Natural Environment Blog

In six days, the world will have a global election. There are two candidates:

1. Candidate 1: Earth
2. Candidate 2: Global Warming

Earth Hour is when you need to cast your vote. Earth Hour 2009 is being held on Saturday, March 28 at 8:30pm (your own local time).

How Do I Cast My Vote?

Voting is easy.

• To vote for Earth, turn your lights off for an hour between 8:30pm and 9:30pm
• To vote for global warming, keep your lights on

Show Your Support

If you intend to vote for Earth on Saturday, you can show your support by downloading a banner, poster, badge, and more.

Here’s a sample of some of the badges you can display on your own blog or website to show your support for Earth.

For more information on how to support Earth on Saturday, see the VoteEarth2009 website.

Last year I mentioned that this year’s Earth Hour will be the biggest to date, but it’s also turning out to be even bigger than the organizers expected. 

No less than 1,539 cities and towns in 80 countries will participate in this year’s Earth Hour 2009. 

This number, which will almost certainly grow over the next eleven days, exceeds the organizers’ target of 1,000 cities. 

With more and more cities and towns signing up every day, the event organizers say that the success of Earth Hour 2009 is limited only by the will of the global community to want a say in the future of their planet.

“Earth Hour is an opportunity for the global community to speak in one voice on the issue of climate change, while at the same time coming together in celebration of the one thing every single person on the planet has in common – the planet” said Earth Hour Executive Director, Mr Andy Ridley.

“Whether it’s joining your community in a town square to watch the city lights go dark or hosting a lights out party in your own home, I encourage everybody across the world to be a part of this historic occasion. Turn off your lights, celebrate the planet, enjoy the moment and cast your vote for Earth,” he added.

With increased involvement from populous countries such as China, it is hoped that Earth Hour 2009 will be observed by over 100 million people around the world.

On Monday, WWF officially announced that China will participate in Earth Hour in 2009.

Back in April,  WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) indicated that China would have more involvement in Earth Hour next year, but the extent of its involvement was largely unknown.

Hong Kong is already on the list of cities to take part in Earth Hour 2009. On Monday it was announced that Beijing and Shanghai would also participate.

WWF has also indicated that more Chinese cities will be announced in the future. 

2009 To Be Bigger Than 2008

In 2008, 26 cities were officially part of Earth Hour (although more than 370 cities, towns and councils took part unofficially). 

For 2009, the official count currently stands at 76 cities across 62 countries. It is anticipated that more than 1,000 cities, towns and councils will participate unofficially in 2009.

About Earth Hour

Earth Hour is a global WWF climate change initiative. Individuals, businesses, governments and communities are invited to turn out their lights for one hour on Saturday March 28, 2009 at 8:30 PM to show their support for action on climate change.

The event began in Sydney in 2007, when 2 million people switched off their lights. In 2008, more than 50 million people around the globe participated. In 2009, it is anticipated that more than 1 billion people in 1,000 cities will participate in Earth Hour.

Delegates attend the opening of the Conference of the Parties (COP) at this year's UN Climate Change Conference in Poznań, Poland. Photo: UNFCCC.

The 12 day United Nations Climate Change Conference began in Poznań, Poland yesterday.

Delegates from 190 countries have gathered to try to agree on a treaty to be signed next December in Copenhagen.

“The protection of the climate requires global solidarity,” said Donald Tusk, Poland’s Prime Minister, as he addressed the delegates.

“All of us must show maximum understanding with each other, and must show patience with each other,” he continued ”but this patience must be have its own horizon - a common goal.”

Shared Vision

Although the full text of a treaty won’t be agreed on at the conference, it is important that the member nations agree on a shared vision.

“What is the shared vision? It’s two 2 things,” says Brice Lalonde head of the French delegation.

“One is having a goal of reduction of emissions and agreeing on that goal, and the other is how do we have a cooperation of all the nations of the world?”

…Or Not

But the United States has a different view.

Regarding the possibility of agreeing on a fixed 2020 target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the US was noncommittal.

“I don’t think many parties are ready to sign onto any range at this time,” says Harlan Watson, head of the United States delegation.

“My own opinion is that that’s going to occur in the end game” in Copenhagen.

“We’ve seen in past discussions of this that a number of parties aren’t prepared to agree to a long-term goal until other parties are coming forward with a 2020 or a near-term goal, and a number of parties, including the United states, are not willing to come forward with that yet.”

Message From Environmentalists

Environmental groups are urging the UN member nations to reduce their dependency on coal. Coal is the single greatest threat to our climate  - coal burning contributes more to climate change than any other fossil fuel.

With coal-fired power stations producing 11 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, environmental groups are pushing for the widespread adoption of renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind.

Furthermore, green groups are pleading with governments to stop the approval of new coal plants. A coal plant built today will emit CO2 pollution for at least the next 40 years.

As the Climate Change Conference gets underway, Greenpeace has set up a Climate Rescue Station on the edge of a coal mine in Poland to highlight the true cost of coal.

Greenpeace wants to see the following outcome from this year’s climate change conference:

• A “climate vision” that will address what the science requires: global emissions peaking by 2015
• A draft negotiating text on the table and a detailed workplan to get this completed by Copenhagen in December 2009
• Developed countries to agree greenhouse gas emission reduction targets at the upper end of 25-40%, as identified by the IPCC

How You Can Help

This year the world is watching the UN negotiations and demanding that governments make good on their promise to come up with an action plan in Copenhagen next year.

You can help by uploading your photo to show that you are watching the UN carefully this year. Uploaded photos will be projected at this year’s UN meeting. 

About the United Nations Framework on Climate Change 

The United Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is a treaty by most of the world’s nations to consider what can be done to reduce global warming and to cope with whatever temperature increases are inevitable.

Initiated in 1992,  the treaty set no mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions for individual nations and contained no enforcement provisions; it is therefore considered legally non-binding. Instead, the UNFCCC treaty includes provisions for updates - called “protocols” - that would set mandatory emission limits.

The principal update (or protocol) is the Kyoto Protocol, which has become much better known than the UNFCCC itself. The Kyoto Protocol has more powerful (and more legally binding) measures than the UNFCCC.

Marine reserves currently provide coral reefs with little protection against global issues such as climate change and disease outbreaks.

Marine reserves, while effective at protecting coral reefs against local issues, are not protecting them against global issues such as climate change, according to Associate Professor John Bruno from the University of North Carolina.

Professor Bruno presented his findings to the Ecological Society of Australia’s annual conference at the University of Sydney.

18 Years of Data

In a speech entitled Climate change and coral reef resilience: are we expecting too much from marine reserves?, professor Bruno and former graduate student Elizabeth Selig compared 18 years worth of data collected from 8,540 coral reefs in the Indian, Caribbean and Pacific regions between 1987 and 2005. 

They found that, while marine reserves are important for protecting fish populations, maintaining coral reef food webs and protecting against anchor damage, they are unlikely to prevent coral loss due to increased sea temperatures.

“We found that while coral loss was reduced in marine reserves, the rate of coral decline with warmer temperatures was just the same in marine reserves as in highly fished areas,” professor Bruno explained.

Largest Threat

Bruno believes that regional and global issues are the largest threats to marine reserves. 

“The biggest stresses put on coral reefs are ocean warming and disease outbreaks,” he says. “These stresses are regional and global in scale and local protection through marine reserves is unlikely to help these reefs resist such changes.”

Older Reserves Are More Resilient

Although marine reserves don’t directly guard against regional and global issues, professor Bruno did find that older reserves are in a better position to protect against coral loss than younger reserves.

“We don’t know the reason for this result, although we can speculate that it could be due to longer-term marine reserves being better managed or established,” he says.

Future Protection

Bruno believes that we need to think long term and establish marine reserves that can protect coral reefs from unknown future threats.

“Restoring and protecting corals from climate change requires urgent implementation of regional and global strategies to deal with the root causes of climate change, including reducing carbon emissions.”

As environmentalists push for “green” energy, the coal industry continues to emphasize the fact that coal is cheaper than its greener alternatives. 

But is coal really as cheap as we think it is?

Greenpeace has released a report that reveals the true cost that coal is having on the world at large.

Entitled The True Cost Of Coal: How people and the planet are paying the price for the world’s dirtiest fuel, the report shows that coal is costing the world around €360 billion per year.

Over the next ten years this would translate into €3.6 trillion - roughly $US4.6 trillion. 

The Hidden Costs

In calculating the figure, Greenpeace looked at the external costs of coal, such as costs arising from mining accidents, acid rain, and more.

The report says:

Traditionally considered the cheapest fuel around, the market price for coal ignores its most significant impacts. These so-called “external costs” manifests themselves as damages such as respiratory diseases, mining accidents, acid rain, smog pollution, reduced agricultural yields and climate change.

Greenpeace explains that the the harm caused by mining and burning coal is not reflected in its price per tonne or its costs for a kWh of electricity, but the world at large is nevertheless paying for it.

Coal’s Impact On Climate Change

The report also explains that coal burning contributes more to climate change than any other fossil fuel, and that coal-fired power stations produce 11 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide each year. 

Greenpeace emphasizes that our decisions regarding coal is not something we should take lightly:

As the single largest source of CO2 emissions, the manner in which we deal with coal in the coming years will determine whether we can respond adequately to the climate crisis.

And, our decisions of today, will have an ongoing impact for years to come:

A coal plant built today will emit CO2 pollution for at least the next 40 years.

Dirty Coal vs Clean Coal?

And Greenpeace is not impressed by so called “clean coal”, where carbon from the burning coal is captured and stored underground.

Greenpeace says that, even if it were a feasible option, there isn’t enough time to deploy Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) plants.

The earliest possibility for deployment of CCS at a useful scale is not expected until at least 2030, while global greenhouse gas emissions must start falling after 2015 to avoid the worst impacts of climate change 

Greenpeace believes that CCS is providing an unwelcome distraction in the discussion on reducing greenhouse gas emissions:

Those peddling technological fixes – such as carbon capture and storage which claims to make coal clean and safe for the climate – create a dangerous distraction as the world seeks truly sustainable solutions that will reduce emissions and protect our climate. It is only by quitting coal and increasing energy efficiency and production of renewable energy that we will prevent catastrophic climate change. 

Coal Must Be Phased Out

The strong message in the report is that coal must be phased out, and proposed coal-fired power stations must not go ahead.

Instead, Greenpeace emphasizes that renewable energy and energy efficiency must be the way forward:

Given the availability of alternatives such as renewable energy and energy efficiency, which can meet our energy needs in a safe and climate-friendly way, there is no need to continue relying on coal. We must reduce our dependence on this dirty fuel and abandon plans to build new coal-fired power stations. 

So, given the true cost of coal, the report makes the argument for renewable energy even more compelling.

Full Report [PDF document]

Scientists have made a breakthrough in determining what actually causes ice shelves in the Antarctic and Greenland to break apart, resulting in icebergs and contributing to increased sea levels.

The findings, reported in the latest edition of the Science journal, could lead to improved climate change models, as scientists will now be able to predict more accurately where icebergs will “calve off” from their parent ice shelves.

Scientists have discovered the main factor to cause ice to calve away from ice sheets, creating icebergs, and resulting in higher sea levels. Photo: Kim Hansen.

The term “calving” in this context, refers to ice breaking off the ice shelves and landing in the ocean, causing icebergs to form. Typically, a shelf front will extend forward for years or decades between major calving events. 

Until now, the main problem for scientists was determining where an ice shelf was to calve. At what point does an ice shelf have so much ice hanging over the ocean that it starts to break off?

What made this a particularly difficult question was that, there didn’t seem to be a common size between ice shelves. For example, the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica hangs over the ocean for as much as 500 miles. Other ice shelves only extend for a mile or two before breaking up.

The Need For A Law For Ice Shelf Calving

To date there hasn’t been a law based on physical principles that explains ice shelf calving.

“To predict the future of the ice sheet and to understand the past, we have to put the information into a computer,” says Richard B. Alley, the Evan Pugh professor of geosciences. “The models we have do not currently have any way to figure out where the big ice sheets end and where the ice calves off to form icebergs.”

Because of this, the scientists searched for the most important variable that determines where an ice shelf will break off into the ocean - not an easy task according to professor Alley. 

“Fracture-mechanics problems are invariably difficult,” he says.

“Earthquake prediction comes to mind, or guessing whether a tea cup pushed off the table will break or bounce upon hitting the floor. With the tea cup, a drop from 1 mm high won’t break it, and a drop from 100 m almost surely will — one term, the height of the drop, explains a whole lot of the behavior.” he added.

“Our hope was to find such a dominant term in calving of bergs from ice shelves.” 

Simple Law for Ice Shelf Calving

The scientists believe they have found a dominant term that can be used to forecast ice shelf calving.

In the tea cup example, the height of the tea cup was the dominant term. With ice shelves, the scientists found that the spreading tendency in the direction of ice and berg motion was the dominant term.

The equation is the rate of spreading times the width of the shelf times thickness multiplied by a constant.

In other words, it is the rate at which ice shelves spread that is the most important variable that determines when an ice shelve is about to calve.

“The spreading rate can be calculated from ice thickness and a few other things that are already solved for in numerical models, so we have provided a practicable calving law,” said Alley. “At present, models rarely if ever calculate physically where the ice ends, instead stopping the model before the ice ends or using some other relation that is not fully physical.” 

Global Warming

Armed with this knowledge, scientists will be in a better position to forecast the impact of global warming on sea levels.

Computer models will be able to use this information to better predict how ice sheets will behave in warmer temperatures.

Scientists recently predicted that sea temperatures would rise by over a meter by the end of this century.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) remanded a PSD permit on Thursday for a proposed coal plant addition near Vernal, Utah.

EPA says that it cannot grant such permits until it decides what to do about limiting the CO2 emissions that the plant will produce.  

The decision will essentially delay any new coal plant in the United States for at least a couple of years.

The Sierra Club went before the Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Appeals Board (EAB) in May this year requesting that the air permit for Deseret Power Electric Cooperative’s proposed waste coal-fired power plant be overturned because it failed to require any controls on carbon dioxide pollution. Once the 110 MW Bonanza plant was in operation, it would have emitted 3.37 million tons of carbon dioxide each year. 

On Thursday, the permit was overturned.

Significant Decision

The ruling will make it much harder for companies to receive permits for new coal plants. This could have a significant impact on the US coal industry as over 100 coal plants are in various stages of development around the country. 

“They’re sending this permit — and effectively sending every other permit — back to square one,” said David Bookbinder, chief climate counsel for the Sierra Club. 

“It’s minimum a one to two year delay for every proposed coal-fired power plant in the United States.”

The ruling makes reference to the landmark Massachusetts v. EPA decision last year that declared carbon dioxide a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. Until Thursday’s decision, the EPA had not yet acted on this ruling.

Coal Plants are Huge Carbon Emitters

Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) permits are for construction projects that may significantly increase air pollutant emissions. Part of the process for granting a PSD permit is determining what Best Available Control Technology (BACT) to use in order to minimize pollutant emissions.

“Coal plants emit 30% of our nation’s global warming pollution. Building new coal plants without controlling their carbon emissions could wipe out all of the other efforts being undertaken by cities, states and communities across the country,” said Bruce Nilles, Director of the Sierra Club’s National Coal Campaign. “Everyone has a role to play and it’s time that the coal industry did its part and started living up to its clean coal rhetoric.”

Good News for Low-Carbon Technologies

Thursday’s decision helps pave the way to making solar, wind, nuclear and other low-carbon technologies more competitive.

“Instead of pouring good money after bad trying to fix old coal technology, investors should be looking to wind, solar and energy efficiency technologies that are going to power the economy, create jobs, and help the climate recover,” said Nilles.

View the ruling [PDF document, 69 pages]

The Great Barrier Reef is benefiting from a strong US dollar and weak Australian dollar. Photo: Copyright (C) 2004 Richard Ling (rling.com)

The Great Barrier Reef tourism appears to be benefiting from a strong US dollar and weak Australian dollar.

Amidst the global financial turmoil, the U.S. dollar has continued to strengthen while other currencies have struggled to keep up. The Australian dollar has taken a huge hit, and recently plunged to its lowest in 5 years.

While this is not normally something for Aussies to celebrate, it has made Australia a more attractive place for overseas visitors. In particular, $1 USD will currently buy you around $1.50 AUD. In other words, if you’re American, your dollar goes 50 percent further in Australia. If you’re Canadian you’ll gain around 25 percent.

“No Barrier to the Great Barrier Reef”

A recent campaign - “No Barrier to the Great Barrier Reef” - has brought in over $1 million dollars in bookings and quotes in the six weeks since it launched, and it’s likely that the low Aussie dollar has given the campaign an extra boost. 

The campaign included an email to 260,000 North American frequent flyers, inviting them to visit Queensland - the home of the Great Barrier Reef.

The email offers packages such as:

• Eight days to the Whitsundays from $US1999 including return airfares from the US, accommodation, transfers, some meals and activit ies
• A Great Barrier Reef Air Pass from $US1199 which includes return airfares from the US and three domestic Australian flights including Cairns
• A $US599 Aussie Wildlife package which includes two nights in Brisbane, two nights on Fraser Island, entry to Australia Zoo and transfers 

Tough Times for Australian Tourism

The campaign follows a particularly destressing time for the Australain tourism industry - particularly in the Far North.   

“Destinations such as Tropical North Queensland have been hard hit by a combination of flight cuts, high fuel costs and a downturn in the global economy so our aim is to hit our key international markets with a range of value-for-money package deals that are too good to refuse” said Queensland tourism Minister Desley Boyle.

“Tourism Queensland invested $200,000 of the $4 million assistance package funding into five US campaigns, but thanks to buy-in from travel partners in North America, we have been able to increase the campaign spend to $1.9 million,” she continued.

Great Barrier Reef a “Must See”

Ms Boyle stressed the importance of visiting the Great Barrier Reef while holidaying in Australia.

“The Great Barrier Reef is one of American travellers’ must-see Australian destinations and because these special packages are only available for a short period of time, our aim is to turn their ‘one day’ dream into ‘let’s book today’ reality,” she said.

About the Great Barrier Reef

The Great Barrier Reef is the world’s largest coral reef system and the largest natural feature on Earth. It is under threat from climate change and water pollution, and unless urgent measures are put in place to prevent this, it could die out within three decades.

A new agency will be formed in early 2009 to act as a driver for renewable energy on an international level.

Although there are other international energy agencies, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), which was initially driven by Germany, Spain and Denmark, will be the first worldwide agency dedicated to renewable energy.

IRENA says,

There is an urgent need for renewable energy to play a stronger part in international political processes – whether they deal with trade, investment, environment, energy or other issues. Its aim will be to generate momentum for renewable energy on an international level.

Large-Scale Adoption of Renewable Energy

IRENA’s objective is to foster and promote the large-scale adoption of renewable energy worldwide. 

The agency plans to break the objective down into the following tangable targets:

• Improved regulatory frameworks for renewable energy through enhanced policy advice 
• Improvements in the transfer of renewable energy technology 
• Progress and improvements on renewable energy skills and know-how; a scientifically sound information basis through applied policy research 
• Better financing of renewable energy