Once again, the annual rendez-vous with the UK's green and ethical lifestyle show is at Olympia Two in London this weekend. To get FREE tickets follow this link and type the discount code TRADE2010.

VIP Tickets including the networking evening are £30.

Earlier this month the government announced a £100bn plan to boost wind power to an unprecedented scale. The Crown Estate confirmed the latest round of
leasing of UK waters for offshore farms, which will add 25 GW of electricity generation (to the existing 8GW); this will be enough to power every household in the UK.

Additional plans for offshore wind farms in Scotland could bring the total capacity to about 40GW.

This is all very impressive. Construction is planned to begin 2013-2015. I was at parliamentary seminar on energy policy earlier this week where the shadow
minister for Energy Charles Hendry rightly commented on these plans en passant "we have a shortage of ships, skills, engineers, manufacturing capacity, and absolutely
no money, but other than that everything is going fine". It's a typical "Yes Minister" moment, and probably spot on, but there're reasons to be optimistic.

There is a huge challenge in delivering the necessary volume to build these offshore farms and the cost involved, especially at a time when Britain is
risking a rating downgrade and needs to keep a lid on printing money, but I have no doubt that we will rise to the challenge. It also beside the point
that in all likelihood all this technology will be sourced from abroad.

The concerns about the unreliability of windpower are unjustified. If there's wind for a net 50% of the time during the year, and we need to resort to burning coal and gas for the
remainder to make up for the shortfall, that is a 50% cut in emissions already. There is no objective need to expect that any one renewable source will produce electricity
at a continuous level 24/7. The key is to diversify the energy mix and securing that the main elements of the mix delivering the lion's share of the demand are low carbon.

The same applies at a micro-generation or household level. Solar panels can be a great investment because the excess production can be sold to the National
Grid. The limited number of hours of daylight means that a household needs to buy back from the grid part of the time. However the net balance
is that an average set up with an initial outlay of £30000  can bring dividends of about 5-7% p.a. by selling the electricity, which is more than one would get from
putting the money in a savings account, plus there's the added advantage that the household becomes a carbon negative contributor to reducing emissions.

This is far from a trivial point. Micro-generation and energy efficiency can play a crucial role in decreasing demand that would otherwise spiral out of control.  

Mikel Susperregi

When economists sit down and scratch their heads to find a solution for a problem, the first word that comes to mind is “tax”.  So it’s no wonder that many leading economists of the world think that a carbon tax will solve global warming.  

Unless a carbon tax is used as a form of revenue for environmental purposes and to fund decarbonisation, it’d be a hard sell. In ordinary circumstances there is no appetite for new taxes, and in the current climate to sell the idea of a carbon tax is nearly impossible.  

Usually the idea of a carbon tax is discussed versus cap-and-trade as though they’re mutually exclusive. There is no objective reason why this should be so. A carbon tax can be introduced in developed countries as a form of value added tax to reflect the carbon footprint of goods and services and to incentivise decarbonisation.

In this way, when products follow a strict code of carbon disclosure, they can be taxed according to their environmental cost (and this could include toxicity and level of sustainability, not just GHG emissions). This tax could then be reclaimed by businesses who offset their emissions or fund projects to remedy their environmental impact.   

The revenue collected will then be used to give grants to those businesses who take measures to reduce their impact.  In effect this form of carbon tax creates three tiers where those businesses who minimise their environmental impact receive the greatest financial incentive.  

A uniform carbon price or carbon tax worldwide would be completely unrealistic because of the huge wealth gap between developed and developing nations.  

Cap and trade has got a bad reputation because in the EU it has miserably failed to deliver emission cuts. CDM is also widely criticised for delivering carbon credits of questionable additionality, creating a bloated market of carbon assets to the service of financial interests but not necessarily the best formula for climate change mitigation. This can and should change in future.  

Potentially carbon trading could deliver the economic benefits that developing countries require to fund decarbonisation. Public money alone will not be sufficient to fund a technology transfer that developing countries need to grow and curb their GHG emissions at the same time. At the moment, developing countries are taking positions to show up at Copenhagen and demand around $500bn per year for “technology transfer” whilst developed nations are only prepared to commit $100bn per year (and even that might be tricky to pull off).   

It is probably too late now to expect that Copenhagen will give us a global emissions trading mechanism that will effectively make up the shortfall but this should be articulated sometime in the next year, as it is our best chance to fund decarbonisation, rather than through a carbon tax.   

India is one of the main CO2 emitters in the world but unlike other developing countries it does not want to set itself emission reduction targets. It is advocating a continuation of Kyoto, whereby developing countries are under no obligation to reduce emissions.

India's carbon footprint is 1.4 billion tons of CO2 per annum (that's 23.3% that of the US), but in per capita terms, India only emits 1.2 tons per inhabitant, which is per se a model of sustainability. The problem is that 400 million people are without electricity, and it is predicted that economic development will reach these people sooner than expected, so India's carbon footprint can skyrocket in the coming decades to China's levels or beyond if the generation of electricity and economic development moves forward with old technologies and fossil fuel burning.

Of course no one wants to halt economic development anywhere in the world. Our challenge must be to combat climate change while keeping the lights on. This also applies to the developed world. No one should listen to the greener-than-thou who advocate to turn the heating down and the lights off, and reduce your comfort levels; turning your standby off will make no difference to climate change if utilities keep on burning coal. Our small collective efforts have negligible impact and the onus is on governments to articulate energy policy to decarbonise the production of electricity. We as individuals cannot do it: it's beyond our control.

I think that India eyes with suspicion the West's insistence to curb its carbon emissions, and interprets it as an obstacle to its own development. After all India's share to cumulative carbon emissions is about 2%, so it bears no responsibility for global warming.

However there are signs of dissent within the Indian government, perhaps because they themselves predict their carbon footprint will grow exponentially if something is not done about it. A leaked letter from the Indian environment minister argues that it would be in India's interest to curb emissions.

The highly visible president of the Maldives Mohamed Nasheed has been relentessly advocating for a technology transfer from developed countries to developing ones to fund their development during a transition of a low carbon economy. It is not clear how astronomical these figures are, but they could be on the high end of the hundreds of billions of dollars, comparable only to last year's financial bailout. India and China are the two obvious recipients of this financial interest, and this will be a key negotiating element to find a convergence of targets.

The timing is however all wrong, with the developed world still recovering from the credit crunch and maybe on the eve of plunging into a second dip with problems such as Dubai looming and other countries finding it hard to meet their debt liabilities.

It's not the right time to write blank cheques to the developing world, and developed countries may find they simply cannot afford to foot the bill.

Brunella

With a few weeks to go to Copenhagen, participants are preparing the ground to accept a declaration of intent rather than a landmark agreement on climate change mitigation.  

A big meeting such as the one scheduled for December at Copenhagen is bound to produce few surprises.

For the last weeks and months, the environment ministers of the main GHG emitters have been holding talks, negotiating positions and recriminating one another, so at this stage everyone knows where they stand and what they are likely to expect.  We know that rich countries have little hope of meeting ambitious emission cuts without a complete rethinking of their energy policy, i.e. abandoning oil, gas and coal immediately and embracing nuclear energy with the urgency and determination of a military operation. There seems to be little sign of that.

We can't expect either promises of huge cash injections to developing countries to walk away from cheap coal and decarbonise their economies and avoid deforestation, particularly as most first world emitters are sinking faster than the Titanic under mountains of debt.

So the planets are aligned for everyone to look at each other, moan about all that and conclude that it can't be done.

The simple message will be diluted in the complexities of the background noise. There will be thousands of attendants representing hundreds of countries, including lobbyists, NGOs, activists, civil servants. All but the most high-profile key players will have very little visibility, although the majority of the participants will be there simply to be in the thick of it.  Politicians will be there to try to cut the best piece of the cake to suit their interests, or walk if they can't, NGOs to scream away their various messages, but the entire cacophony will be distilled in the simple conclusion that we are sleepwalking into disaster if we do not fundamentally change and reorganise our infrastructures, and particularly our energy production worldwide.

It is clear that something has to be done.

Kyoto expires in 2012 and a new treaty needs to be agreed to continue from that date. It now looks likelier than ever that 2010 will be a busy year for the main emitters to forge the agreement that won't happen next month.

Brunella

brunella@carbonica.org

The celeb-endorsed 10:10 campaign is at best a badge a hypocrisy for celebs to grab a share of the limelight with the cause du jour. It was famine in Africa, now it's climate change.

Companies must take emissions reductions more seriously than meaninglessly sign up to a campaign that doesn't provide any guidance on how to actually cut emissions.

In the United Kingdom the only meaningful and real commitment that the government can make to cut carbon dioxide and GHG emissions is via the Carbon Reduction Commitment, which sets out a timetable of reductions via the carbon budgets in order to achieve ultimately the goal of cutting emissions by at least 80% with respect of 1990 levels by 2050. The CRC protocol is the only effective way to achieve and objectively measure our progress with emission cuts.

If companies want to voluntarily cut emissions, there is a wonderful thing called the Carbon Trust. It offers a free service and can advice companies on how to achieve emission cuts to as high a level as they wish to. They are immensely successful in what they do and have managed to get major corporates in the UK and abroad to cut their emissions very significantly. Given that this service exists already, what is the point of signing up to 10:10, claiming to commit oneself to reduce emissions by 10% during 2010? The commitment in itself is not very impressive to start with, and clearly misses the point that there is a abyss of difference between signing up and actually doing something. But that's it - the people behind 10:10 are not into "doing" things, they are into preaching. Any company can just put a call to the Carbon Trust and get the ball rolling to reduce emissions by 20% during 2010 and quietly a better result would be achieved, minus the boasting.

The 10:10 campaign is the brainchild of Franny Armstrong, the director of "Age of Stupid", who led the "not-so-stupid" campaign of promoting her film under the banner of "fight climate change" (ie "buy a ticket=you are doing something to combat global warming"). When the campaign anticipated running out of steam (as you can only watch one movie so many times), then the 10:10 campaign was born. It was launched at the Tate Modern some weeks ago with the Guardian's PR machinery as launch pad, and a host of celebrities with the carbon footprint of the size of St Paul's cathedral and no idea on how to reduce it but very determined that signing up for 10:10 was very cool. I don't need to say that there was no one of any scientific calibre present, and the big guns of climate change in this country were absent and have not said much to endorse this campaign. One admires the dignified silence of the learned.. Some celebs wrote on the Guardian that they "have no idea" of the size of their carbon footprint, and "would prefer not to know" but "someone must do something about this". Yes, someone.. hopefully someone else. And they should do something pronto while I am busy preaching and parading myself on the papers. You have to laugh - bless. Celebrity endorsement is well and truly a kiss of death, and the global warming cause does not need this.

Just like pop concerts to fight poverty/AIDS/famine are uniquely self-serving to the celebs backing them, this is pretty much the same. The intention is probably good but the result is the opposite: the public gets the false impression that something is being done in raising awareness and taking action, when in reality nothing is being done.

The same applies to Greenpeace, who believe that climbing Big Ben is tantamount to some global warming mitigating action.

We need the green agenda at the centre of government policy and streamline this by ambitious plans in the CRC, and ultimately this boils down to turning our energy production to renewables and nuclear energy. No amount of signing up is a substitute to get the utilities to take this path to decarbonise Britain.

The 10:10 website gives individuals helpful information such as "lower your thermostat and jumpers all round!". I won't continue, it's just too absurd. For companies who want some practical advi ce it helpfully sends them packing in the direction of the Carbon Trust. Sooner or later they all end up in Rome, or the Carbon Trust, as it should be, albeit via a convoluted road, so the whole point of 10:10 is defeated, apart from keeping Franny Armstrong and her troupe bankrolled until they get funding for their next film.

The Cabinet signed up to 10:10 to save face with the media, and so did the opposition, but when crunch came to vote, the commitment did not become policy in yesterday's debate at the House of Commons. Again, here are discussing the difference between signing up and doing something.

On a funny note, back in July we invited la Armstrong to come to the Lansdowne Club in Mayfair to present her movie at a fund raiser where we talked about climate change and raised funds to plant several thousand rainforest trees. That is several thousand rainforest trees more than she or her movie proceeds have planted. She declined as "glam" was not on the table and soon we got an email saying she was a Vogue model and was photographed for a Vogue feature -- we are pleased to see she was busy saving the world via the means of vogue.. Another email of the "not-so-stupid" campaign pleaded support in cash to cover £100,000 which -she said- was "the extent of our personal debts".

 One day someone should do a Dispatches programme about all these people. It's just too much.

Brunella

brunella@carbonica.org

The Earth receives at any given time 120,000 terawatts of sunlight (1 terawatt is 1 trillion watts), whereas the global need of power is 16 terawatts (to increase to about 20 terawatts in the next decade).

This means that 0.013 per cent of the sunlight reaching us is enough to satisfy all our energy needs.

Clearly the challenge is to tap from this endless source of energy, and if we are clever enough renewables will help us keep the lights on and fight climate change at the same time. There's no need for lowering thermostats and jumpers all around, sharing showers and living with frugal amounts of electricity. Our priority has to be to switch to ways of producing clean and abundant electricity, not using less of it.

If we do it well, our high-tech societies can become decarbonised not by decreasing power consumption but by increasing it by as much as our technologies require it.  

The September issue of National Geographic contains an interesting feature article on Solar Energy "Plugging into the Sun". If focuses on the example of the 250 acre compound of 182,000 mirrors in the Mojave Desert, called Nevada Solar One. It is owned by a Spanish utility company and it is capable of pumping 64 megawatts into the grid, enough to serve 14,000 households in the Las Vegas metropolitan area.

It is a success story that needs to be replicated worldwide.

Brunella

The UN has given green light to two new generations of carbon offsets that will bring carbon reductions to a mass market in developing nations.

The panel that oversees the running of the UN's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) approved in principle last week a substantial project that will deploy over 30 million compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) in Mexico.

Details of the project can be found in www.unfccc.int.

The project is designed by energy efficiency project developer Cool nrg International and the CFLs will be distributed in phases over the next 2-3 years with the purpose of generating up to 7.5m offsets under the Kyoto's CDM scheme called Certified Emission Reductions (CER).

Each offset will account for the equivalent of one tonne of CO2 equivalent of greenhouse gas emissions.

CDM has been criticized for the high administration costs of rubberstamping the UN's approval. Trying to put together smaller projects that bring emissions reductions to significant numbers of people, such as energy efficient lighting schemes, is very expensive.

Under what is known as a programmatic CDM, developers deploy projects in unlimited numbers (in theory) providing each uses the same approved standards or methodologies from the outset. Therefore fees and redtape are kept to a minimum.

On the other hand, the UN also recently approved the the first agricultural methodology, or biological approach, for CDM projects. The UN’s announcement coincides with the USDA’s analysis report that shows the economic benefits to agriculture from the US cap-and-trade legislation.

The agricultural methodology, which will be used to design projects that eliminate the use of synthetic nitrogen on legumes like soybeans and cowpeas, was developed by Amson Technology LC, a greenhouse-gas-reduction and sustainability consulting firm, Becker Underwood Inc., a leading developer of bio-agronomic and specialty products and Perspectives GmbH, a Point Carbon company, a high-quality greenhouse gas reduction market solutions provider.

Carbonica very much supports these initiatives. We believe that they are very beneficial to developing nations, and they are pivotal in our global strategy to cut GHG emissions.

Brunella  

brunella@carbonica.org

All comments are welcome, will be immediately displayed and this forum is not moderated. Your feedback is appreciated.

In view of the recent report by Friends of the Earth against the use of carbon offsetting and the inclusion of forestry programmes in a future Copenhagen treaty, Carbonica wishes to make the following statement in defence of forestry (REDD) carbon offset programmes (and carbon offsetting in general).

London, 3 June 2009 

Carbon credits and carbon offsets are an integral part of the Kyoto protocol and have enabled an entire sector of the economy to invest in emission reduction programmes, contributing to the mitigation of climate change. Furthermore, CDM has contributed to raise awareness among companies and individuals about their priority to reduce emissions and pay the cost for the environmental damage caused by GHG emissions, in particular CO2. Putting a price on carbon is a good way to manage our environmental damage.

CDM is far from being a perfect mechanism and the forthcoming Copenhagen treaty gives us the opportunity to improve the framework. There are obviously fundamental questions that must be addressed. The principle that an emissions reduction programme generates a "carbon credit" which in turn legitimises a company to pollute and entitles it to emit a permissible amount of GHG gases into the atmosphere must be completely dismissed. In order to mitigate climate change we must start from the premise that the only permissible level of emissions is zero and our net global GHG emissions must be negative. The reason for this is very simple: the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is already too high and for our mitigation efforts it is mandatory that we capture CO2 from the atmosphere, not simply reduce our emissions.

However there is a very good reason why CO2 emission quotas are allocated within the Kyoto framework. It helps us keep our emissions under control. These quotas, however, should not be interpreted as "permissible" emission levels within our mitigation efforts, and within the Kyoto protocol's main remit every conceivable measure must be adopted to gradually reduce them.

For this reason, cap-and-trade mechanisms where companies gradually and continually try to find ways to reduce their emissions and overall carbon footprint, will be the more realistic foundation of a future Copenhagen agreement, and will pave the way to an orderly and gradual transition to a low-carbon or decarbonised economy.

Carbon offsetting is an umbrella term that is used for many different products. It is important to distinguish carbon offsets that are created from emission reductions and those that stem from carbon capture and result in a net negative amount of GHG emissions. Forestry carbon offsets are the only type of offset where net GHG emissions are negative, and therefore the only ones that play an active role in mitigating and reversing global warming. Other offsets, such as renewable energy projects, contribute to net emission reductions and make no more than a neutral contribution to our mitigation efforts.

One could ask the question of why a carbon credit is created by investing in, say, a hydro project in developing countries, whilst investing on a wind turbine in the UK would not entitle a company to create an emission credit that it can sell on. It is an interesting question. 

One answer is that by placing a price on emissions, developed countries can fund emission reductions and green energy projects in the developing world. This can only be positive.

Forestry projects on the other hand, are very different instruments. They are pivotal to climate change mitigation and for this reason not only should they be high on the agenda of the Copenhagen talks, they must be the cornerstone of our global climate change mitigation and reversal strategy.

Carbonica dismisses the claims contained in the FoE document that offsetting contributes to global warming and forestry projects will lead to land grab and poverty in developed countries. On the contrary: the only sustainable forestry carbon offset programmes are those carried out in collaboration with local communities, by enabling them to make a living out of the forests and the environment around them, and empowering them to look after the land and have a vested interest in protecting it. For these projects to work, local communities must have sufficient autonomy and there can be no land purchase for the purposes of creating the offsets. The local farming communities will look after these assets best when they work on their own land. These carbon offsets are a fundamental vehicle for developed countries to protect the rainforests, and provide local communities with the skills to make a living and protect the wildlife, biodiversity and the living environment around rainforests. 

Other rainforest projects that are based on land purchase are not sustainable in the long term; they create fenced-off areas that entail a greater financial liability to the owners of the asset than the ecological service derived from it.

In order to takle climate change and draw a significant mitigation and reversal strategy, REDD programmes must be extensive and well funded to permit reforestation in quite an unprecedented scale. Forest owning countries will benefit from this cash flow and their deprived communities will reap greater benefits from reforestation than illegal logging, which is a problem directly correlated with poverty.

Mikel Susperregi

Chief Executive

mikel@carbonica.org  

A study published in Nature last week shows that the extra CO₂ in the atmosphere is causing trees to grow bigger in the rainforests, absorbing a net extra 5bn tons of CO₂.

Tropical trees are absorbing more carbon than they would naturally, grow bigger, and unwittingly provide a helping hand in the fight against climate change.

It is very much a case of eat as much as you can, while food is abundant and readily available. It appears that trees, like humans, do have a good go at the buffet while it's there. It's not surprising that in areas such as the tropics, where rain is abundant and growth can be sustained, the excess of CO₂ can just be the thing for the largest tree specimens to go supersize.

This emphasises the importance of the rainforests as carbon sinks and how urgent it is that we restore them to their past glory. The earth has lost over three quarters of its forests during the last century, so we do have quite a lot of ground to recover. This is the challenge to combat climate change.

It's good news that governments are now talking about REDD (reduction of emissions by preventing deforestation) to include reforestation and prevented deforestation in the successor to the Kyoto protocol. For a while reforestation projects didn't have a good reputation but this is fortunately changing and there's now talk of financial commitments to prevent deforestation.

The UK government commissioned a report, the Eliasch Report, on financing global forests and the cost of preventing deforestation. Indirectly, all this has a lot to do with the financial incentives for countries such as Brazil and Indonesia to prevent illegal logging. I think this might be the wrong angle - paying people to stop destroying their own forests doesn't address the issue of why they are doing it in the first place. Illegal logging can move elsewhere and the subsidies will be money wasted. The real solution is to turn deprived communities into skilled farming communities who will benefit from sustaining the rainforests. So long as everyone can have a vested interest and views the rainforest as an asset of greater financial value than its timber content, then we will have a solution.

I believe, as we all do in Carbonica, that reforestation is the only acceptable form of carbon offset. The rainforests are the only mechanisms we have to absorb carbon from the atmosphere. Other projects, such as renewable energy projects are often a disguised form of deception. For example, if I was to put a wind turbine on my roof and sell carbon offsets from the emissions I have saved (by not connecting to the national grid and being self-sufficient in my electricity consumption), I would probably be able to get CDM certification, the Gold Standard and all possible rubberstamped "certified" and "authenticated" credentials one can imagine. However, it does seem ethically objectionable. Why should I pay for my own wind turbine by allowing other people to emit CO₂ into the atmosphere with these so-called carbon "credits"?

How can we talk about "credits" or "allowances" to release CO₂? It is a farce in this day and age of global warming. 

I don't know how my wind turbine differs from some hydroelectric project in the developing world. Such a project would be deemed as contributing to "renewable energies" but it would create tons of CO₂ in carbon credits because the local community is no longer using a coal-fired station. Well, my question is that they shouldn't be using a coal-fired station in the first place. If they stop doing that, then that's great, but that does not entitle someone else to spew into the atmosphere all the junk that the coal-fired station would have emitted. Otherwise the end result is the same, and we have gained absolutely nothing in terms of addressing climate change.

If, on the other hand, we restore the rainforest as a form of carbon offset, we recapture the CO₂ emitted and in the long term even more than was emitted, as well as adding to the planet's biodiversity, and helping local communities earn a living. And it's important that we talk about reforestation and not only about prevented deforestation. Reforestation means progress in the fight against climate change, because we increase the capacity of the planet to absorb CO₂. Prevented deforestation simply leaves us where we are.

In my opinion deforestation can be prevented by turning illegal loggers into farmers and effectively the drivers of reforestation.  

Brunella Bell

brunella@carbonica.org

James Lovelock, the father of the Gaia theory, has just published a new book "The Vanishing Face of Gaia" available from the Carbonica bookstore for just £11.99 (compared to £20 at shops).

In a brilliant article "Nuclear lies are keeping you afraid" published on The Sunday Times (15 Feb 09) he tells us that far from being dangerous, only nuclear power can solve the food and energy crises ahead.

I couldn't agree more.

The developed world has shied away from nuclear energy because it has played to our worst fears. During the Cold War, we all feared a nuclear attack and life in the aftermath of a nuclear war in a contaminated and radioactive planet. It was a chilling and very real possibility. The Chernobyl accident reinforced our apprehension and the green movement successfully campaigned to turn governments away from nuclear research and energy policy has since been predominantly fossil fuel based for this reason.

At the time it seemed like nuclear energy was the new Prometheus' fire and it wasn't wise for us to play with it.

Obviously with hindsight it's now clear that by turning away from nuclear energy we have played a more dangerous game. Coal does not have the stigma of plutonium, but it is not any less deadly - it has single-handedly landed us where we are now, with the planet's future threatened with runaway global warming and total destruction due to excessive CO₂ emissions.

Even today it still difficult to show open support for nuclear energy. It can land you an immediate fatwa from even relatively moderate greens.

In the Sunday Times article Lovelock tries to make a point about the fact that polonium-210 was used by Russians in the murder of former spy Alexander Litvinenko in 2006 in London. He jokes (I think - or half-jokes? surely he can't be serious..) that the Russians chose this rather expensive, complicated and deliberately cruel manner of killing for maximum PR impact, in order to re-ignite our fears about nuclear energy, radioactivity, etc. The idea being that Russia's worst fear is that if we'd take on nuclear energy with gusto then they'd have no one to sell their gas and oil to.

That is obviously true, but I think Lovelock is being colourful by connecting this with the Litvinenko murder. The FSB (and earlier the KGB) has a long tradition of using poisons against their targets - radioactive or not. It's all in rather poor taste, but there's a very valid point buried there regarding the vital trade interests of the gas and oil producing countries.

It is very true that it is in the UK's best interest to regain energy self-sufficiency. And this can only be achieved (in the shortest timescale) with nuclear energy. It would achieve the double objective of providing reliable and cheap energy in sufficiently large amounts (as any back-of-the-envelope calculation can predict the demand will sky-rocket as we increasingly turn to electricity to reduce carbon emissions - one significant element will be the predominance of electric cars in future), and the second objective of meeting our emission reduction target of 80% by 2050.

In fact the UK should go further and lobby the rest of the world (and in particular the largest polluters) to turn away from coal and into nuclear energy in the shortest time possible.

Wind and solar power are interesting alternatives and they should be developed in parallel with a nuclear programme. However nuclear energy should be the predominant ingredient of our energy policy. Nothing else is realistic to meet the demand that we can anticipate, and to do so in a sustainable way.

Brunella Bell

brunella@carbonica.org

"The Vanishing Face of Gaia" is published on February 26 by Allen Lane (Penguin) and can be ordered following the link above.

CARBONICA - PROTECTING THE WORLD'S RAINFORESTS 

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The ebook has entered the market timidly and with limited impact but it doesn't take a lot of vision to see it's going to be huge.

Ebooks will boom like the mobile phone industry, and in less than a decade will demise all printed papers, books and magazines, which will be a blessing to the environment.

To be honest I can't wait to buy a Sony Reader, now available through Amazon and Waterstones in the UK. This little cute gadget is going to be so much more than the next ipod. It's easy to see this - after all the written word is so much more predominant in our day to day business than music tracks. The ipod demised the CD player, and itunes turned the whole music industry upside down, to the benefit of the consumer - no more trips to the shop to buy a CD while you can download thousands of tracks for the fraction of the price and manage it all in a small gadget very efficiently. 

The ebook will cover so much more ground. Forget about buying expensive books and magazines, if you can browse an itunes equivalent of a bookshop and download all you want to read. I imagine that internet bookstores like Amazon will re-invent themselves to offer ebooks to download and eventually phase out the hardcopy books (except for eccentrics like those who collect vinyl LPs).

I can only dream of all the space that would be freed up getting rid of dusty bookcases, and no more weighty books in the handbag. It sounds like my idea of heaven.

Imagine having the day's newspapers beamed to your ebook on your way to work and then browse all the papers you want while you travel on the tube! No more inky fingers, etc, plus you can get so much more information (and diversity) by reading several newspapers.

There are many reasons to object to printed newspapers - apart from the carcinogenic ink and the waste of paper (we don't read the bulk of it), they are simply impractical to carry and to read. In fact, younger savvier generations are turning to reading news online, which is causing plummeting sales in the printed sector, and a good thing too. The ebook will deliver the final blow and then everyone will simply go electronic.   

At the moment the number of books available to read with the Sony reader is quite limited but it is easy to see this will soon change. You can't help feeling this is a moment like when mobile phones where at their infancy -for those of us old enough to remember that in the 80's only inadequate yuppies carried those brick-sized objects around. We all had opinions on the subject and only the visionary saw the clumsy thing was going to take off the way it did. Now it's obvious the ebook is destined to a similarly stellar future. It is our decarbonised future.

Brunella Bell

brunella@carbonica.org

PS An update with two interesting articles on Kindle II, Amazon's new ebook reader: "Kindle2: Style Over Substance" (Forbes.com) and "Amazon Unveils Latest E-Book Tablet" (Carbonica News)

For those of you who want to compare, here is an interesting comparison article: "Showdown: Kindle 2 vs. Sony Reader" (as far as I am concerned, I think both are great, and there's plenty of room for many other competitors, but for the time being these two are battling it out to dominate the market).

CARBONICA - PROTECTING THE WORLD'S RAINFORESTS 

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"Even if your steak was reared in the UK, there's a good chance it was fed on food grown on land that was once rainforest" is the message of a report by Friends of Earth ("What's Feeding Our Food?"), discussed on this month's issue of The Ecologist.

It is a chilling message, showing that our appetite for meat (and the growing trend in China) is turning huge areas of rainforest in Mato Grosso into monoculture soybeans farming at record speed. 

Apparently, the area of land required to produce soybeans for Europe's livestock farming industry since 1996 is roughly equal to the amount of rainforest that has been cut down in Brazil to make way for plantations since then.

In the last 15 years, production of soybeans has skyrocketed by 170% since it became the preferred animal protein feed since the BSE crisis. The large soybeans plantations are detrimental to local communities because they're industrially run and require very small numbers of staff (on average 1 employee per 500 acres).

I think that now more than ever before a true commitment to fight climate change means to eat less meat. The carbon footprint of meat is simply astronomical. Livestock production is a major source of emissions, using valuable resources such as drinking water (often in countries such as Australia where these resources are a more valuable commodity than they are at the country of consumption, e.g. UK). Then for good measure the feedstock is produced largely from depleting rainforest (greenhouse emissions from change of use of land amount to more than all our transport emissions combined).

A low-carbon footprint diet is to a large extent an "almost vegetarian" diet. Eating red meat is an archaic and barbaric habit that stems from our most primary instincts as hunters. After all, each time you are taking a bite at a steak you're munching a bit of muscle. How disgusting is that? It's positively pre-historic. Besides it clogs your arteries and it is a major factor in causing cancer (because you're eating less veg if you're appetite is satiated with animal protein). Obviously clogging one's arteries was not a problem when men lived to the age of 30 before the Stone Age, but in our day and age it does matter once you hit the age of 80 and beyond.

I can see the roaring abuse and rotten eggs coming my way from opinionated food critics and red meat fundamentalists, but it is true.

A sensible low-carbon footprint diet derives animal protein exclusively from fish and low-fat dairy. A switch to a much more significant consumption of fish should make us rethink sustainable fisheries and creative ways to regenerate fish stocks quickly to keep up with demand. But that's another topic altogether.

It's a fact that a vegetarian person using a 4x4 (SUV) as sole means of transport has a much lower footprint than a meat-eater who cycles. Here's some food for thought for all meat-eaters out there.

Brunella Bell

brunella@carbonica.org

CARBONICA - PROTECTING THE WORLD'S RAINFORESTS 

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It is very disappointing that the expansion of Heathrow airport was approved last night at the House of Commons.

Under the plan, Heathrow will double the number of flights (by over 350 a day) and singlehandedly boost the UK's aviation emissions by 40%, contrary to the Climate Change Bill. So, how can Britain pretend to set an example and tell the rest of the world to reduce emissions?  

Given that under the Climate Change Bill overall emissions in all sectors must drop 80% (with respect to 1990 levels) by 2050, other aviation sectors will have to reduce their emissions by nearly 90% to offset Heathrow's growth. This obviously won't happen, in fact the contrary: we expect other airports will also grow and build additional runways. Therefore other transport sectors will have to compensate for this enormous increase, and it is not clear which. It is already very ambitious to aim for a 80% emissions cut. It is not realistic to achieve it allowing aviation to grow from the current levels unless we expect to have nearly full decarbonisation in our road and rail transport. But where are the plans for this?

The government's plans imply that the aircraft using the new runway will be greener within 10 years. This is almost comical. These aircraft do not exist and they are not even at the inception stage. No single large manufacturer of commercial aircraft has plans to carry out significant alterations of engine design to cut emissions dramatically. So where are these fabulous aircraft?

I am sure that they will come about in due course, but not as quickly as Heathrow's third runway, and the government should be transparent about this. It is not acceptable to approve the expansion of the airport with the condition that it is for use by greener aircraft, and then once the project is completed tell the public that regrettably it cannot be used by greener aircraft because they don't exist. We know this now, so the additional runway should not go ahead under this false pretence because we all know that it will be used by today's polluting and noisy 747's and the like.

Today we have selected an interesting item of news regarding electric airplanes ("Will Electric Planes Take Off?", 29 Jan 09). This is going to be a growth sector that is attracting some very clever investors, who in my opinion, can see where our future is. But you can see from the article that the state of the art with truly green aircraft is still at its infancy. These aircraft are very small and light and we might still be generations away from achieving the technological feat of flying commercial aircraft with electricity. Perhaps this will never be possible, unless nuclear energy is used, in which case it would be extremely expensive and not viable for commercial use.

Realistically we might be able to achieve light small commercial aircraft for short-haul routes. Perhaps hybrid models will come about for long-haul. Watch this space, as I feel this is the little corner for the truly visionary. Electric aircraft are an amazing challenge and it could be this century's big achievement.

Back to the present. The present of Rolls Royce engines, jet propulsion and air travel with dirty old fossil fuels. And that's where we are and that's where we will be in 10 years' time when Heathrow's third runway opens. And that means that the House of Commons has OK-ed Heathrow's carbon footprint to become positively astronomical.

Apart from the natural objection that this is going to cost the UK taxpayer £9bn for the benefit of a private company such as BAA, of course. I am a bit in the dark about distribution of stakeholding. Is the £9bn a grant to Spanish Ferrovial to increase their assets and recover a near monopoly position after the MCC has ordered them to sell two of the London airports to break their [badly-managed] monopoly?

Brunella Bell

press@carbonica.org

CARBONICA - PROTECTING THE WORLD'S RAINFORESTS 

Click  here to reduce your carbon footprint