Franny Armstrong Informs us that Scotland has become the first nation world-wide to comply in full with the IPCC CO2 emissions’ cut.  It is a 42% cut based on 1990 by 2020.

Compare above with the US 14% based on 2005 by 2020 - it is indeed more then 10 times the cuts suggested in the US House of Representatives legislation and 5 times the EU’s 20 by 2020 plans.

 http://www.christianaid.org.uk/ActNow/Co…

Scotland! Bonny, bonny Scotland has finally passed its own Climate Act, and in the process has become the first rich nation to commit to mid-term targets that are actually in line with the IPCC’s guidelines for avoiding that dreaded 2˚C threshold. Massive bigups to Stop Climate Chaos, WWF, Christian Aid and Friends of the Earth Scotland for all their work to make that happen, as well as everyone else who took the time to lobby their MSPs about this. Scotland actually now leads the developed world in climate mitigation policy. Who knew?

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20…

      Scottish parliament agrees tougher 42% target to cut emissions.

Campaigners say ‘hugely significant’ vote to cut emissions by 42% by 2020 sets new ‘moral’ standard for the rest of the industrialised world

Scotland has set itself the world’s most ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets after the Scottish parliament voted today to cut the nation’s CO2 emissions by 42% by 2020.
In a rare show of unity, all political parties at Holyrood unanimously agreed to fix the target as part of a radical climate change bill which also requires the Scottish government to set legally binding annual cuts in emissions from 2012.

The measures are tougher than the 34% target set in the UK government’s climate change act last year, which has no statutory annual targets. In common with UK government aspirations, the new act also commits Scotland to an 80% reduction on 1990 levels by 2050.

The campaign coalition Stop Climate Chaos Scotland, which claims its 60 member organisations represent two million people, said this “hugely significant” vote set a new “moral” standard for the rest of the industrialised world.

It comes the day after the US stated that a 40% cut by 2020 was “not on the cards”: developing nations have demanded this level of cut from rich nations.

Kim Carstensen, head of WWF International’s global climate initiative, said: “At least one nation is prepared to aim for climate legislation that follows the science. Scotland made the first step to show others that it can be done. We now need others to follow.”

However, the new measures are already under intense scrutiny. The act allows ministers to reduce the target later this year if the UK government’s advisory panel on climate change says it is unrealistic, or the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen in December fails to agree on a global deal to replace Kyoto.

Environment groups are critical of the Scottish government’s refusal to abandon road, bridge and airport expansion programmes, its plans for a new coal-fired power station, and its unwillingness to tackle directly increasing car use.

Furthermore, Scottish ministers only directly control about 30% of Scotland’s total annual emissions of 68m tonnes of CO2 – which only equates to a 700th of the world’s emissions. Most significant policies are controlled in Brussels and London, critics point out.

About 40% is covered by the European Union carbon emissions trading agreement, while the UK government has policy responsibilities for a further 30% of Scotland’s emissions. That includes fuel taxation, low emission vehicles, VAT on energy efficiency and air taxes.

The Committee on Climate Change, the panel set up to advise Gordon Brown’s government, has warned Salmond that Scotland is effectively jumping the gun by setting a 42% target in advance of a deal at Copenhagen.

In a letter to Stewart Stevenson, the Scottish climate change minister, the committee’s chief executive, David Kennedy, said it believes Scotland should follow the UK strategy of waiting until the Copenhagen conference.

If a deal is reached, it should follow the UK government’s lead and only then set a 42% target.

The Scottish government had also increased the pressure on itself by including emissions from international aviation and shipping in its target, Kennedy wrote, even though it has no control over policy for these sectors.

“I would therefore consider that an appropriate Scottish 2020 target could be set slightly below 34% to account for different treatments of international aviation under UK and Scottish approaches.”

Despite these criticisms, the chairman of Stop Climate Chaos Scotland, Mike Robinson, said the significance of the all-party consensus could not be underestimated.

“It means Scotland’s climate change bill has the toughest target of any industrialised nation in the world and will be held up as an example, ahead of the climate talks in Copenhagen in December, of what can and should be done,” he said.

“This is a moral commitment and we hope other developed nations will hear this call for action and follow Scotland’s lead.”

Although on renewable energy the Scottish National party is very likely to surpass its ambitious targets to deliver half of Scotland’s electricity from renewables by 2020, ministers have failed to embark on any politically unpopular measures to combat car use or the growth in short-haul aviation.

It has authorised a second road bridge over the Firth of Forth and abandoned bridge tolls, paid to extend the M74 motorway, supports a new ring road around Aberdeen and dualing the A9 and wants a major new coal-fired power station.

Its most ambitious emissions-reduction policies, such as using carbon capture for all fossil fuel power stations, using marine energy, and a wholesale switch to green transport, either have targets set at 2030 or are largely UK-government controlled. The SNP has also completely ruled out any new nuclear power stations.

——————-

Scotland ‘Leads the World’ in the Fight Against Climate Change

The Scottish Parliament today (Wednesday 24 June) led the world by passing the strongest climate change legislation of any industrialised nation.

MSPs voted in favour of legislation that commits Scotland to:

at least 80% cuts of all greenhouse gases (on 1990 levels) by 2050
a 2020 target of at least 42% reduction in greenhouse gases
include the full effects of emissions from international aviation and shipping from the start
a strong duty on all public bodies to make a full contribution to tackling climate change
strong energy efficiency measures to tackle fuel poverty and save energy
Stop Climate Chaos Scotland (SCCS) has been campaigning for three years to see these key elements included in the Bill.

Mike Robinson, Chair of Stop Climate Chaos Scotland, said: This is a truly momentous day. The Scottish Parliament has voted for legislation that will be held up as a positive example to the world ahead of climate talks in Copenhagen in December. An emissions reduction target of at least 42% and the inclusion of aviation and shipping from the start sets Scotland’s Bill apart from the UK Act. We hope other developed nations will hear this call for action and follow Scotland’s lead. Now that MSPs from all parties have made these moral commitments, they have a responsibility to do what is necessary to deliver them.

Stop Climate Chaos Scotland commends the Liberal Democrats and Greens for introducing robust targets early in the process and Labour and the SNP for their strong targets as the Bill neared conclusion.

—————
To the Editor:

Re “In Climate Change Bill, What May Become an Election-Year Issue” (Congressional Memo, June 27, The New York Times):

I can only hope that voters will take the time to read what the scientists are saying and see through the hot air offered by those politicians who deny global warming and deny the urgency of the situation.

Michael Yellin
Montclair, N.J., June 28, 2009

•

To the Editor:

“Betraying the Planet,” by Paul Krugman (column, June 29, The New York Times), recognizes that we can no longer afford to deny global warming, particularly in light of heavy Republican opposition to the Waxman-Markey bill that was passed in the House on June 26. Refuting global warming certainly constitutes betraying the planet, yet, surprisingly enough, so does supporting the bill.

A minority of the 212 representatives who voted against the bill did so because they considered the bill too weak. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said that countries should cut their emissions by 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. Yet the short-term target in the bill offers only a 4 percent reduction by 2020, which just begins to signal the numerous problems with the bill.

Supporting this bill is a step backward and would only further betray the planet and give in to these global warming deniers.

Brian Howe
Manlius, N.Y., June 30, 2009

•

Algae Farm Aims to Turn Carbon Dioxide Into Fuel.

By MATTHEW L. WALD
The New York Times, June 28, 2009

Algenol Biofuels
Algenol grows algae in troughs filled with saltwater that becomes saturated with carbon dioxide.

Dow Chemical and Algenol Biofuels, a start-up company, are set to announce Monday that they will build a demonstration plant that, if successful, would use algae to turn carbon dioxide into ethanol as a vehicle fuel or an ingredient in plastics.

Because algae does not require any farmland or much space, many energy companies are trying to use it to make commercial quantities of hydrocarbons for fuel and chemicals. But harvesting the hydrocarbons has proved difficult so far.
The ethanol would be sold as fuel, the companies said, but Dow’s long-term interest is in using it as an ingredient for plastics, replacing natural gas. The process also produces oxygen, which could be used to burn coal in a power plant cleanly, said Paul Woods, chief executive of Algenol, which is based in Bonita Springs, Fla. The exhaust from such a plant would be mostly carbon dioxide, which could be reused to make more algae.

“We give them the oxygen, we get very pure carbon dioxide, and the output is very cheap ethanol,” said Mr. Woods, who said the target price was $1 a gallon.

Algenol grows algae in “bioreactors,” troughs covered with flexible plastic and filled with saltwater. The water is saturated with carbon dioxide, to encourage growth of the algae. “It looks like a long hot dog balloon,” Mr. Woods said.

Dow, a maker of specialty plastics, will provide the “balloon” material.

The algae, through photosynthesis, convert the carbon dioxide and water into ethanol, which is a hydrocarbon, oxygen and fresh water.

The company has 40 bioreactors in Florida, and as part of the demonstration project plans 3,100 of them on a 24-acre site at Dow’s Freeport, Tex., site. Among the steps still being improved is the separation of the oxygen and water from the ethanol. The Georgia Institute of Technology will work on that process, as will Membrane Technology and Research, a company in Menlo Park, Calif. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory, an Energy Department lab, will study carbon dioxide sources and their impact on the algae samples.

Algenol and its partners are planning a demonstration plant that could produce 100,000 gallons a year. The company and its partners were spending more than $50 million, said Mr. Woods, but not all of that was going into the pilot plant. The company had applied to the Energy Department for financing under the stimulus bill, but would build a pilot plant with or without a grant, he said.

With a stimulus grant, he said, the division of spending would be slightly more than 50 percent from the private sector, although the normal level was 20 percent. The project would create 300 jobs, he said, adding that Algenol and Dow were “incredibly hopeful” of getting the grant, partly because they had a combination of an innovative start-up company, a major company with extensive experience in industrial processes, a university and a national laboratory.

At Dow, Peter A. Molinaro, a spokesman, said that the ethanol was “intriguing to us as a feedstock, because the chemistry is simple.” Dow is already working on using ethanol from Brazilian sugar cane as a replacement for natural gas as an ingredient in plastics.

When Congress created a tax subsidy for ethanol, it raised the price for nonfuel users like Dow, he said. “We’re looking at options, and this is one,” he said.

————

See also:

“The Alga Dunaliella” editors - Ami Ben-Amotz, Jurgen E.W. Polle, D.V. Subba Rao, Science Publishers, Enfield (NH), Jersey, Plymouth, printed in India, 2009 - 555p. - www.scipub.net

The Neda or the “Iran Libre” - the new non-alcoholic green drink of choice.

It is non alcoholic in deference to the Islamic people.

It is based on cool mint and lime juice tamed with some black chocolate syrup and strawberry pulp.

The latter two in memory of old United States and its new President.

Garnish with a rim of salt and in major bars, like the Delegates’ Bar at the UN, with glass hang-ons of two lions - the Iranian lion and the British lion.

Drink when discussing Climate Change and Green Energy Policy.

 In 1953 Iran lost its one shot at real democracy thanks to the US CIA. Later on Iran lost one million people on the hands of  a US sanctioned Saddam Hussein attack - now the Iranian government blames their old enemies while beating their own people. They also blame British nationals - but these days the real blame - honestly - is on all of us - this because we allow funds to flow to the coffers of the Iranian government - then wonder what makes them tick?

How long will it still take to recognize not just the miserable US history in Iran, which finally was recognized as such by President Obama, but also the fact that behind the CIA and the decision makers in the US Department of State - and in the White House itself - was that forced dependency on oil - engineered by self serving oil interests that had and still have a strangle hold on US policy. That is what set up the CIA and the others to do exactly what they did.

The memory of Neda Agha-Soltan deserves better from us - it deserves a good GREEN LAW in the United States - the kind of law that will help us fight our addiction to oil and thus retire the batton wielding and gun shooting goons of Tehran.

————–

NEW YORK TIMES OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Green Revolution(s)

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: June 23, 2009

There has been a lot of worthless chatter about what President Barack Obama should say about Iran’s incipient “Green Revolution.” Sorry, but Iranian reformers don’t need our praise. They need the one thing we could do, without firing a shot, that would truly weaken the Iranian theocrats and force them to unshackle their people. What’s that? End our addiction to the oil that funds Iran’s Islamic dictatorship. Launching a real Green Revolution in America would be the best way to support the “Green Revolution” in Iran.

Oil is the magic potion that enables Iran’s turbaned shahs — “Shah Khamenei” and “Shah Ahmadinejad” — to snub their noses at the world and at many of their own people as well. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad behaves like someone who was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple. By coincidence, he’s been president of Iran during a period of record high oil prices. So, although he presides over an economy that makes nothing the world wants, he can lecture us about how the West is in decline and the Holocaust was a “myth.” Trust me, at $25 a barrel, he won’t be declaring that the Holocaust was a myth anymore.

The Obama team wants to pursue talks with Iran over its nuclear program, no matter who wins there. Fine. But the issue is not talk or no talk. The issue is leverage or no leverage. I love talking to people — especially in the Middle East — on one condition: that we have the leverage. As long as oil prices are high, Iran will have too much leverage and will be able to resist concessions on its nuclear program. With oil at $70 a barrel, our economic sanctions on Iran are an annoyance; at $25, they really hurt.

“People do not change when you tell them they should; they change when they tell themselves they must,” observed Michael Mandelbaum, the Johns Hopkins University foreign policy specialist. And nothing would tell Iran’s leaders that they must change more than collapsing oil prices.

* * * * *

Mr. Obama has already started some excellent energy-saving initiatives. But we need more. Imposing an immediate “Freedom Tax” of $1 a gallon on gasoline — with rebates to the poor and elderly — would be a triple positive: It would stimulate more investment in renewable energy now; it would stimulate more consumer demand for the energy-efficient vehicles that the reborn General Motors and Chrysler are supposed to make; and, it would reduce our oil imports in a way that would surely affect the global price and weaken every petro-dictator.

That is how — as Bill Maher likes to say — we make the bad guys “fight all of us.”

Sure, it would take time to influence the regime, but, unlike words alone, it will have an impact. I believe in “The First Law of Petro-Politics,” which stipulates that the price of oil and the pace of freedom in petrolist states — states totally dependent on oil exports to run their economies — operate in an inverse correlation. As the price of oil goes down, the pace of freedom goes up because leaders have to educate and unleash their people to innovate and trade. As the price of oil goes up, the pace of freedom goes down because leaders just have to stick a pipe in the ground to stay in power.

Exhibit A: the Soviet Union. High oil prices in the 1970s suckered the Kremlin into propping up inefficient industries, overextending subsidies, postponing real economic reforms and invading Afghanistan. When oil prices collapsed to $15 a barrel in the late 1980s, the overextended, petrified Soviet Empire went bust.

In a 2006 speech entitled “The Collapse of an Empire: Lessons for Modern Russia,” Yegor Gaidar, a deputy prime minister of Russia in the early 1990s, noted that “the timeline of the collapse of the Soviet Union can be traced to Sept. 13, 1985. On this date, Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani, the minister of oil of Saudi Arabia, declared that the monarchy had decided to alter its oil policy radically. The Saudis stopped protecting oil prices, and Saudi Arabia quickly regained its share in the world market.

If we could bring down the price of oil, the Islamic Republic — which has been buying off its people with subsidies and jobs for years — would face the same pressures. The ayatollahs would either have to start taking subsidies away from Iranians, which would only make the turbaned shahs more unpopular, or empower Iran’s human talent — men and women — and give them free access to the learning, science, trade and collaboration with the rest of the world that would enable this once great Persian civilization to thrive without oil.

Let’s get serious: An American Green Revolution to end our oil addiction — to parallel Iran’s Green Revolution to end its theocracy — helps us, helps them and raises the odds that whoever wins the contest for power, there will have to be a reformer. What are we waiting for?

Oil or Trees? Germany Takes Lead in Saving Ecuador’s Rainforest.

by Jess Smee
24 June 2009

Oil companies are salivating over the supply of black gold beneath Ecuador’s rainforest. The South American country is pledging to keep the oil in the ground — if the international community provides compensation. Now Germany has taken a leading role in raising the necessary cash.

There are many attributes which make the Yasuni National Park special: It is one of the most bio-diverse places on the planet, it is home to indigenous tribes which hunt and gather in its remote interior, and there’s a unique breed of small bat. But the national park also has a geographic curse: It sits atop Ecuador’s largest known oil reserve, thought to contain hundreds of millions of barrels.

And this potential fortune threatens its very future. In response, Ecuador has come up with an unusual plan to safeguard the UNESCO biosphere Reserve. The cash-strapped South American country has pledged to leave the oil in the ground forever — something unheard of among oil nations — if the international community compensates for some of the lost income.

The scheme, which was first mooted by Ecuadorian President Raphael Correa more than a year ago, got off to a slow start. By the end of the year the country extended its self-imposed deadline, in a last ditch bid to rally international support. Meanwhile, international oil giants were queuing to exploit the supply of black gold.
But now, all of a sudden, the ball seems to be rolling. Following a two-day visit by the Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Fander Falconí to Berlin, Germany had positioned itself at “the forefront of the initative,” the Ministry for Economic Cooperation said.

However, officials urged caution on a newspaper report which said Germany would pay $50 million (€36 million) into a yet-to-be-established international fund. “There will be emphatically no financial promises. The conversation in the Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development focused on the framework of the project and also on the efforts that Ecuador itself has to make,” Stephan Bethe, spokesman for the ministry, told SPIEGEL ONLINE.

He stressed that Ecuador’s idea had caught Berlin’s imagination: “It offers a new approach to rainforests and, from the perspective of development politics, it is very promising,” Bethe said. “Combining climate protection and fighting poverty will play a growing role in the future.”

Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Falconí told the German daily Die Tageszeitung that Germany had pledged “the first significant contribution” to a yet-to-be-created international fund. The paper reported that Ecuador was pushing Germany to pay up within one month.

Hat in Hand

Ecuador estimates that by leaving the oil untouched, some 410 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions will be averted. Oil is Ecuador’s most important export, generating around a third of its income. With the value of the untapped supply under the Yasuni National Park estimated at some $6 billion, the country argues it has little option but to approach international donors, hat in hand.

Environmentalists welcomed the plan as a way to save Ecuador’s rainforest from destruction. Preventing forests from disappearing is a vital element in the fight against climate change as they absorb huge quantities of CO2 from the atmosphere.

Still, doubts lingered about the Ecuador model. Tobias Riedl from Greenpeace Germany’s Forest Campaign warned that the scheme was far from perfect. “It is a double-edged sword. While we welcome moves to save this unique environment, the fact is that all rainforests need to be saved, regardless of whether they lie on valuable natural resources or not,” he told SPIEGEL ONLINE.

“There needs to be a broader move with industrialized nations paying money into a fund to save these forests. Preservation of these bio-diverse areas comes at a price.”

Meanwhile, environmental groups are looking to the Copenhagen Climate summit in December which aims to hammer out a new United Nations accord to replace the Kyoto Protocols which expire in 2012. Riedl remained upbeat, despite mounting signs that worldwide climate negotiations are stalling: “We expect to see how the preservation of forests can be brought into a new climate protection framework,” he said. “That is a step in the right direction.”

But there is a long way to go. Greenpeace estimates that €30 billion are needed to secure the future of the rainforests worldwide. And with 80 percent of all ancient forests (including rainforests) worldwide already gone, the clock is ticking. And Ecuador knows it.

Links:    Original article at www.spiegel.de

IAI to help build quieter, greener and cleaner aircraft
By Karin Kloosterman
June 24, 2009

Carbon offsetting your flight is one way to help reduce the amount of greenhouse gases entering the air. But experts in the transportation industry know that it’s necessary to start from the ground up — by making planes, trains and automobiles more environmentally friendly as part of their engineering.

Taking on a major partnership in the European Union’s flagship project - the $1.6 billion Clean Sky Joint Technology Initiative together with large European partners, Israel’s aviation giant Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) is helping to make skies greener. The company is the only non-EU partner in the massive research and development project.

Although in planning for a couple of years, just six months ago the Israeli company started working on its tasks. Led by Dassault, a prominent European aerospace company, IAI is also greening the skies along with Airbus and Eurocopter.

“We are dealing with reducing the amount of hazardous manufacturing waste, recycling, reducing weight - which will reduce carbon emissions - and extending the life [of the aircraft], which reduces need for recycling,” says Arnold Nathan, the director of IAI’s R&D Engineering Division.

The be all and end all of green flight projects:

Funded by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Program, Israel’s IAI is playing no small role: “This is the R&D product for the next seven years in Europe,” Nathan tells ISRAEL21c.

A third major project in the Clean Sky project is in composite materials, and finding ways to cut down on waste. The Boeing 787 and the Airbus 350 are all using more composite materials, explains Nathan. Made from cotton fabrics with epoxies, the process results in about 20-40 percent waste. And the waste is defined as hazardous to the environment.

Scrapping, recycling, extending aircraft life

In its mission, Clean Sky partners are looking into alternate ways to deal with the scrap, either through improved manufacturing methods, upfront planning, or recycling the waste efficiently. Using less energy in the manufacturing process, says Nathan, originally from Chicago, is also part of the environmental idea.

Additionally, IAI is focusing its R&D efforts on extending the life of an aircraft. “So if you make the life of an aircraft longer, you don’t have to deal with its waste and recycling,” says Nathan.

“We are really shooting to help the EU reach its 2020 goals – the ACARE — or Advisory Council for Aeronautics Research in Europe,” which by 2020 plans on reducing 50% of its CO2 emissions, 50% in external noise, and in general, greening the industry.

IAI plays a leadership role in four or five work packages. In one of six groups, each platform will come up with a serious significant piece of hardware by around 2013, two years before the project is supposed to end.

IAI is an Israeli aeronautics company involved in building aircraft. The company has partnered with Gulfstream in the US for building business jets. So far it has assembled about 70 business jets in Israel. The company also specializes in manufacturing the Arrow missile, and satellite and radar equipment through its various divisions.

Established in 1953, estimates suggest the company sees about $2 billion in sales annually, supplied by its workforce of about 1,500 people. Its products are developed from the skills and experience Israeli defense officials and researchers have acquired in order to help defend their country from hostile neighbors over the years.

HELP SAVE THE EARTH, TIME TO SUBSITUTE HEMP FOR OIL
By Dara Colwell, AlterNet
Every man-made fiber we wear, sit on, cook with, drive in,
are by-products of the petroleum industry — all of which
could be replaced by hemp.
 http://www.alternet.org/water/140739/hel…

EATING MEAT IS NOT NATURAL
By Kathy Freston, AlterNet
Eating meat is a relatively recent phenomenon in human
evolution. And our bodies have never adapted to it.
 http://www.alternet.org/story/140643/eat…

to our surprise, specially as we believe that it is D.O.D. that is going to establish the big renewable energy projects, and we already saw how president Obama came to Nellis Air Force base near Las Vegas to bless over such a plant, it is now the commanding officer at Nellis that presents arguments not to allow a second plant in his neighborhood. This is indeed something that we expect to require a Presidential intervention.

News About the Environment
Solar Project Meets Bigger Foe Than Cloudy Skies: The Air Force.
Opposition to Plant Highlights Hurdles Facing Renewable Energy

SolarReserve of Los Angeles hopes to build a solar plant in Nevada that could run in dark conditions, but the Air Force has objected to the project. (Artist Rendering Courtesy Of Solarreserve)

By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 20, 2009

On a vacant piece of land near Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, the promise of solar energy has collided into the demands of military training. And a solar project that would have featured a vast field of mirrors, a molten-salt storage facility and a 600-foot “power tower” appears to be heading for defeat.

In 2007, a Los Angeles firm called SolarReserve proposed the construction of a $700 million solar thermal power plant, covering two square miles near the Nevada Air Force base, where the sun shines brightly virtually all year long. There aren’t issues with wildlife, the company said. Moreover, it could hook up its solar-powered turbines to existing transmission lines left behind by a defunct mining operation.

But Col. Howard D. Belote, installation commander at Nellis, said this week that the plan won’t fly and is urging the government to turn it down.

The Air Force’s opposition demonstrates some of the conflicts and delays that could lie ahead as renewable-energy projects search for places to put big wind turbines or solar collectors, even in Western states where the federal government is a major landholder. SolarReserve has been negotiating with the Air Force for 18 months and has already revised its plans once to move the plant 25 miles away from the base, at the Air Force’s suggestion.

The Nevada plant was supposed to be a showcase for SolarReserve: one of the largest solar plants in the world, using heat-transfer technology developed for space rockets by United Technologies. A field of mirrors would focus sunlight on a receiver on a tall tower, where it would heat the molten salt to 1,050 degrees Fahrenheit, much hotter than other solar plants using similar technology. The molten salt would then flow to a storage tank, where its heat would generate steam and power conventional steam turbines similar to those in coal plants.

By using the molten-salt method, the plant could store 16 hours of power supply, easing concerns about the ability of solar plants to provide power when it is dark or cloudy. It would have a capacity of 100 megawatts, enough to power about 50,000 homes.

“We’re trying to build a facility that runs 24 hours a day,” said Kevin B. Smith, SolarReserve’s chief executive.

But Belote said the solar plant would compromise classified aspects of the Air Force’s training range and would interfere with radar. He said the Air Force would tell the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management, which owns most of the land in the state, to reject the proposal. (The bureau controls more than 20 million acres of land with wind energy potential and more than 30 million acres with solar potential.)

SolarReserve officials “did a lot of [research] with publicly available tools,” Belote said. “But when they came back for an official look the answer was, ‘Man, that’s still too close.’ And because of the sensitivity [of information], I can’t tell them why. . . . Unfortunately for them and us, there’s stuff on the Nevada testing range we don’t tell anyone about.” Belote suggested they try another site, either 100 miles to the southeast or about 80 miles to the northeast, near the town of Mesquite.

Top executives at SolarReserve said they were upset and disappointed. They feel that the Air Force pointed them toward the second site before rejecting it. Moreover, the Nellis base boasts of its own photovoltaic panels — the nation’ largest solar photovoltaic power plant; on May 27, Belote hosted President Obama and  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who toured the solar facility.

Obama “got a nice tour of the facility, but I expect he had not been informed that Nellis was resisting renewable-energy facilities in the surrounding area,” Smith said. “The fact that Nellis AFB allowed someone to build a PV [photovoltaic] facility on the base and sell them the power is great, but they are hiding behind it while they try and stop other development in the region.”

The Air Force has a history of balking at buildings near the 2.9-million-acre flight-training range in Nevada, which makes up 41 percent of the Air Force’s total training acres worldwide. In the past, the service has objected to tall hotel projects in nearby Las Vegas and to wind turbines.

But SolarReserve’s chief executive Smith said “we tried to make sure we had a site the Air Force wouldn’t object to.” The company’s plan would place a lone solar-power tower below a 2,000-foot-tall mountain range that separates their location from the base. The base sits well above the height of the tower.

In addition, the project would create many construction jobs, Smith noted.

SolarReserve is still hoping it can prevail upon the Air Force to approve the site near Nellis and has appealed to members of Congress for help. Belote has arranged for classified briefings to explain his objections to select Senate staffers, and he has promoted the project to the mayor of Mesquite, a small town just on the Nevada side of the Arizona border, 87 miles northeast of Las Vegas.

“Our community is very, very interested in alternative energy and the thought of being green,” said Mesquite Mayor Susan M. Holecheck. “Historically, our economic base has been gaming and tourism.” Another solar company has already proposed a project using similar technology. Holecheck said the town would have to study whether a SolarReserve site would interfere with plans for moving the town’s airport. And the Bureau of Land Management would also need to agree to provide land.

Smith hasn’t had time to pursue the Mesquite idea. He said the Air Force just mentioned the alternative a month ago. “The difficulty with moving to a new site is you start over again,” he said. “It is certainly something we can do if we fail at the current site but it will delay the project 12 to 18 months.”

from:  Cicerone, Brett

BUSINESS STRATEGIES FOR ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY
Location:
Lake Tahoe, California
Program Dates:
October 25-31, 2009
Application Deadline: September 14, 2009

Listen to Professor Bill Barnett describe the challenges facing executives in business, government, and nonprofit organizations with an environmental purpose. Preparing Environment Conscious Leaders.

As a friend of the Stanford Center for Social Innovation, we wanted to make sure you were aware of our pioneering executive education offering, Business Strategies for Environmental Sustainability. Drawn from a multidisciplinary curriculum and delivering strategies to gain competitive advantage through environmentally sustainable practices, Business Strategies for Environmental Sustainability is the first of its kind program designed to advance environmental responsibility across sectors.
Hosted at the Stanford Sierra Conference Center, Business Strategies for Environmental Sustainability offers executives a camp-like retreat where they can explore what it means to turn sustainable business practices into competitive advantage. The program is designed to cover a range of issues that are central to those who are leading sustainability initiatives in their roles as leaders in business, government, public agencies, and environmental advocacy organizations. Key takeaways include: frameworks to understand how organizations can strike a balance between business and environmental objectives while managing complex stakeholder relationships, and leadership skills to enable action as an internal change agent.
If you or someone you know would benefit from this program, please visit us online at www.gsb.stanford.edu or contact Brett Cicerone directly.

As per Earthjustice e.Brief  - to my horror, four months into the Obama Administration - we just found out that:

After years of delay and denial from past administrations, the Environmental Protection Agency is finally taking steps to declare that greenhouse gas emissions threaten the public’s health and welfare - which means they have not done it yet!The time has come for this action, and we need to encourage the EPA to move swiftly on it.

The EPA is proposing two historic findings under the Clean Air Act: that greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, endanger public health, and that emissions from motor vehicles contribute to climate change. This is a critical first step for the EPA to take in order to tackle climate change pollution.

The findings follow a decision by the Supreme Court which said the EPA has authority to regulate pollutants responsible for global warming under the Clean Air Act. Earthjustice argued the case at the appellate level in 2005.

While the EPA’s current proposal is a necessary first step, there are additional steps the EPA can take, such as setting actual standards to regulate greenhouse gases, particularly from motor vehicles in the U.S., which contribute 4 percent of climate change emissions, and from other mobile sources such as ships and airplanes, which contribute another 4 percent.

We know that the EPA is hearing from polluters in the fossil fuel industry who want to keep the status quo, stop the EPA from moving forward, and protect their record-breaking profits. We can’t let them go unchallenged.

Please join with people across the nation and tell EPA to formally embrace these findings, and then act without delay to regulate greenhouse gas polluters.

The National Museum of the American Indian presents a public symposium on Saturday,

June 27, 2009 from 2:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.

Mother Earth: Confronting the Challenge of Climate Change

Please join us after the symposium for an Indian Summer Showcase Concert featuring Andes Manta performing traditional music from the Andean Highlands at 5:00 p.m. at the Museum’s Welcome Plaza.

These events are free and open to the public.

Symposium information:
Native peoples are responding to the urgent challenge of climate change in creative ways, calling on traditional knowledge and adapting new technologies to craft solutions to this planetary crisis. Join us at this important symposium for engaging presentations and lively discussion about innovative indigenous strategies, from the Arctic to Amazonia. Speakers include Patricia Cochran (Inupiat), chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council; Robert Gough of the Intertribal Council on Utility Policy (Intertribal COUP); Miguel Pinedo-Vasquez (Ribereño/Caboclo), director of international programs, Center for Environmental Research and Conservation (CERC), Columbia University; and Deborah Tewa (Hopi), renewable energy specialist and educator. Moderated by José Barreiro (Taino), assistant director for research, National Museum of the American Indian.

Please help spread the word.
Mother Earth: Confronting the Challenge of Climate Change
Saturday, June 27, 2009, 2:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
National Museum of the American Indian
Elmer and Mary Louise Rasmuson Theater
4th Street and Independence Avenue, SW
Washington, DC

Metro: L’Enfant Plaza, Maryland Avenue/Smithsonian Museums exit
For further information, please contact  NMAI-SSP at si.edu

While the UN ran two more weeks of climate change hot air in Bonn, the US and China negotiated for real in Beijing. As we keep saying - the answer is in Washington and Beijing all the rest is really a waste of time on that road to Copenhagen. Will there be a US-China agreement before December? At least an agreement to make sure that by 2010 there will be a solid new Framework?

————

America and China talk climate change
Heating up or cooling down?
Jun 11th 2009 | BEIJING
From The Economist print edition
The big two emitters try to stop finger-pointing and save the planet

THOUSANDS of officials from all over the world this week neared the end of two weeks of difficult talks in Bonn under the United Nations’ climate convention. But they were conscious that even more difficult and probably more important negotiations were under way in Beijing. America’s most senior climate-change officials were meeting their Chinese counterparts. The two countries are by far the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases. They will determine whether a worthwhile global treaty to limit emissions can be concluded as planned in Copenhagen in December.

The treaty is to replace the Kyoto protocol, which expires in 2012. Some 180 countries will take part in the negotiations, but many feel that, on this issue more than any other, China and America make up a “G2” that determines the global post-Kyoto agenda. Shortly before traveling to Beijing, America’s climate-change envoy, Todd Stern, said that, though China may not be the “alpha and omega” of the international process, it was close. His delegation included President Barack Obama’s science adviser, John Holdren, and David Sandalow, the assistant energy secretary.

Details of the talks were scanty. Mr Stern was able to call them “a step in the right direction on the road to Copenhagen”. But progress is painstaking. Zha Daojiong, an energy-security expert at Peking University, says that, although he himself disagrees, many Chinese still feel the world’s original big polluters should be the first to pay for cleaning things up. Others suspect American critics see the issue as yet another stick in a relentless campaign to bash China. As one American official acknowledges, climate change is emerging as the biggest issue in bilateral relations, supplanting trade and human rights.

For their part, American critics of China make much of the rapid growth in its energy consumption. Indeed, in 2007 China overtook America as the world’s leading carbon emitter, with an estimated 1.8 billion tonnes of fossil-fuel emissions. As it decides how America should curb its own emissions, Congress remains keenly aware that potentially painful and costly steps will mean little if China stays on anything approaching its current trajectory.

China asserts its simple right to develop rapidly and make progress towards attaining Western living standards. It also points out that its consumption and emission levels per head remain a mere fraction of America’s. Moreover, a large chunk of its emissions come from producing goods consumed by rich developed nations, which have exported much of their manufacturing industry to China.

Lastly, China points to its impressive improvements in energy efficiency and coal-plant cleanliness in recent years, and its increasingly ambitious commitments to invest in renewable energy sources. According to Deborah Seligsohn, based in Beijing for the World Resources Institute, an American think-tank, China has received too little credit for the steps it has already taken and its commitment to do more. Others argue that China’s leaders have decided both that the Obama administration is serious about climate change, and that China, especially in its drought-prone north, will be a big loser from global warming. On this analysis, they may adopt even more ambitious energy-efficiency targets, if not emissions limits.

Mr Zha urges America to refrain from browbeating China into accepting distant targets for future reductions. That, he said, would be a narrow and empty victory, since it is too late for vague visionary principles. What is needed instead, he argues, is a workable timetable under which America agrees to rethink restrictions on sophisticated exports to China, and Beijing reduces tariffs to encourage the import of cutting-edge green technology.

In this context, another development in Sino-American relations strikes a discordant note. Sichuan Tengzhong, a private Chinese company, is to buy the division of General Motors, a beleaguered American carmaker, that makes the Hummer, a gas-guzzling hulk. There could be few clearer illustrations of the shifting contours of the quarrel between rich and poor countries over who is more to blame for climate change and who should do more to arrest it. Looking more like a tank than a car, the Hummer for years seemed to embody the worst excesses of American consumerism. Now, unless Chinese regulators reject the deal, as they may, it will become another symbol of China’s commercial clout and polluting potential.

————–

and from Bonn - the usual hot air:

UN Climate Talks Advance, Poor Urge More CO2 Cuts

Date: 15-Jun-09
Reuters, Alister Doyle and Gerard Wynn

BONN, Germany - Climate talks made progress on Friday toward a new U.N. treaty to curb global warming but ended far short of calls by developing nations for the rich to make deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

Four years of talks to widen the existing Kyoto Protocol have struggled to agree on how to share the cost of efforts to curb greenhouses gas mainly emitted by burning fossil fuels.

The United States and Europe warned in closing remarks on Friday that the private sector would finance the climate fight, not their governments.

“I look back on this as a significant session that has advanced our work in important ways,” Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, told a news conference at the June 1-12 talks among 183 nations in Bonn.

He said governments staked out far clearer views after their first review of a draft legal text of the treaty due to be agreed in Copenhagen in December to succeed Kyoto.

But developing countries called for more, despite the global recession.

“We finally managed to have a positive exchange on the numbers” for developed nations, China’s climate ambassador Yu Qingtai told Reuters. “But still we hear repeated statements resisting calls for further meaningful cuts.”

China and many developing nations want the rich to cut by at least 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 to avoid the worst effects of global warming such as droughts, floods and rising sea levels.

Offers made by developed countries so far work out at cuts of between 8 and 14 percent below 1990, according to the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

The United States and Europe poured cold water on hopes for major public funds, such as the 1 percent or more of national wealth demanded by many poor nations to help them avoid a model of high-carbon growth dominant since the Industrial Revolution.

“The key issue is not the number,” said Jonathan Pershing, head of the U.S. delegation, referring to “marginally” bigger investments to improve efficiency or to install low-carbon instead of polluting coal plants.

“We’d like to change that” view of developing countries that governments would bankroll the fight against climate change, he said, adding that carbon offset markets could play a big role.

The European Union also underscored that private finance would dominate in the climate change fight.

Pershing said progress in Bonn had been “slow,” and the European Commission’s Artur Runge-Metzger said “enormous effort” was required to get a deal in Copenhagen in December.

The United States expected China to undertake action, such as setting renewable energy targets, but not be legally bound to prove curbs. China and the United States are top emitters.

“We have advanced perhaps a couple of miles toward Copenhagen. We still have thousands to go,” said Jennifer Morgan of the London-based E3G think-tank. The next meeting will be in Bonn in August.

Outside the talks in a Bonn hotel, protesters brought along two live camels and laid out some sand to illustrate fears of creeping desertification. “We spit on weak targets,” one banner said, another said: “Shrinking targets, growing deserts.”

The chair of a group looking at new actions to curb emissions by all countries said a draft text had swollen with new ideas from about 50 pages to 200. Big breakthroughs were likely to happen only in Copenhagen, he said.

“This is like the evolutionary process in reverse. The Big Bang comes at the end,” said Michael Zammit Cutajar, of Malta.

——————-

and on the New York Times an article is full of optimism which is fine with us, but at this stage might be misleading like that famous pot that puts the lobster to sleep.

Climate Change Treaty, to Go Beyond the Kyoto Protocol, Is Expected by the Year’s End.

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published, the New York Times, June 12, 2009.
The world is on track to produce a new global climate treaty by December, the top United Nations climate official said Friday as delegates from more than 100 nations concluded 12 days of talks in Bonn, Germany.

The delegates issued a 200-page document that they said would serve as the starting point for treaty negotiations that open in Copenhagen in December.

“Time is short, but we still have enough time,” the official, Yvo de Boer, who is the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, said at a briefing. “I’m confident that governments can reach an agreement and want an agreement.”

The goal is a climate treaty that would go beyond the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, a climate-change agreement that set emissions targets for industrialized nations. Many of those goals have not been met, and the United States never ratified the accord.

The document issued Friday outlines proposals for cutting emissions of heat-trapping gases by rich countries and limiting the growth of gases in the developing world. It also discusses ways of preventing deforestation, which is linked to global warming, and of providing financing for poorer nations to help them adapt to warmer temperatures.

But many environment advocates and politicians suggested that delegates had not made enough progress in winnowing down those options. “Of course we have to respect the way the United Nations works,” Denmark’s minister for climate and energy, Connie Hedegaard, said in a statement after the talks ended. “But to me, there is no doubt that things are moving too slow.”

Representatives of poor countries complained repeatedly in the talks that developed nations had not made an adequate commitment to reduce their emissions. They expressed particular dismay over Japan’s announcement this week to reduce emissions by only 8 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.

Shyam Saran, India’s envoy on climate change, called such targets “unsatisfactory.” China and other developing countries have demanded that richer nations reduce emissions by 40 percent below 1990 levels in that period.

Experts described some of the back-and-forth as predictable jockeying in the months leading up to the make-or-break talks to negotiate a treaty in December.

Jonathan Pershing, who led the American delegation at the Bonn talks, said the discussions had unfolded about as fast as could be expected given the number of nations involved and the size of the task. He predicted a treaty would emerge in December.

He said that American negotiators acknowledged at the talks that “climate change is an urgent problem and it needs a global and immediate response.”

Despite the shortage of specific commitments, environmentalists took heart from the strong involvement of many nations, especially the United States and China, which jointly produce 40 percent of the world’s heat-trapping emissions. (In declining to ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the United States cited China and India’s lack of participation.)

“There are a lot of options to work out, but we have come a long way,” said Alex Kaat, a spokesman for Wetlands International, which fights the destruction of rainforests and decaying bogs. “There is now text on paper, and that’s progress.”

Bigger isn’t Better        

by Peter A. Victor
Culture Change, 12 June 2009

There’s nothing like a good crisis to make us rethink old ideas. The depression of the 1930s led to the rejection of the prevailing idea that unemployment would right itself if only people would work for lower wages.

Governments could do very little to help. These ideas were overthrown by experience… and by the invention of modern macro economics by British economist, John Maynard Keynes. By the end of World War II, most Western governments had adopted Keynesian economic policies designed to ensure that total expenditures were sufficient to maintain full employment.
Keynesian economists soon discovered that full employment today meant a bigger economy tomorrow because some of the investment expenditures required to keep unemployment down: on infrastructure, buildings and equipment, also expanded the productive capacity of the economy. So does an expanding population and labour force. Initially, governments pursued economic growth to meet the more pressing concern of maintaining full employment, but this soon changed. In the 1950s, economic growth became the number one economic policy objective of governments and all others, such as productivity, innovation, free trade, competitiveness, immigration, even education, became a means to that end.

Until a year or so ago all seemed to be going reasonably well. Then came the breakdown in the financial sector followed quickly by a recession that through globalization, spread further and faster than swine flu. Now governments are congratulating themselves for acting together to stimulate spending to get the economies back on course, much as Keynes might have recommended. But times have changed since his day. World population has increased almost three times, world economic output has increased ten times and with this massive expansion of the human presence on earth, we are confronting limits to the availability of cheap energy, to fresh water, and to the capacity of the atmosphere to absorb increasing emissions of greenhouse gases. At the same time we are destroying the habitat of numerous species of flora and fauna and the security of our own food supplies is threatened.

It is time to rethink the old idea that the solution to all our problems lies in the incessant expansion of the economy. Rich countries like Canada should explore alternatives, especially if poorer countries are to benefit from economic growth for a while in a world increasingly constrained by biophysical limits. Some deny or simply ignore these limits and argue that economic growth in rich countries is necessary to stimulate growth in poorer ones. Others say that with ‘green’ growth we can expand economic output as we reduce the demands we place on nature through more efficient production, better designed products, fewer goods and more services, compact urban forms, and organic agriculture. While these measures may well help in a transition they are an unlikely prescription for the long term. What is required is a radical rethinking of our economies and their relation to the natural world.

Although no 21st century Keynes has emerged to prepare the intellectual ground for such a change in thinking, we do have a body of knowledge built up over many decades and now thriving under the name of ‘ecological economics’. Ecological economists understand economies to be subsystems of the earth ecosystem, sustained by a flow of materials and energy from and back to the larger system in which they are embedded. It is understandable that when these flows were small relative to the earth they could be ignored, as they have been in much of mainstream economics. Economists are not alone in treating the economy as a self-contained, free standing system largely independent of its environmental setting. It is a widely held view that environmental protection is just one among multiple competing interests to be traded off against the economy. And anyway, this mainstream perspective teaches that if resource and environmental constraints are encountered, scarcities will be signaled by increases in prices that will induce a variety of beneficial changes in behaviour and technology. Should this system of scarcity, price, response fail then economists can estimate ’shadow’ prices which can be imposed directly through taxes or used indirectly through policies based on cost-benefit analysis to fix the problem.

To ecological economists, this is an inadequate response to the myriad problems of resource depletion, environmental contamination and habitat destruction confronting humanity in the 21st century. They question the pursuit of endless economic growth and contemplate a very different kind of future.

In my own work, I have examined whether and under what conditions a country like Canada could have full employment, no poverty, much reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and maintain fiscal balance, without relying on economic growth. Using a comparatively simple model of the Canadian economy I have explored scenarios in which these objectives are met. The ingredients for success include a shorter work year to reduce unemployment yet retain the advantages of technological progress, a carbon price to discourage greenhouse gas emissions, and more generous anti-poverty programs.

In such an economy, success would not be judged by the rate of economic growth but by more meaningful measures of personal and community well-being. We would adjust to strict limits on our use of materials, energy, land and waste, guided by prices that provide more accurate information about real rather than contrived scarcities. We would enjoy more services and fewer but more durable and repairable products, and we would value use over status when deciding what to buy. Rampant consumerism would be history, advertising would be more informative and less persuasive, and new technologies would be better screened to avoid problems to be fixed later, if at all. Infrastructure, buildings and equipment would be more efficient in their use of energy and we would think and act more locally and less globally. With more free time at our disposal we would educate ourselves and our children for life not just work.

Is all this simply wishful thinking of a sort that flourishes in troubled times? I think not. The undercurrent of discontent with modern life is rich with ideas for a better future, one that is not dependent on economic growth. For example, in March of this year the UK’s Sustainable Development Commission delivered its report “Prosperity without Growth?” to the British Government endorsing and amplifying many of the ideas expressed here. The Centre for the Advancement of a Steady State Economy based in the USA has obtained over 3000 signatures on its position statement designed to help change the goal of the economy from growth to sustainability. At the local level, Transition Towns has spread in less than four years from the UK to many countries including Canada, to raise awareness of sustainable living and to build local resilience in response to the combined threats of peak oil and climate change. Even mainstream economists are moving with the tide. Nobel Laureate economist Robert Solow said last year: “It is possible that the US and Europe will find that either continued growth will be too destructive to the environment and they are too dependent on scarce natural resources, or that they would rather use increasing productivity in the form of leisure.” Let’s add Canada to the list and go from there.

* * *

Economist Peter A. Victor is Professor in Environmental Studies at York University and author of Managing without Growth: Slower by Design, not Disaster, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2008. “Bigger isn’t Better” first appeared in the Ottawa Citizen  www.ottawacitizen.com).

Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, and the author, most recently, of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy (Henry Holt). A DVD of the documentary film based on his previous book, Blood and Oil, is available by clicking http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175082/m…

The US was incapable of taxing the use of oil, and has a hard time coming up with a climate law that bites into the problem - enough to make the world believe the US and join the US in tackling the issue.

So, the price of oil reached $73/barrel and the talk in Washington is again of “Drill Baby Drill” - Wolf Blitzer will have Sara Pailin on his program and what do you expect her to say?

With above in mind, I read two important articles in today’s papers and start questioning if there is not a renewed pandering by the US, even under the new Obama Administration,  of oil producing Gulf States? Do they think it will work?

The first article is the Financial Times editorial:

 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1d43d172-56b6-…

 Climate change for richer and poorer.
Published: June 11 2009

For now, we have hot air – not what you want when the topic for debate is CO2 emissions. But, only months before December’s Copenhagen meeting, where 181 countries are supposed to slug out a post-Kyoto protocol, bluster inevitably outweighs real concessions.

The biggest impasse is between China and the US, which together emit 40 per cent of the world’s carbon. The US is considering legislation that would cut emissions by 16-17 per cent from current levels by 2020 – roughly flat on 1990 levels, Kyoto’s baseline year. Japan this week went slightly better, offering an 8 per cent cut from 1990. The European Union offers 20 per cent; but with the EU already making good headway on cuts, this is a lesser concession than it looks.

China and India are dismissive. Beijing has raised the stakes by urging rich countries to cut emissions 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020, and to pay huge sums to help poor countries cope with climate change. But everyone, China included, knows this is unrealistic. Its tough stance is an opening gambit, not a target outcome.

That stance is based on old arguments, but they are not less potent for being well-worn. The west has been polluting for 200 years and China’s per capita emissions are only one-fifth of those of the US. Some 40 per cent of Chinese energy use produces exports for western consumers. That Beijing has logic and morality on its side, however, does not mean we will not all perish by applying them.

Not all is lost. China, and even India, are doing more than they are letting on. But they cannot be seen as being lectured by the west: much of their tough talk is for domestic display. So neither wants to be penned in by binding commitments – but they do want to be more energy-efficient and less polluting. Notwithstanding the smog hanging over Chinese cities, Beijing really is trying to implement stricter environmental standards.

Developing countries will not accept absolute cuts. But there is talk behind the scenes of China “bending the curve” – slowing the rate of increase. That would be a start. The best outcome would be if poor-country emitters were willing to quantify such promises.

To achieve this, rich countries must lead. They must put money on the table so poor countries see financial gains from combating climate change. They should also offer genuine research and technology collaboration – cheap, but symbolically important for countries such as China. If rich countries move, they may find China and others are willing to respond.

The Second is an op-Ed article in Wall Street Journal:

 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB12447633…

Why Israelis Are Cool on the Obama Speech - What’s needed is an affirmation of Israel’s historical right to exist.

By Judea Pearl

A friend asked me to explain why people in Israel, including seasoned peace activists, felt less than buoyant about Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo last week.

In theory, Mr. Obama’s speech has affirmed everything Israelis have ever hoped for. Peaceful coexistence and mutual acceptance with its Arab neighbors has been the ultimate dream of the Zionist movement since the Balfour Declaration of 1917. So, why not embrace a major U.S. presidential speech that calls for concrete steps to advance that dream?

My friend reminded me of the outburst of joy that seized the Jewish world on Nov. 29, 1947, when the United Nations voted to partition the Biblical land into a Jewish and an Arab state of roughly equal size. There was hardly a dissenting voice then among Israelis. Half a century later, the peace offers that Ehud Barak made to Yasser Arafat in 2000 and that Ehud Olmert made to Abu Mazen in 2009 prove that the idea of a two-state utopia is still firmly lodged in the psyche of most Israelis. Why then weren’t Israelis ecstatic over Mr. Obama’s speech?

There are two main reasons.

The first stems from crossed signals that are blocking the resumption of peace talks. Palestinians view Israeli settlement construction as the litmus test for Israel’s intentions vis-à-vis a future Palestinian state. Israelis view Palestinian textbooks, TV programs and mosque sermons to be the litmus test of Palestinian intentions. A society that teaches its youngsters to negate its neighbor’s legitimacy, so the argument goes, cannot be serious about respecting a peace accord as permanent.

Mr. Obama’s speech, keenly recognizing the importance of emitting trust-building signals to break the stalemate, had crisp and stern words to say about Israeli settlements but hardly a word about Palestinian denial and incitement. “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements,” the president said. “It is time for these settlements to stop.”

The hoped-for reciprocal sentence — “It is time for Palestinian incitements to stop” — was conspicuously absent. Commentaries on Israeli TV noted disappointedly that not a single demand was addressed to the Palestinian Authority.

This has left many Israelis wondering if the Obama administration is aware of the fierce, subterranean “battle of intentions” that has prevented the peace process from moving forward. In Israel, even the harshest opponent of the settlement movement would not support the emergence of a sovereign neighbor, rocket range away, that is unwilling to invest in education for a lasting peace.

A call for a simultaneous freeze on both Israeli settlements and Palestinian incitement, clad in timetables and monitoring methods, would have invited both sides to an equal honesty test. That test could help jump start the “new beginning” that Mr. Obama called for.

Secondly, Mr. Obama’s rationale for Israel’s legitimacy began with the Holocaust, not with the birthplace of Jewish history. “The aspiration for a Jewish homeland,” he said, “is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied.” Who else defines Israel’s legitimacy that way? Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad does. Iran sees Israel as a foreign entity to the region, hastily created to sooth European guilt over the Holocaust. Israelis consider this distortion of history to be an assault on the core of their identity as a nation.

An affirmation of “Israel’s historical right to exist,” based on a 2,000-year continuous quest to rebuild a national homeland, is what the region needs to hear from Mr. Obama. The magic words “historical right” have the capacity to change the entire equation in the Middle East. They convey a genuine commitment to permanence, and can therefore invigorate the peace process with the openness and goodwill that it has been lacking thus far.

I hope that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a policy speech this Sunday, makes historic recognition an axiomatic part of any peace agreement, and that Mr. Obama backs him up. This would turn Mr. Obama’s speech in Cairo into a huge leap forward in the quest for peace and understanding in the region.

Mr. Pearl, a professor of computer science at UCLA, is president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation, founded in memory of his son to promote cross-cultural understanding.

——————–

The line connecting these news is, as it is our long term belief - the lack of a US posture when it comes to a call to get off the addiction to cheap oil that in order to obtain it, from what once was a US high handed Middle East policy, it has become now a potentates-subservient US foreign policy.

The US went to war in Iraq in order to get a more dependable source of oil and found out that it is not easy. Now the new Administration is saying much that is correct, but does it have the full backing of the American people to also utter those words that it did not say yet? The likes of “let us make the alternatives to oil cheap by taxing the oil and using ourselves those funds to commercialize the alternatives, and let us tell the Arab people those chapters of history that they do not want to hear so there can be a leveling effect on the Mideast infighting - albeit, also allowing a chance for the most westernized Arabs - the Palestinians?”  We have long said that most so called West Bank settlements will have to go, but we do not believe for a moment that this will happen a moment earlier then it will become possible by having the Saudi King state in flowery Arabic, and plain English - the Israelis have a historic right to live in our midst as an independent, separate, historic and contemporary, Jewish State with which we will live in peace-because it is their fulll right to be here. We - the Arabs of the presently oil exporting states will work together with the Israelis to create a new Middle East that has diversified away from oil, and has the full honest intention to benefit all people of the region, and the world at large, to live in a post-fossil carbon economy that benefits future generations and not just our own pockets.

But also, according to further articles on The Wall Street Journal News Page, looking at the elections in Lebanon they say “Saudi Arabia’s Renewed Political Influence Counters Tehran,” and “In Iran Vote, a Challenger Looks to Past - Reformist Candidate Borrows From Playbooks of Obama and the 1979 Islamic Revolution - ‘The Army Is Beautiful in Green’” does little else then show the WSJ love affair with oil.

The fact that Hezbollah has the stronger army in Lebanon has not changed with the election, and the fact that Israel sees little difference in the status of Lebanon as long as that Hezbollah army continues to be tolerated presents no great hope for change when in Iran there will continue an army in Green Shiia fatigues and as long as Syria was not bent under Saudi leadership to a joint agreement between the two that results in a clear understanding - in public - that Israel is there to stay for the long term, and the world is allowed to slip away from the tyranny of oil.

Sorry - but this is interconnected indeed.

             Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale University.

Revisioning Human-Earth Relations

 http://fore.research.yale.edu/index.html

The Forum on Religion and Ecology is the largest international multireligious project of its kind. With its conferences, publications, and website it is engaged in exploring religious worldviews, texts, and ethics in order to broaden understanding of the complex nature of current environmental concerns.

The Forum recognizes that religions need to be in dialogue with other disciplines (e.g., science, ethics, economics, education, public policy, gender) in seeking comprehensive solutions to both global and local environmental problems.

Forum Coordinators:
Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, Yale University

Forum Administrative Assistant:
Tara C. Maguire Knopick, Yale University

Forum Web Content Managers and Newsletter Editors:
Sam Mickey and Elizabeth McAnally, California Institute of Integral Studies

With thanks to Anne Custer for the original development of the Forum Web site, and Ann Keeler Evans and Donna Rosenberg for their administrative work with the Forum.

————-

Summer Solstice Celebration with Paul Winter & Friends

Dear Forum community,

We want to inform you about the Summer Solstice Celebration with Paul Winter & Friends on Saturday, June 20, 2009. The two-hour concert will begin at 4:30 a.m. and will be held at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine (1047 Amsterdam Ave., New York, NY).

Paul Winter will be joined by an array of outstanding musicians from different musical backgrounds for a festival of the Earth’s music as we greet the summer and one of the longest days of the year. The Summer Solstice Celebration is a sublime experience; the first rays of sunlight filter through the Cathedral’s stained glass above the High Altar as guest artists and members of the Paul Winter Consort perform in different parts of the Cathedral. The musicians meet at the stage in the Great Crossing as morning overtakes night and we welcome the day.

This celebration will be dedicated to Thomas Berry.

For more information, including free music downloads, visit: http://solsticeconcert.com/

Tickets are now on sale at: https://www.ovationtix.com/trs/pe/729160…

Warmly,
The Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale
 http://www.yale.edu/religionandecology

The United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (UN-REDD Programme) is a collaboration between FAO, UNDP and UNEP. A multi-donor trust fund was established in July 2008 that allows donors to pool resources and provides funding to activities towards this programme.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that the cutting down of forests is now contributing close to 20 per cent of the overall greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere. Forest degradation also makes a significant contribution to emissions from forest ecosystems. Therefore there is an immediate need to make significant progress in reducing deforestation, forest degradation, and associated emission of greenhouse gases.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) agenda item on “Reducing emissions from deforestation in developing countries and approaches to stimulate action” was first introduced at the Conference of the Parties (COP11) in December 2005 by the governments of Papua New Guinea and Costa Rica, supported by eight other Parties. The challenge was to establish a functioning international REDD finance mechanism that can be included in an agreed post-2012 global climate change framework. Progress has been made and the need to meet the challenge is now reflected in the Bali Action Plan and the COP13 Decision 2/CP.13. A functioning international REDD finance mechanism needs to be able to provide the appropriate revenue streams to the right people at the right time to make it worthwhile for them to change their forest resource use behaviour.

In response to the COP13 decision, requests from countries, and encouragement from donors, FAO, UNDP and UNEP have developed a collaborative REDD programme. The UN-REDD Programme is aimed at tipping the economic balance in favour of sustainable management of forests so that their formidable economic, environmental and social goods and services benefit countries, communities and forest users while also contributing to important reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. The aim is to generate the requisite transfer flow of resources to significantly reduce global emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. The immediate goal is to assess whether carefully structured payment structures and capacity support can create the incentives to ensure actual, lasting, achievable, reliable and measurable emission reductions while maintaining and improving the other ecosystem services forests provide.

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From:  Charles McNeill
Senior Policy Advisor
United Nations Development Programme
The UN-REDD Programme is having an event at the current climate change meeting in Bonn:

MRV, MULTIPLE BENEFITS & GOVERNANCE: KEY ISSUES FOR REDD IMPLEMENTATION

Tuesday, 9 June 2009
1:00pm – 3:00pm

Solar Room, Ministry of Environment , Bonn

Speakers:

Peter Holmgren, Director, Environment, Climate Change & Bioenergy Division, FAO

Barney Dickson, Head of the Climate Change & Biodiversity Programme, UNEP-WCMC

Rosalind Reeves, Forest Campaign Manager, Global Witness &
Laura Furones, Regional Manager for Latin America Forest Team, Global Witness

Charles McNeill, Senior Policy Advisor, UNDP

Monitoring systems that will allow credible and affordable Measurement, Reporting and Verification (MRV) of REDD performance are critical for successful implementation of any REDD scheme.  Many countries are in the early phases of designing such systems by preparing and testing technical methodologies for accurate measurements, including field measurements and remote sensing, to enable monitoring of emissions from forests and land use.

MRV requirements under REDD are about trends in emission levels and therefore concern the stock and flows of forest carbon.  Specific MRV requirements will be determined through the UNFCCC process, building on IPCC guidelines.  Additionally, for REDD to be successfully  delivered by countries, alignment with national development contexts is needed to address synergies and trade-offs among multiple benefits (including livelihoods, biodiversity and ecosystem services).

The aim of the event is to support countries in developing appropriate institutional and governance mechanisms to operationalize MRV systems. Speakers will also describe ongoing work of the UN system on multiple benefits beyond carbon.  Implementation issues at the national level including institutional capacities will be explored.  The CSO speakers will address the governance and independent monitoring aspects of MRV for REDD.

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The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED)  announced its latest CLIMATE related publications:

 - Incentives to sustain forest ecosystem services: A review and lessons for REDD
Paying people to protect forests can be an effective way to tackle deforestation and climate change but only if there is good governance of natural resources, claims this study funded by Norway’s Government. IIED, the World Resources Institute and the Center for International Forestry Research looked at existing efforts to pay people in developing nations to protect ecosystems in return for the services — such as fresh water, wild foods and climate control — they provide. It aimed to see if such payments could be used to help tackle climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD). A review of 13 schemes that make payments for ecosystems services in Africa, South-East Asia and Latin America concluded that performance-based payments can be part of REDD but only if important preconditions are met.

 http://www.iied.org/pubs/display.php?o=1…

 - Community-based adaptation to climate change: an update
Over a billion people - the world’s poorest and most vulnerable communities  - will bear the brunt of climate change. For them, building local capacity to cope is a vital step towards resilience. Community-based adaptation (CBA) is emerging as a key response to this challenge. Tailored to local cultures and conditions, CBA supports and builds on autonomous adaptations to climate variability, such as the traditional baira or floating gardens of Bangladesh, which help small farmers’ crops survive climate-driven floods. Above all, CBA is participatory – a process involving both local stakeholders, and development and disaster risk reduction practitioners. As such, it builds on existing cultural norms while addressing local development issues that contribute to climate vulnerability. CBA is now gaining ground in many regions, and is ripe for the reassessment offered here.

 http://www.iied.org/pubs/display.php?o=1…

EU turns blind eye to corruption in eastern gas trade
Andrew Rettman, The EUobserver, June 6, 2006

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The EU is sending a “fact-finding” mission to Ukraine to see if its financial troubles could lead to a new gas crisis. But it is wary of tackling deeper problems of politics and corruption in the eastern gas trade, which also threaten EU energy security. The team of senior European Commission officials will travel to Kiev “in the coming days” and produce a report in time for a regular summit of EU leaders in Brussels on 18 June.


The move comes after Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said that Ukraine is unable to pay for Russian gas and will probably start stealing EU-bound transit volumes, unless the EU loans it billions of euros.

Ukraine’s state-owned gas distributor, Naftogaz, has poor cashflow and often avoids public audits. But Ukraine sees the Putin statements as part of a propaganda war to damage its reputation and increase political support for new Russian pipelines bypassing the country. The dispute over Naftogaz’ reliability is just one aspect of a major shake-up in the Russia-Ukraine gas business.

Mr Putin and Ukraine Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko are at the same time trying to strong-arm Ukraine gas tycoon Dmitry Firtash, in developments which highlight the links between politics, gas and organised crime in the region.

A Putin-Tymoshenko deal in January ended the role of RosUkrEnergo (RUE), in which Mr Firtash controls a 50 percent stake, in selling Turkmenistan gas to Ukraine. Naftogaz in March also seized €3 billion of RUE gas stocks.

A little-known, Swiss-based firm called RosGas in May took ownership of Mr Firtash’s Hungarian gas supply company, Emfesz, in a transaction that Mr Firtash has called “illegal” and is fighting in the Swiss courts. It is unclear who owns RosGas. But Emfesz has said it belongs to the Putin-controlled Russian firm Gazprom.

The events have already affected European interests. RUE’s problems have seen it cut deliveries to EU states Poland and Hungary. The Emfesz takeover means 20 percent of Hungary’s gas supply is now in unknown hands.

The Putin-Tymoshenko attack on Mr Firtash could be designed to hurt Ukraine’s pro-Western president, Viktor Yushchenko, and reformist presidential candidate, Arsenyi Yatsenyuk. Mr Firtash is widely reported to have given financial support to Mr Yushchenko. The Firtash-linked TV station, Inter, has given Mr Yatsenyuk lots of good publicity.

“People can see that Firtash is a dead fish, so they are taking little bites out of him,” one Brussels-based diplomat said on the Emfesz takeover.

See no evil, hear no evil

Mr Firtash, who denies having any business relations with Mr Mogilevich or paying Mr Yushchenko, is trying to engage EU support.

One of Mr Firtash’s employees, Robert Shetler-Jones, last year donated around €57,000 to the British Conservative party.

Mr Firtash’s small, Brussels-based public affairs firm, Macmillan, compares him to “Mazeppa” - a seventeenth century Ukrainian patriot betrayed by a fellow nobleman and forced to flee the country, leading to decades of domination by Russia.

A middleman claiming to represent Mr Firtash has also approached the Brussels offices of two large international PR firms in recent weeks.

The European Commission has so far turned a deaf ear. In March, EU officials said they were “closely monitoring” Naftogaz’ seizure of RUE’s gas - “closely monitoring” is a typical commission “holding statement” when it does not have a real position.

The June fact-finding mission will not ask questions about Emfesz.

“From our point of view, the takeover of Emfesz has to be done in full respect of internal market rules. If there is any suspicion this is not the case, there should be a notification by one of the parties. At this stage we have not received any such notification,” a commission spokesman said.

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Concrete steps:

“The European Commission has failed to recognise the danger these companies [RUE, RosGas or other alleged Gazprom offshoots] present to the energy security of the EU and has not made any attempt to convince member states to investigate the role these companies play in the supply chain,” Jamestown’s Mr Kupchinsky s

From IISD a Special Report on UNCCD Land Day at the ongoing Bonn meetings on Climate Change.

On Saturday June 6, 2009, organized by the UNCCD Secretariat, the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) Secretariat hosted “Land Day” at the Gustav-Stresemann-Institut, Bonn, Germany.

The event, attended by 170 participants, aimed to help climate change negotiators and other stakeholders attending the concurrent Bonn climate change talks consider in detail the linkages between climate change and desertification, land degradation and drought (DLDD).

The event was opened by Luc Gnacadja, UNCCD Executive Secretary, Yvo de Boer, UNFCCC Executive Secretary, and Adolf Kloke-Lesch, Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) Director-General.

Jeffrey Sachs, Earth Institute Director, Columbia University, offered a pre-recorded keynote address.

Participants then attended three panels, entitled:

  - “How does sustainable land management support climate change adaptation?”;

 - “What options can soil carbon sequestration offer for mitigating and adapting to climate change?”; and

  - “Sustainable land management in climate change policy frameworks: what is the way forward?”

Luc Gnacadja, UNCCD Executive Secretary, stressed that land has an unparalleled capacity to sequester carbon, but its potential to mitigate climate change is presently untapped. Emphasizing that numerous opportunities exist to include land within a post-2012 climate regime, he said the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and carbon markets must be changed and made accessible to farmers and land managers.

Gnacadja argued that soil restoration and soil carbon sequestration offer “win-win-win” opportunities for climate change, biodiversity and desertification. Noting that “poor soils lead to poor people,” he further suggested that inclusion of desertification, land degradation and drought in a future climate regime has the potential to bring more equity and justice to developing countries.

Yvo de Boer, UNFCCC Executive Secretary, discussed the linkages between the agriculture and forest sectors and climate change mitigation and adaptation. He highlighted that 10-12% of total annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions come from agricultural practices, and that deforestation accounted for 20% of GHG emissions in the 1990s.

Underscoring that some mitigation options can be realized at “low or even negative costs,” de Boer highlighted a number of possibilities in these sectors, including: reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation in developing countries (REDD); improved crop and grazing management; and restoration of organic soils. He added that mitigation options, such as agroforestry, support adaptation and promote biodiversity.

Adolf Kloke-Lesch, Director-General, German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), said climate change threatens to destroy the efforts and achievements of sustainable development. Noting that land degradation was previously considered a collection of local problems, he argued that today it is understood as a global problem that must be part of the global environmental agenda.

Kloke-Lesch stated that sustainable land management offers a cost-effective solution to mitigating climate change and that natural infrastructures, such as forests and soils, must be part of this solution. He stressed that sustainable land management must become an integral part of climate protection strategies in a new “Green Deal” forged at the 2009 climate change talks in Copenhagen.

In a pre-recorded message, Jeffrey Sachs, Earth Institute, Columbia University, underscored the importance of integrating the urgent agendas of drylands and global climate change. He said drylands are amongst the most vulnerable areas to climate change, and that impacts in dryland countries are compounded because these countries are also experiencing demographic pressures and have large populations living in poverty.

Sachs explained that the combination of these factors is “at the root” of some of the greatest security challenges on the planet, noting these issues must be addressed to lessen security risks not only for the people in these regions but for the entire world.

He called for several responses, including: better science on the effects of climate change in dryland regions; increased understanding of human systems, such as the impacts of climate change on herders’ livestock assets; and increased understanding of intervention measures that are needed for adaptation and climate change preparedness. Sachs emphasized the need for a holistic approach in addressing these issues, highlighting the potential for ecosystem-based adaption in this regard.

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(later addition) Professor Sachs - Highlighting the political conflicts in the 10,000 km stretch of drylands across the Sahel from Senegal to the Horn of Africa, across the Red Sea into Yemen, Pakistan and on to Afghanistan, Sachs said the lack of  “a coherent, consistent, persistent, scaled science-based response” to the harrowing effects of climate change associated with hunger, livestock survival and increasing stresses between sedentary populations and nomadic or semi-nomadic herders is the real challenge.

It is mind-boggling how above reality was suppressed by the UN for so many years - this as if the men in the UN glass building can speak only of unsolvable issues that provide for them a raison d’etre and their jobs, while trying to find the real reasons of those conflicts, the reasons before the fabricated reasons of “the other” would do harm to the bureacrats self  interest.

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www.sustainabilitank.info is still waiting to hear above ideas fully backed by the UN bureaucracy, but we are already gratified that many individuals, and enlightened governments, speak out forcefully. We were privvy, and victims, to a UN that was hiding above under the global rug because they felt it was just one more cause that can harm the sale of petroleum.

Please also read into the “at the root” comment by Dr. Sachs, locations like Darfur and the Middle East, and we would like to remark that we were hoping that President Obama would mention this in his Cairo speech to the Muslim World - but he did not. In our opinion, an opinion we fought for at the UN, a cooperative program on these “Land” issues between Israel, the Arab World, Iran, China, Africa, with international support, could go a long way in helping  address some of the problems with the Islamic governments - problems that were mentioned in the speech and the African problems that were not mentioned at all.

Juan Somavia is Director-General of the International Labour Office, at the UN ILO - International Labor Organization since 1999, prior to that he was Permanent Representative of Chile to the United Nations in New York from March 1990 to March 1999 - thus within the UN international system for at least 20 years. When it comes to change, he is thus very slow. Unexpectedly, he steps now into the climate change challenge, at a time that most at the UN have taken notice of this topic.

Adaptation to climate change poses a huge challenge - by Juan Somavia -   On the occasion of World Environment Day , 5 June 2009.

The global financial and economic crisis is prompting us to rethink values, policies and practices that have led to a global jobs crisis, increasing poverty and inequalities, and a widespread disregard for the environment.

We ignore the mounting costs of energy-intensive production and consumption patterns and the threats posed by climate change at our peril. Achieving a high-employment low-carbon economy must become a top priority in moving towards a more sustainable development path.

Green jobs that contribute to preserving or restoring the environment are being created directly and indirectly. Equally important, though less visible, green jobs can help to make the whole economy more environmentally friendly. Adjusting production and consumption patterns to low-carbon and green economies is a global challenge affecting enterprises and workplaces everywhere.

Similarly, adaptation to climate change poses a huge challenge, particularly for those developing countries which did little to cause the problem but now are likely to suffer most.

In December this year, the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference offers an opportunity to make a major step forward if an ambitious new agreement is reached which takes due account of all pillars of sustainable development - economic, social and environmental.

The Green Jobs Initiative sponsored jointly by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the ILO, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and the International Organisation of Employers (IOE), has highlighted the promise of a triple dividend from green jobs: sustainable enterprises; poverty reduction; and a job-centred economic recovery (1).

Meeting the dual challenges of the economic crisis and of climate change hinges on adjusting existing jobs and workplaces and on investing in new technologies generating new sources of growth, enterprise creation and jobs. Green jobs are a practicable and effective option for reviving economies and for quickly creating large numbers of jobs (2). Similarly, investment in adapting to climate change could provide many new jobs, particularly for lowincome
persons.

The ILO is working together with UNEP and other multilateral partners in a “Green Economy Initiative” adopted by the CEB (UN System Chief Executives Board for Coordination) to respond to the crisis by promoting investment in long-term environmental sustainability as part of a stimulus and recovery expenditure, and to put the world on a climate-friendly path.

It is encouraging to see that an increasing number of stimulus packages include support for the greening of economies and the creation of green jobs. But, lifting millions of workers surviving on less than US$2 per day out of poverty, calls not just for green jobs but also decent work - where the promotion of enterprise and job creation is accompanied by measures to ensure adequate incomes and social protection, support for social dialogue and respect for workers’ rights.

Wisely invested, resources for recovery could leave a legacy of energy efficient infrastructure, rehabilitated  ecosystems, renewable energy sources, and enterprises and workplaces more resilient to climate change.

And they could lay the foundation for a greener economic future which is environmentally sound, economically productive and socially sustainable.
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(1) See the Green Jobs report: http://www.unep.org/pdf/A_Global_Green_N…
(2) For a more detailed discussion, see for example, ILO: The financial and economic crisis - A decent work response; UNEP: The Green New Deal - A policy brief.