The preservation of the world’s remaining forests is one of the most pressing issues we face today. Forests are also home to most of the world’s wildlife as well as some of the remaining indigenous populations. Besides, the felling of trees releases huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and wreaks havoc with weather conditions, water sources, rainfall etc. Renewable energy alone will not save the planet. Halting forest loss is known to be one of the most cost-effective ways to mitigate the effects of climate change.

Tropical rainforests are the focus of major concern as they are targeted by cattle ranchers, loggers and palm oil plantations, to name some of the most ferocious causers of devastation. Global deforestation stands at roughly “13 million hectares per year, or 36 football fields a minute. It generates almost 20 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions”, says WWF.

Earlier this week, the Brazilian government announced a 45.7 percent fall in deforestation rates of the Amazon forest within the country’s borders. The period measured was August 2008 to July 2009. While this sounds like good news, 7,008 square kilometres of forest were cleared. That is 80 times the size of Manhattan, surely not a small area and probably not quite accurate since the figures released are preliminary. Once they are consolidated, they are likely to go up (last year they did by 1,000 square kilometres).

Greenpeace welcomed the news but said deforestation rates are still too high. The organization said that it is Brazilian society that must get credit for a reduction in the deforestation of the Amazon. “Brazilians have for years demanding action to protect the Amazon, forcing governments to introduce measures in order to decrease the size of the disaster. And when governments abide by the law, deforestation rates fall”, said Paulo Adario, head of the Amazon campaign.

The organization added that actions carried out by the Public Ministry of the Amazonian state of Pará played a major role in deforestation reduction. These included freezing cattle ranching in the state with the highest rates of deforestation, and the implementation of an initiative called “Moratória da Soja” to guarantee the forest-friendliness of the product. The global financial crisis also contributed to decrease demand for products that come out of the Amazon, such as meat, soy and wood.

And while Amazon deforestation may have decreased for now, the Cerrado region, a savanna area of two million square kilometers in Brazil’s heartland, lost more than 20,000 square kilometers of forest over the last year, still according to WWF. The situation there has become so critical that it prompted Brazil’s biggest TV network, Rede Globo, to broadcast a documentary about it. It was aired last night and you can see one of the clips below. The voice-over is in Portuguese but the imagery gives an idea of the beauty of the region and how agribusiness is eating into it.

We can all help by making sure we only buy products that are green certified. By eliminating demand for forest-unfriendly products (watch out for palm oil, which is very common and is destroying Indonesian forests), we can play a role in preserving one of the world’s biggest treasures: its forests.

Earlier this month (2-4 November) an event at London’s Windsor Castle brought together religious leaders from all major faith traditions to discuss initiatives that such groups can partake to help the fight against climate change. The event, which only served vegan food because it is the only one suitable to all types of faith, was called Faith Commitments for a Living Planet and was co-hosted by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and organized by Prince Philip’s Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC).

There’s good reason to attract the support of religious groups to the green cause. According to the ARC, faith-based groups own nearly eight percent of habitable land on Earth, operate dozens of media groups and more than half the world’s schools, and control seven percent of financial investments worth trillions. All the main world religions in theory condemn greed and destructiveness and urge restraint and protection.

The event launched dozens of long-term commitments by all the major faith traditions including: transitioning to solar-powered Taoist Temples in China; creating faith-based eco-labelling systems in Islam, Hinduism and Judaism and greening all types of religious buildings; protecting sacred forests; developing ethical investment policies; printing sacred books on environmentally-friendly paper; and creating educational programs through formal and informal education.

Religion will also be on the table at the Copenhagen climate summit next month. A panel discussion titled Many Heavens: One Earth – Faiths, the Environment and Copenhagen is part of the program.

Source: Wikipedia

The discussion is based on two studies in the current issue of Science magazine. According to Reuters, one of them says that “cellulosic” biofuels (advanced fuels made from wood and grass as opposed to biofuels made from food crops such as corn) could produce more carbon than gasoline “per unit of energy, averaged over the 2000-2030 time period”. And once again deforestation is the problem: “The land required to plant fast-growing poplar trees and tropical grasses would displace food crops, and so drive deforestation to create more farmland, a powerful source of carbon emissions.”

The other study highlights that the United Nations had overestimated carbon savings from biofuels and biomass, and the mistake was echoed by the European Union’s cap and trade law. The UN simply ignored the impact of deforestation and other changes in land use. The problem is that “none of the major climate regimes -including the Kyoto Protocol, the European Union’s carbon market and the House-passed climate bill – account for the carbon released by changing land use for biofuels”, says the Washington Post, adding that researchers, including the study’s author and Princeton scholar Timothy D. Searchinger, are worried that bioenergy crops could replace the world’s forests and savannahs on a huge scale unless accounting issues get corrected.

The biofuel industry has already manifested against the report, accusing scientists of trying to perpetuate the dependence on fossil fuel. But that is not what scientists are doing: they are simply calling for a rectification of the methods used to assess the carbon impact of biofuels, which means factoring in land use. They are not against biofuels, but they are aware of the challenges they pose and that they are not exactly carbon-neutral. The point here is to preserve the world’s forests, which are homes to animals, tribal people, sanctuaries of biodiversity and work as natural carbon storage devices – I think we all agree that forests are some of the world’s greatest treasures and preserving them is top priority. Deforesting in order to grow biofuel crops is simply unacceptable.

Worldwatch Magazine

Now evidence has emerged that the figure was “grossly underestimated” and a new report by the Worldwatch Institute has remade the calculations. The report, called Livestock and Climate Change, concludes that livestock’s contribution to greenhouse emissions actually accounts for 51% of the total. That’s nearly three times the previously estimated figure.

“Recent analysis by Robert Goodland and Jeff Anhang finds that livestock and their byproducts actually account for at least 32.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year, or 51 percent of annual worldwide GHG emissions”, the organization says on its website.

The report can be downloaded for free here. Treehugger has published a breakdown of the factors that explain why livestock is such a major polluter. The popular green blog concludes: “The overall message can really be boiled down to this: One of the cheapest and most effective ways of mitigating climate change is eating far less meat and dairy or (better yet) eating none and adopting a full vegetarian or vegan diet. It’s going to take a cultural shift to do this, to be sure, but the effect is huge.”

Wheel based on the assumption that aggressive policy is enacted. Source: MIT

“Our results show we still have around a 50-50 chance of stabilizing the climate” at a level of no more than a few tenths above the 2 degree target, said Ron Prinn, co-director of MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change and a co-author of the new study. However, that will require global emissions, which are now growing, to start downward almost immediately.

That result could be achieved if the aggressive emissions targets in current U.S. climate bills were met, and matched by other wealthy countries, and if China and other large developing countries followed suit with only a decade or two delay. That 2 degree C increase is a level that is considered likely to prevent some of the most catastrophic potential effects of climate change, such as major increases in global sea level and disruption of agriculture and natural ecosystems.

The study used the MIT Integrated Global Systems Model, a detailed computer simulation of global economic activity and climate processes that has been developed and refined by the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change since the early 1990s. The new research involved hundreds of runs of the model with each run using slight variations in input parameters, selected so that each run has about an equal probability of being correct based on present observations and knowledge.

Other research groups have estimated the probabilities of various outcomes, based on variations in the physical response of the climate system itself. But theMIT model is the only one that interactively includes detailed treatment of possible changes in human activities as well – such as the degree of economic growth, with its associated energy use, in different countries.

“The nature of the problem is one of minimizing risk,” explains Mort Webster, assistant professor of engineering systems, who was the lead author of the new report in an article published by MIT’s new office penned by David L. Chandler. “That’s why looking at the probabilities of various outcomes, rather than focusing on the average outcome in a given climate model, ‘is both more scientifically correct, and a more useful way to think about it’”, he says.

Regardless of how much one can follow the technical description of the analysis, the gist of it is that swift action is key. I think it’s great to see this important message being reinforced by such a reputable institution.

By the way, this post is part of Blog Action Day 2009 which takes place today and is dedicated to, you guessed it, climate change. Blog it on, folks!

Source: WWF

Because of that, WWF (World Wildlife Fund) Sweden has issued a statement urging its government, which currently holds the EU Presidency, “to get behind an effective international agreement on halting forest loss”. The annual loss of natural forests in developing countries is equivalent to one third of Sweden’s surface area. Forest fires, the conversion of forests to agricultural land and the cultivation of energy crops are responsible for the high rate of forest loss, the organization says.

The aforementioned plan is called REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) and it is currently being discussed in the negotiations for a global climate deal. The idea is to “make it worthwhile for developing countries to maintain their forests, as opposed to cutting them down”.

Take the Indonesian case: there, where large areas of forests are cut down and prepared for palm oil plantations, 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from deforestation. Halting deforestation would not only reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but would also secure the livelihoods of people living in these forests.

“Time is passing and the possibility of reaping the positive climate effects that a stop in the loss of forests entails is decreasing rapidly. Complex social, economic and ecological [factors] are involved which is why a global cooperation for REDD must be carefully prepared,” says Stefan Henningsson, Climate Director, WWF Sweden.

WWF negotiators in Bangkok are urging an institutional structure for REDD which guarantees transparency, effectiveness and long-term financing from developed countries in support of measures in developing countries. In financing, WWF is seeking the equivalent of $US42 billion per year after 2013, a key element of an estimated financing requirement of $US160 billion annually for climate change adaptation and mitigation in developing countries.

The scheme would aim for a goal of zero net deforestation by 2020, with WWF also emphasising that forestry and climate projects must also contribute to the conservation of biological diversity and respect the rights of local and native populations.

Keeping forests is a win-win situation. Less carbon goes into the atmosphere, wilflife and indigenous population keep their homes and the world stay beautiful. What’s not to love about it?

Slate Magazine’s environmental section, The Green Lantern, published an article a few days ago that dug out a topic that many of us probably have forgotten about: the ozone layer, a gas shield that protects us from the sun’s harmful UV-B rays located roughly six to 30 miles above the Earth’s surface. The topic made headlines in the 1980s and although it hasn’t exactly been forgotten about, it’s not longer a hot media topic either, having been replaced by climate change. But the problem hasn’t gone away; in fact the hole is bigger than before, spanning “a patch of sky almost the size of North America”.

The situation could be worse, though. Actions taken 20 years ago means that the widening of the hole slowed down. Also, it takes a long time for the ozone layer to heal as some of the banned ozone-destroying gases are still floating around the atmosphere. But upon noticing the use of the verb ‘heal’ I got thinking: is there a chance that the ozone layer will patch itself up?

Science Daily reported a couple of weeks ago that scientists “found a global slightly positive trend of ozone increase of almost 1% per decade in the total ozone from the last 14 years: a result that was confirmed by comparisons with ground-based measurements”.

So, yes, it seems that the Montreal Protocol, a 1987 agreement that calls for a ban on producing and using nearly 100 of the most important ozone-depleting chemicals, and which recently was ratified by every member of the United Nations, is yielding some results.

The problem is that some of the replacement gases actually cause global warming.

Still according to the Lantern, “the hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) we use in place of many CFCs [chlorofluorocarbon; a class of chemical compounds that deplete ozone] don’t contribute to ozone depletion, but some of them have thousands of times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide.” These chemicals are used in refrigerators and air conditioners, domestic goods that have become increasingly disposable, a consumer plague.

So be sure to avoid HFCs as much as you can as there are more eco-friendly options out there. Surely we want to protect the ozone layer and not contribute to global warming at the same time.

A new research to be released on Friday by the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) reveals that “the largest U.S subsidies to fossil fuels are attributed to tax breaks that aid foreign oil production”. The report was produced in partnership with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The study reviewed fossil fuel and energy subsidies for Fiscal Years 2002-2008 and shows that the lion’s share of energy subsidies supported energy sources that emit high levels of greenhouse gases.

During that period, the federal government provided substantially larger subsidies to fossil fuels than to renewables. Fossil fuels benefited from approximately $72 billion over the seven-year period, while subsidies for renewable fuels totaled only $29 billion. More than half the subsidies for renewables – $16.8 billion – are attributable to corn-based ethanol, the climate effects of which are hotly disputed. Of the fossil fuel subsidies, $70.2 billion went to traditional sources – such as coal and oil – and $2.3 billion went to carbon capture and storage, which is designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants.

Why is this happening? The U.S. energy market is shaped by a number of national and state policies that encourage the use of traditional energy sources. These policies range from royalty relief to the provision of tax incentives, direct payments, and other forms of support to the non-renewable energy industry. “The combination of subsidies – or ‘perverse incentives’ – to develop fossil fuel energy sources, and a lack of sufficient incentives to develop renewable energy and promote energy efficiency, distorts energy policy in ways that have helped cause, and continue to exacerbate, our climate change problem,” says ELI Senior Attorney John Pendergrass. “With climate change and energy legislation pending on Capitol Hill, our research suggests that more attention needs to be given to the existing perverse incentives for ‘dirty’ fuels in the U.S. Tax Code.”

The subsidies examined fall roughly into two categories: foregone revenues (changes to the tax code to reduce the tax liabilities of particular entities), mostly in the form of tax breaks, and including reported lost government take from offshore leasing of oil and gas fields; and direct spending, in the form of expenditures on research and development and other programs. Subsidies attributed to the Foreign Tax Credit totaled $15.3 billion, with those for the next-largest fossil fuel subsidy, the Credit for Production of Nonconventional Fuels, totaling $14.1 billion. The Foreign Tax Credit applies to the overseas production of oil through an obscure provision of the U.S. Tax Code, which allows energy companies to claim a tax credit for payments that would normally receive less-beneficial treatment under the tax code.

Fossie fuels and renewable energy were defined according to conventional definitions. Fossil fuels include petroleum and its byproducts, natural gas, and coal products, while renewable fuels include wind, solar, biofuels and biomass, hydropower, and geothermal energy production.

A report called 2009 State of the Future, the 13th annual Millennium Project report card on the future, has collected intelligence from more than 2,500 leading scholars, futurists, among other experts, and offers a framework for understanding global change and identifying strategies to improve decision-making for a better future. Noticeably, the report compares mankind to a teenager.

“Much of humanity is in an adolescent stage, characterized by a self-centered, short term focus. To solve the enormous issues on economy, climate change and more, humanity needs to mature and address global scale decisions,” comments Jerome C. Glenn, the lead author of the report. The Millennium Project is an international think tank that provides early alert and analysis of long-range issues, opportunities, challenges and strategies for policy making, advanced training and public education. It is a hub of renown futurists, scholars, business planners, and policy makers who work for international organizations, governments, corporations, NGOs, and universities.

The 2009 State of the Future report is structured around 15 global challenges, including energy demands, sustainable development and water. “In these uncertain times, we need an intellectually solid set of ideas,” says Glenn. “The global economy needs a serious upgrade. Future prospects for climate change are more serious than most recognize. It is imperative we act responsibly – now.”

The report sees in economic stimulus packages as some of the alternatives to deal with shrinking resources and impeding climate catastrophes. These should be used to help shifts from freshwater agriculture to saltwater agriculture, producing meat in laboratories without animals and gasoline to electric cars, it says.

The report can be found, both print version and CD, at http://www.millennium-project.org.

The whole world is taking about the Climate Change Report released by the Obama administration via its U.S. Global Change Research Program. The gist of the report is that a reduction in carbon emissions is crucial to mitigate the impact that global warming will have on life as we know it. And it says that sooner is a lot better than later. In fact, we don’t any time to waste.

This is no novelty for the green contingent but hopefully the release of the report will be the last nail in the coffin of climate change deniers and procrastinators who insist in remaining oblivious to scientific facts, almost to a suicidal point. The Bush administration played a major role in cultivating a culture of denial and hadn’t even published a climate change report since 2000, when federal law requires a document every four years.

Renewable energy plays a major role in curbing global warming – a switch-over to clean sources of energy is fundamental and it is possible, even if at present there are several hurdles to be resolved, mainly in the way of transmission and a more efficient grid system. But act we must, not simply out of charity but mainly because we have created the situation we find ourselves in and it’s our duty to work on the solutions and contribute to their implementation.