Red, Green, and Blue

The UK is undergoing a small crisis of parenting at present. The reason is that there has been an outbreak of E.coli, in one of its most virulent forms: 0157, which causes kidney damage in a small proportion of people contracting it, and the outbreaks have been linked to two city farms visited by children with their parents or as part of school groups.

City Zoos linked to disease outbreak

Forty-nine cases of E.coli have been linked to Godstone Farm in Surrey which has been closed, and its fellow site Horton Park Children’s Farm in Epsom, Surrey has closed voluntarily.  Other sites have closed in Nottingham and Devon. In Exmouth, Devon, a petting farm has closed after three children became ill, although there hasn’t been a direct link from their illness to a visit to the site.

However, in responding to the concerns, there appears to be a division of opinion in the governmental ranks. Professor Hugh Pennington who was chair of the Pennington Group enquiry into the Scottish Escherichia coli outbreak of 1996 and Chairman of the Public Inquiry into the 2005 Outbreak of E.coli O157 in South Wales, says parents should not allow under-fives to touch animals on farms. But the Department of Health (DoH) is maintaining that its current advice still stands: contact with animals is okay if good hand hygiene is undertaken.

Youngsters most at risk of harm

The concern is partly that very young children haven’t learned good hand hygiene and so are not good at washing their hands, and also that they are more prone to complications from E.coli than adults.  But there is a counter-argument being made by some health professionals that a child’s immune system is only built if it is given enough exposure to the wider world and depriving children of this kind of contact actually harms their ability to battle a range of viruses and infections.

One solution could be to provide better systems of hygiene, such as nail brushes that would allow people to ensure that they removed every lurking trace of the bacterium from their hands.  It is impossible to remove E.coli risk entirely from animals or their environment, even though most strains of the disease are very short lived outside the gut which is their natural habitat. So parents must decide whether to give their children the chance to get to meet animals, to improve their knowledge and development and to boost their immune systems through contact with the wider environment, or to reduce the risk of exposure to E.coli by avoiding such experiences as city zoos and agricultural or wild animals, altogether.

City Farm photograph author’s own

After spending some time bringing together Israel and Palestine for a handshake photo-op in New York, President Obama turned his attention to a problem that may prove equally daunting: global cooperation on climate change.

In his first UN appearance since taking the Oval Office, Obama staked a lofty position for the US, promised that the US is “determined to act,” and that the US “will meet our responsibility to future generations.” Chinese President Hu Jintao matched Obama’s rhetoric, pledging that the Chinese would commit to a host of progressive steps around renewable energy and emissions reductions, but also cautioning that developing economies like China’s “should not … be asked to take on obligations that go beyond their development stage.”

The summer saw a lot of pre-positioning in advance of Copenhagen, and with today’s UN General Assembly marking the beginning of a series of mini-summits in the lead-up to December’s big climate change conference, the volume on those announcements will only increase along with their frequency and grandeur.

Still, with Obama facing an uphill battle on domestic climate change legislation and China hiding behind their “developing” status, Copenhagen is threatening to become little more than a public relations event with little real concerted action. The US will have to avoid making the push for global leadership on climate change into a new breed of arms race that would find Obama and US policymakers at a significant disadvantage against the Chinese in the following ways:

Paying Lip Service is Costly – China, India and other developing countries want the US-led West to subsidize their carbon reduction efforts. If the West balks and no comprehensive global agreement emerges, the US could still find itself saddled with costly commitments made in going toe-to-toe with China as a demonstration of leadership and willingness to cooperate. For example, at the UN, President Jintao made the headline-grabbing promise to plant enough new trees in China to cover the area of Norway. Jintao also promised to get China to 15% renewable energy within 10 years, a much more ambitious timeline than any US plan. While it may not represent the kind of economy-crippling commitment that China fears will result from a global agreement, these programs will be costly, and Obama has his hands full just trying to pay for health care.

Democracy’s Dilemma - Not only is Obama hamstrung by health care, an increasingly troublesome war in Afghanistan, and an economy that is still teetering; but, he also has the mettlesome matters of bipartisanship, political pressure and budget restraints. While a strongly Democratic House could barely pass a weakened climate bill, Jintao and the Chinese have a one-party system overseeing a command economy that gives the Chinese a lot more adaptability as circumstances dictate in Copenhagen, in the world press, and on the geopolitical landscape.

The World Won’t Grade on a Curve - The Chinese are already crying foul over efforts to stifle their economy for the sake of climate change action and the world community is not expecting much from the world’s fastest growing economy and most voluminous emitter. Commitments like those above are enough to make a splash and convince the world that China really is trying. By contrast, Senators from Obama’s own party are refusing to discuss the prospect of domestic climate change legislation unless it includes trade protections. That kind of opposition in his own party makes a lot of his words ring hollow while the Chinese will certainly be able to deliver on whatever proposals they float. There are no handicaps in this game, so even if they overshoot on a much lower standard, the Chinese promise to steal Obama’s thunder.

Conventional wisdom says you should never enter a land war in Asia. The same might be said for wars of words.

Flickr photo.

Recently the Food and Agriculture organisation (FAO) of the UN reported that millions more people may find themselves facing long term hunger and even starvation, in east Africa.

Climate change affects Africa

El Nino is blamed for changing rainfall patterns, and that, combined with inadequate harvests and increasing conflict has led to a drop in cereal production already affecting Uganda, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia. This could lead to an increase in the number of people relying on food aid.

Already more than 20 million people are receiving food assistance in the Horn of Africa region and their numbers are only likely to increase further towards the end of the year as El Nino drives heavy rains across the region, leading to mudslides on tree-denuded hillsides and the destruction of crops close to harvest time. The same rains often destroy roads and other infrastructure required to bring food aid and medicine into the region and can kill livestock or cause epidemic diseases in animals or human populations, all of which add to the complexity of managing food security in a region where conflict is endemic and border raids and ‘tribal’ disagreements are a standard response to poverty.

Horn of Africa countries badly hit

The worst hit country at present is Somalia, where the FAO claims that around half the population already need some form of aid; either food or medical supplies or both. Ethiopia is also expected to tip into reliance on emergency aid, as the second harvest of the year has failed and that means that food aid reliance could rise from 1.3 million to over six million people.

Kenya and Uganda are both expecting poor harvests, and Uganda has an even more disastrous prognosis as the ongoing unrest between government forces and rebels has forced people off their land or led them to stay barricaded in their compounds, resulting in less cultivation and a probably halving of the harvest of staple food crops. The current violence has left more than a million people in Uganda struggling with food security and the number is expected to rise steadily throughout the next twelve months, according to FAO experts.

Somali roadside wreckage courtesy of Carl Montgomery at Flickr under a creative commons licence

Thursday this week seems to have been a key day for environmental protest.

Chinese pollution protest

In Fujian Province, eastern China, villagers blockaded a road to protest against high levels of lead in the blood of their children. Local residents are convinced that the children’s excessive lead levels are the result of pollution from the  Huaqiang Battery Factory. Authorities have ordered China’s environmental protection bureau to increase oversight of the plant. The protest comes in the wake of several similar protests against industrial plants that have succeeded in getting polluting factories closed down.

Manure message

And in the UK, journalist and television presenter Jeremy Clarkson found his own bit of global warming, on his doorstep! Seven members of group Climate Rush visited his home and left steaming piles of horse manure on his drive, along with a message reading ‘This is what you’re landing us in’. The protestors, all women, chose Clarkson because he has a sceptical attitude to climate change. Clarkson is the presenter of Top Gear, a car programme, and has recently driven to the Arctic. In the past he has made inflammatory remarks about the effects of climate change, describing walkers who demand access to land as ‘urban communists’ and cyclists as ‘Lycra Nazis’.

New Zealand animal foods protest

And finally on the same day, 17 September, a New Zealand protest against palm kernel imports ended inconclusively.  The company, Fonterra, is a dairy supplies specialist and also a cooperative with over 11,000 dairy farming members in New Zealand.  Greenpeace claims there is both local and international concern about the nature of the palm oil industry globally and protestors chained themselves to the cranes of the ship delivering the imports.  Feed imports for livestock are an increasing contentious issue – Greenpeace says that corn and grain farmers in New Zealand have supported their action because their own products have been outpriced by cheap imported livestock foods and that endangered species are being further threatened by land clearance fuelled by the palm oil export industry. 14 protesters, charged with unlawful boarding of a ship, will be appearing in court next week.
New Zealand sheep courtesy of PhillipC at Flickr under a creative commons licence

After months of staunch resistance to mandatory emission reduction targets the Indian government has hinted that it is willing to consider a national legislation on voluntary emission reduction targets.

India’s environment minister Mr. Jairam Ramesh acknowledged for the first time that his country needs to take up bold responsibilities in order to mitigate the adverse impacts of climate change. The proposed legislation could include emission reduction targets for the year 2030 for the most polluting and carbon intensive industrial sectors.

India has been against mandatory emission reduction targets putting forward two main arguments – one, its per capita emissions are among the lowest in the world and two, taking bold measures to reduce its carbon emissions would adversely impact its endeavor to eradicate poverty. The proposed bill would address both these issues and could serve as a path breaking legislation striking a balance between the economic and social costs and the mitigation measures. Read the rest of this entry »

The leader of one of Australia’s most influential unions has said that green jobs is a ‘dopey term’. Tony Maher went on to suggest that many of the environmental campaigns run in his country are ‘judgemental nonsense’ and that industries like coal and steel will have more impact on both prosperity and the creation of a low carbon future than people realised. As an example, he claimed that carbon capture and storage schemes would require vast amounts of steel and that this steel should be produced in Australia by Australian workers.

Union fights for blue-collar jobs, not green-tinged ones

Maher is President of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, a constellation of workers that might look odd in many other parts of the world where ‘green’ industries like Forestry have separated themselves from extractive industries by putting logging in with extraction and keeping woodland husbandry and tree surgery in with farming.  For over ten years, Tony Maher has spoken on behalf of the union, which states in its publicity material that it is the principal union for both brown and black coal mining. Brown coal is relatively recent in origin and falls between peat, which is still largely vegetable in structure, and bituminous coal. It is often known as lignite.

Many people feel that brown coal should not be extracted because it should be kept as a reserve for the distance future when it may have developed further and become more like bituminous coal or black coal, which is more consolidated, deep black in colour and burns more readily with greater fuel efficiency.

Union leader says more coal, not less, will be burned in 2050

It’s not surprising that a union leader representing coal minders should object to ‘green jobs’ but Maher went much further than simply protesting against the removal of blue-collar industries, he added that he thought that by mid 2050 the planet would be using twice as much coal as at present and that the recent protest at Hazelwood power station was ‘just silly’.

Hazelwood Protestors Get Direct

‘Switch Off Hazelwood’ the campaigning group that organised the protests claims a successful weekend’s protesting, with more than 300 people turning up over 12 and 13 September, to use such direct action tactics as the Bikezilla (a number of bicycles welded together to form a giant bike, which was impounded by police), the Ministry of Energy, Resources and Silly Walks, the wombat warriors and forming a giant windmill with their bodies.  The police say 18 people were arrested, the action group says it was 22 individuals who were arrested and then released on bail.

While protestors said that removing Hazelwood could be the first step to creating an employment-rich, renewable energy manufacturing region, Maher’s comments suggest that the opposition to renewable energy is entrenched in the old blue-collar industrial regions as a threat to well paid jobs, as well as being perceived as a threat to lifestyle. Maher added that Australia produced some of the best-quality coking coal in the world, which was used to make premium quality steel and that it was ‘silly’ to raise objections to industries that created a large amount of Australia’s exports.

Switch off Hazelwood: Starring the Wombat Warriors courtesy of Sean Bedlam at youtube

The European Union has proposed a climate change funding of €2-15 billion every year for developing countries to help them make transition from fossil fuel based energy systems to clean energy based systems. However, EU does not see the advanced developing counties like India and China eligible for this financial help.

EU in its Global Finance Blueprint for Ambitious Action by Developing Nations paper stated that advanced developing countries should contribute to the climate adaptation fund instead of expecting funds for themselves. According to the paper, advanced developing countries posses ample financial resources to initiate and sustain emission reduction programs.

The Commission said that from 2013, it would depend on the carbon market to fund 40% of the money required for climate change mitigation and adaptation in developing nations. The emerging economies should be able to generate 20-40% of the proposed global fund, it said. The remaining—around $22-50 billion a year—will be paid for by the European Union and the rest of the developed nations.

Developing countries have been at loggerheads with the developed countries on the issue of funding for adaptation to clean fuel technologies. Decision to set up an adaptation fund for helping poor and developing countries was taken at the Bali climate conference in 2007. However, the developed countries are yet to act on their promises of aid as they find themselves constrained by the global economic crisis and objections by their own people. Read the rest of this entry »

Cap-and-trade calamity? Au contraire. While the US flounders on regulating carbon, France’s Nicolas Sarkozy is pushing forward with new carbon tax legislation that will only add to France’s edge in the emerging green economy.

With heavy subsidies in place for nuclear power, France already generates 80% of its electricity from non-fossil-fueled sources. The French are also participants in the European cap-and-trade regime. That combination of support for clean technologies and downward pressure on carbon is the same that the Obama White House sees as the critical path to green energy adoption in the US. Progress has been elusive in that regard and things do not look rosy in the Senate this fall. Read the rest of this entry »

The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) may not sound snappy, but its long-term aim is easily expressed: to act as a vegetable ark.  Part of the treaty requires the developed world to fund the preservation of diverse species of food crop around the world.

The funding is provided by richer nations, which have often become variety poor, and given to other nations, which are often poorer but have a wide range of plants which could act as an ‘agricultural insurance’ by maintaining biodiversity in essential crops.

The crops being preserved in this way include potatoes in Peru, corn and beans in Cuba and oranges in Egypt. The varieties need to be preserved to ensure that the planet has a range of foods that are more likely to be able to adapt to challenges ranging from climate change to pollution, from salination to the loss of pollinators like insects to the ability to resist diseases and predators.

Up to 90% of vegetable variety has been lost

Four basic food staples: rice, wheat, corn and potatoes make up more than half the total foodstuffs eaten on the planet, and in this group of staple foods, less than 150 varieties are grown commercially. Wheat has just five major varieties now grown globally on a commercial scale, of the more than 700 recorded varieties, many of which have been lost and others of which are only grown by hobby farmers or in remote districts where the ‘big five’ will not thrive. China alone has lost nearly 90% of the wheat varieties that were grown across the country sixty years ago and India grows only 10% of the rice varieties that appeared in its fields a hundred years ago.

This is not just a loss of diversity – a limited range of varieties means that those grown are more liable to damage by pests or disease. It also leaves many countries open to price hikes in the recently globalised commodity markets, meaning that many people simply cannot afford to buy the staple foods that used to grow in the fields around their houses.

ITPGRFA set up the Svalbard seed-bank last year, and now that a repository for 1.1 million plant varieties exists, it is focusing on the very many crops that can’t have their variety maintained in a seed bank, such as tuberous crops like potatoes.

International treaties depend on funding and have no national accountability

For a long time this part of the ITPGRFA programme looked as if it would never get off the ground because for five years the parties who were funding the seed conservation initiative couldn’t agree how to finance the on-site part of the project nor on contracts that guarantee any commercial use of the diverse species will bring financial benefit to the nations that have been conserving them. And perhaps the best news of all, for those already involved in ITPGRFA, is that the USA may be willing to join the scheme after expressing no interest in it under the previous administration.

Corn varieties courtesy of alecim at flickr under a creative commons licence

Judge Juan Nunez has recused himself in the case which focuses around claims that Chevron has been environmentally irresponsible in Ecuador’s Amazonian rainforest. He is the fifth judge to leave the case. While he refuses to discuss the reasons he has disqualified himself from giving judgment in the case, there has been a flurry of claim and counterclaim around Chevron’s release of video in which he appears to say to members of the ruling Alianza Pais party that he will decide against Chevron, although judgment is not due to be given until October.

Chevron further alleges Nunez was to be given a $15 million ‘commission’ by the party, for deciding against the oil company. Judge Nunez says the video was manipulated – Chevron say it was not and that they will bring a counter-case against him for corruption. Read the rest of this entry »