass does. People who buy carbon offsets aren’t just sitting back afterwards and thinking they’ve done their duty. These people are active in other ways, too: they’re very in tuned to the problem and the other solutions. Furthermore, carbon offsets are a voluntary enterprise; no one is forcing someone to buy carbon offsets.

However, there is also a lot of talk about common umbrella standards for carbon offsets, and I think TerraPass and our customers would be better served with them. Our industry needs consumer protection standards. Right now it’s unregulated, and the consumer has to be very cautious. Consumers are taking the initiative and doing the research on which carbon offset programs are legitimate, but they shouldn’t be expected to do all of the work.

GO: What makes TerraPass different from other carbon offset companies?

EB: Terra Pass focuses on helping the individual consumer reduce emissions, rather than only large corporations. We want to help individuals take action to reduce their carbon footprint. We’re also very accessible. The company has a blog where we can communicate with customers and get their feedback and ideas.

GO: You support a number of different renewable energy and efficiency projects. Why did TerraPass get involved in biomass? You don’t see that as a carbon offset very often.

EB: It’s great to be able to work with biomass providers. Energy from biomass is produced by capturing methane from sources like cow manure and burning it. We’ve set up contracts with them, buy credits and register them on the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX). We are very careful to ensure that our carbon offsets are not counted twice.

GO: I don’t see tree planting – a very popular offset – as a TerraPass option. Why not?

EB: Trees plantings are popular offsets because they’re intuitively appealing. But the science doesn’t hold up enough for us to sell them. Some science is based on the average age of a tree being 80-100 years, but that’s just not always the case. And when the tree dies and rots, that carbon dioxide goes back into the atmosphere. There are some carbon offset programs that focus on the conservation of forests rather than tree planting, and that’s an interesting avenue that TerraPass may explore in the future.

GO: What percentage of carbon offset costs goes to the projects?

EB: We don’t break that out, because we don’t think offsets are commodity products, which is what that kind of breakout would imply. We are more focused on our pricing to consumers, which is competitive though not rock bottom, because it reflects the work we put into researching our projects thoroughly and sticking to principles like matched maturity of credits. We could probably sell offsets for a lower price if we we’re willing to sell credits from previous or future years, to buy blind on the CCX, or to buy forestry projects, but we have decided not to do any of those.

GO: How do you assure customers that their money is making a real difference?

EB: We make sure that the customer knows what we’re doing. We publish a verification report each year and we use three protocols to verify our credits: Green-e certifies our wind power projects, SES certifies our biomass, and First Environment certifies our landfill gas projects.

GO: What are some challenges and advantages of the U.S. carbon market?

EB: The U.S. didn’t sign onto the Kyoto Protocol, so one challenge is that the idea of carbon offsets is still fairly new here. There’s a general awareness of the issue, but carbon offsets still feel more exotic to people than they really are. It’s just a lack of awareness that we need to work on.

However, an advantage is that the American consumer is generally very open to new ideas and is very action-oriented. They want to take responsibility and do something, so the mindset of the consumer is right for a carbon offset market.

GO: TerraPass is well-known for its relationship with Expedia. How do you see that relationship evolving?

EB: We’ve got a great relationship with Expedia. It gets our brand out there and we look forward to continuing our relationship.

GO: I’ve got to say, it’s difficult to find the TerraPass option on Expedia’s site. It kind of gets lost in the shuffle of offers for car rentals and zoo passes.

EB: Expedia has many different lists of add-ons for their trips, so TerraPass is lumped with many other options. But we’re really happy to have the brand out there.

GO: If you could partner with any other company or entity, who would it be?

EB: That’s a really good question, but my answer is going to sound really funny. I really want to partner with the federal government. Global warming and emission reductions are a national problem. We need federal action and federal standards to solve it.

Image source: Zimbio

There’s a lot of talk about China’s staggering amount of planned coal plants, and the narrowing gap between it and the U.S. for the title of Planet’s Biggest Carbon Dioxide Emitter. But China is examining at least one unique way to develop more sustainably.

Welcome to Dongtan, the world’s first CO2-free city. Developers are building this $1.3 billion eco-city just outside of Shanghai. Renewable energy will be used extensively, the layout of the city maximizes walking and biking rather than cars, and transport vehicles will run on batteries or hydrogen fuel cells. Other plans include recycling organic waste, green roofs, and rainwater capture.

Dongtan will cover an area about three-quarters the size of Manhattan on wetlands at the mouth of the Yangtze River. However, Peter Head of Arup, the London-based firm heading the planning, said the wetlands are not at risk from the development. From the Architectural Record:

“‘First of all, water usually discharged into the river will be collected, treated, and recycled within the city boundaries,” he says. ‘There will be a 2-mile buffer zone of eco-farm between city development and the wetlands.’ While farming is water intensive, relatively small amounts of water reach the plants themselves. Head says Dongtan ‘will capture and recycle water in the city and use recycled water to grow green vegetables hydroponically. This makes the whole water cycle much more efficient.’”

But what will the habitants do in this eco-utopia? City officials and consultants expect jobs in education like at the planned Institute for Sustainable Cities, and they anticipate attracting companies pursuing clean technologies, food research and production, and health care. Dongtan is also expected to rely heavily on ecotourism.

Designers hope CO2-free city will serve as a model for the rest of the urbanized world. Its first phase includes a marina village of 20,000 habitants that will be unveiled at the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai. Nearly 80,000 people are expected to live in the city by 2020, and eventually designers hope to see 500,000 citizens living the good, green life there.

Architectural Record
Jetson Green

In a report released on Monday and on the heels of the first debate in the United Nations Security Council on the issue, 11 retired U.S. military leaders assert that climate change raises risks and tensions in the world’s most volatile areas, and the U.S. needs to start planning and cooperating with other nations to mitigate and respond to those risks. From the Associated Press:

“The report warns that in the next 30 to 40 years there will be wars over water and increased instability from hunger, worsening diseases, rising sea levels and global warming-induced refugees. ‘The chaos that results can be an incubator of civil strife, genocide and the growth of terrorism,’ the 35-page report predicts.

‘Climate change exacerbates already unstable situations,’ former U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gordon Sullivan said. ‘Everybody needs to start paying attention to what's going on. I don't think this is a particularly hard sell in the Pentagon. … We're paying attention to what those security implications are.’

Gen. Anthony Zinni, President Bush's former Middle East envoy, said in the report: ‘It's not hard to make the connection between climate change and instability, or climate change and terrorism.’”

The leaders urged the U.S. to take action now, without waiting for a total certainty on global warming’s impacts. Extreme weather like drought, flooding, rising sea levels, and shifts in habitat for plant and wildlife are some of the expected consequences. Any of these could prompt U.S. military involvement; for example, the U.S. and Europe may have to accept environmental refugees from Latin America and Africa as drought increases and food production declines. Climate change impacts could also make life more difficult in unstable locales like parts of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, perhaps driving the U.S. more frequently to provide stability before conditions are exploited by extremists.

Although the U.S. is the planet’s biggest emitter of global warming pollution, the report stressed that it does need to develop strong partnerships with other nations like China and India, who will be contributing significantly to the global economy and to its emissions.

The report was published by the non-partisan CNA Corporation think tank.

Associated Press, via the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CNA Corporation
Globe and Mail

For the first time ever, the United Nations Security Council has put global warming on its agenda and will hold a high-level meeting this month to discuss its potential impacts on international security.

We often hear of climate change’s threat to the environment, health, and the economy. But more and more policymakers and leaders are nervous about the global security issues we could face, such as conflicts over water resources and massive numbers of refugees from flooded regions.

Specifically, the April 17th meeting, chaired by British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, will examine how water, agricultural production, famine, and crop surpluses could be effected by climate change. No statement or resolution is expected from the first meeting, which is following on the heels of the recent report on global warming’s impacts from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Britain’s U.N. Ambassador, Emyr Jones Parry, is the Security Council President. He said he expects a summit on climate change in September 2008. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon hasn’t committed to the summit, although he does want to discuss how best to confront global warming’s impacts with world leaders at a G-8 meeting of industrialized countries in June.

The Associated Press, via MSNBC

Yesterday the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its second report of the year on global warming. Back in February, the IPCC explained the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change. This time, we learn the impacts.

For increases in global mean temperature of less than 1-3 degrees Celsius above 1990 levels, impacts may produce benefits in some places and some sectors, and produce costs in other places and sectors. However, some low latitude and polar regions of the world will see net costs rise even with only small increases in temperature. Once the average temperature increases more than 2-3 degrees Celsius in any region, however, it is “very likely” that we wil see declining benefits and instead see an increase in net costs.

The Summary for Policymakers of the Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability reports the projected effects of climate change:

• Costs and benefits of climate change for industry, settlement, and society will vary widely by location and scale. In the aggregate, however, net effects will tend to be more negative the larger the change in climate.

• Crop productivity is projected to increase slightly at mid to high latitudes for local mean temperature increases of up to 1-3 degrees Celsius depending on the crop, and then decrease beyond that in some regions.

• Studies in temperate areas have shown that climate change is projected to bring some benefits, such as fewer deaths from cold exposure. Overall it is expected that these benefits will be outweighed by the negative health effects of rising temperatures world-wide, especially in developing countries.

• Approximately 20-30 percent of plant and animal species assessed so far are likely to be at increased risk of extinction if increases in global average temperature exceed 1.5-2.5 degrees Celsius.

Each word of the report had to be agreed upon by consensus, but disputes between the scientific authors and diplomatic editors infuriated some scientists. They claim the predicted impacts have been watered down because of political interference. For example, a sentence that originally said scientists had “very high confidence” (greater than 90 percent) that many natural systems would be affected by rising temperatures was changed to “high confidence” (greater than 80 percent) at the insistence of delegates from China and Saudi Arabia.

The report goes on to say that global warming cannot be stopped at this point, only slowed down. However, the most catastrophic effects can still be avoided with swift and decisive global action. The IPCC recommends a combination of adaptation and mitigation measures:

Even the most stringent mitigation efforts cannot avoid further impacts of climate change in the next few decades, which makes adaptation essential, particularly in addressing near-term impacts. Unmitigated climate change would, in the long term, be likely to exceed the capacity of natural, managed and human systems to adapt.

This suggests the value of a portfolio or mix of strategies that includes mitigation, adaptation, technological development (to enhance both adaptation and mitigation) and research (on climate science, impacts, adaptation and mitigation).

The full report will be released next week. It includes more than 2,500 scientists appointed by more than 130 countries.

The IPCC was created by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme to assess the scientific, technical, and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk for climate change, along with its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation. Its assessments are based solely on peer reviewed and published scientific/technical literature.

CNN
Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability: Summary for Policymakers
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

As a signatory of the Kyoto Protocol, Canada has committed to cutting global warming emissions to 6 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. But emissions have climbed, and the northerly nation is nervous about forest fires that release carbon dioxide (CO2) back into the air when the trees burn, thus increasing CO2 emissions even more. As a result, Canada has decided to cut its forests from global warming emissions calculations completely.

This also means that Canada won't count forests as a CO2 absorber or "sink," either. That's just fine for some scientists: According to the Toronto Star, for three years between 1990 and 2004, trees were a net source of emissions rather than a CO2 sink.

“Government scientists made the call after learning of the damage that could come to forests from 2008 to 2012 and realizing the forests could become another source of emissions, pushing Canada even further from its Kyoto targets.”

Insect infestations have contributed to forest fires also: an insect like the mountain pine beetle burrows into a tree and prevents it from drawing water, killing it and turning it into kindling.

The Kyoto Protocol gives nations the option of using agricultural land and managed forests (ones that are regularly cut down and replanted) in their emissions calculations. Although forests should theoretically be a great source of storing carbon in such a forested country like Canada, a hotter planet has changed that assumption.

Some environmentalists are angry about the decision, saying Canada is skirting its Kyoto responsibility.

A spokesman for Environment Minister John Baird said that the decision to not count forests only applies to Kyoto’s first commitment period, which ends in 2012. After that, Canada may reassess its decision.

The Toronto Star, via the Daily Canuck