news20091014gdn1

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Carbon capture and storage (CCS)]
Carbon capture plans won't be derailed by Kingsnorth, insists Miliband
Energy and climate change secretary says viable CCS technologies will be pursued with 'great urgency'
Alok Jha, green technology correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 13 October 2009 19.19 BST Article history

Energy and climate secretary Ed Miliband has insisted that the delay to the new coal-fired power plant at Kingsnorth would not derail Britain's drive to prove the viability of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, seen as vital to ensuring energy security while also curbing carbon emissions.

The comments come as the International Energy Agency (IEA) released a report saying that at least 850 full-scale CCS plants need to be built by 2030 – 100 of them by 2020 – if the world is to avoid dangerous climate change by halving global carbon emissions by 2050. To date, no plant has been shown to be able to trap and bury the emissions from a power station on a commercial scale.

Last week, power company E.ON said the recession had cut demand for electricity, forcing it to postpone its Kingsnorth plans. Kingsnorth had been seen as a frontrunner in the UK government's competition to build a CCS demonstration. Plans for clean coal were dealt a further blow this week when the Danish energy company Dong Energy announced it was pulling out of plans for another major new coal-fired plant in Ayrshire.

But Miliband said: "The recession and decisions of individual companies will not push us back from driving CCS forward with great urgency. There are no shortage of companies that want to come forward with projects and we are determined [to make sure] CCS happens quickly."

E.ON is technically still taking part in the UK competition, which aims to see up to four CCS demonstration plants running by the middle of the next decade, but it is unclear if its revised plans for Kingsnorth would fit in that timeframe. Friends of the Earth's head of climate, Mike Childs, said: "Trials of carbon capture and storage need to be fast-tracked so that the technology can be applied to existing industry as soon as possible. New coal-fired power plants without full CCS from the beginning are not an option."

Miliband was speaking at a meeting of the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum (CSLF), a group of major energy companies and 22 coal-consuming countries – including the US, China, Australia and the UK – in London. The group issued a statement insisting that the "viability of CCS as a key mitigation technology should be recognised" at the UN climate summit talks in December, and encouraged major economies to accelerate deployment of CCS around the world.

Nobuo Tanaka, head of the IEA, said the economic crisis, and the consequent fall in emissions, had given the world a "window of opportunity" to halve the world's CO2 emissions by mid-century. He said CCS must play a major role, delivering a fifth of all cuts, with increases in energy efficiency and renewable energy making up most of the remainder. "Our road map says we'll need 100 large-scale projects by 2020, 850 by 2030 and 3400 in 2050." This is consistent with the G8 leaders' call in Hokkaido to announce 20 large-scale demonstration projects identified by 2010 with a view towards commercialisation by 2020.

The IEA report said the majority of the CCS demonstrations will have to be built, in the first instance, in developed countries, but then "quickly expanded to the developing world, such as China and India, where the vast majority of emissions growth will be seen".

The IEA's road map requires global investment of about $56bn (£35bn) per year for CCS in the next decade in developed countries, with up to a further $2.5bn in developing countries. In total, the IEA has estimated that the world needs to invest $45tn in low-carbon technologies by 2050 to make the required cuts.

At the meeting, Norway said it will raise annual investment in CCS to a record $621m in 2010. Norway is well placed for CCS, having large, depleted oil and gas fields for burial of CO2. Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said his country wanted to lead international efforts to develop CCS, and has compared the challenge to the Apollo space programme of the 1960s.

But finance might not be the biggest problem for CCS, according to some speakers at the CSLF, who stressed the need to gain public acceptance of projects. "There is still a lot of work needed to explain to citizens why we do this and that this is not dangerous to health and that this will not decrease their property value," said Andris Piebalgs, EU energy commissioner. A pilot project at Schwarze Pumpe in Germany has had to vent trapped CO2 to the atmosphere following local objections to its burial underground.

"In the end you have to take specific projects forward and have to have an acceptable public reception to those projects," said Nick Otter of the Global CCS Institute. "We've seen some of the difficulties of getting these projects through the planning phase. All the work we've done shows that when people know what it's about, they have more confidence in it. There's a real awareness issue there, which could be a real big stopper on the whole way forward. This must be addressed."



[News > UK news > Rowan Williams]
Dr Rowan Williams says climate crisis a chance to become human again
Riazat Butt, religious affairs correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 13 October 2009 23.12 BST Article history

People should use the climate change crisis as an opportunity to become human again, setting aside the addictive and self-destructive behaviour that has damaged their souls, the Archbishop of Canterbury said today.

Dr Rowan Williams, head of the Church of England and leader of the worldwide Anglican communion, told an audience at Southwark Cathedral that people had allowed themselves to become "addicted to fantasies about prosperity and growth, dreams of wealth without risk and profit without cost".

The consequences of such a lifestyle meant the human soul was "one of the foremost casualties of environmental degradation".

Small changes, such as setting up carbon reduction action groups, would help them reconnect with the world in addition to repairing some of the damage to the planet, because it was too much to expect the state to provide all the solutions.

"Many of the things which have moved us towards ecological disaster have been distortions of who and what we are and their overall effect has been to isolate us from the reality we're part of. Our response to this crisis needs to be, in the most basic sense, a reality check."

Williams added: "We need to keep up pressure on national governments; there are questions only they can answer about the investment of national resources. We need equally to keep up pressure on ourselves and to learn how to work better as civic agents."

In the lecture, sponsored by the Christian environmental group Operation Noah, Williams outlined a Christian response to the climate crisis.

"When we believe in transformation at the local and personal level, we are laying the sure foundations for change at the national and international level.

"If I ask what's the point of my undertaking a modest amount of recycling my rubbish or scaling down my air travel, the answer is not that this will unquestionably save the world within six months, but in the first place it's a step towards liberation from a cycle of behaviour that is keeping me, indeed most of us, in a dangerous state — dangerous, that is, to our human dignity and self-respect."

In a message to heads of state attending the Copenhagen summit, Williams said leaders had to create a "suitably serious plan" for the speedy implementation of protocols on carbon reduction.

"We have had unexpected signs that the east Asian countries are readier than we might have imagined to put pressure on the economies of the US and Europe. The idea that fast-developing economies are totally wedded to environmental indifference because of the urgency of bringing their populations out of poverty no longer seems quite an obvious truth."

Earlier this year Williams said that God was not a "safety net" that would guarantee a happy ending and that human pillaging of the world's resources meant the planet was facing a "whole range of doomsday prospects" that exceeded the results of global warming.

Humanity faced being "choked, drowned or starved" by its own stupidity, he said, and he compared those who challenged the reality of climate change to the courtiers who flattered King Canute, until he proved he could not command the waves by going to the seashore and trying to do so. "Rhetoric, as King Canute demonstrated, does not turn back rising waters," said Williams in a lecture in March.

Tonight's remarks came days after research suggested that Britons had little appetite for shrinking their carbon footprint by reducing the number of flights they took.

The study, from Loughborough University, showed that the vast majority of the public would rather cut energy use at home than go without flying for a year. While 88% of participants in the Propensity to Fly survey said they were willing or very willing to "reduce how much energy I use in my home throughout the year" only 26% said the same when asked if they would "not fly in the next 12 months".

news20091014gdn2

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Nuclear waste]
French minister launches inquiry into claims that EDF 'dumped' uranium
TV investigators alleged to have filmed spent fuel from French energy giant's nuclear reactors in metal containers in Siberia
Lizzy Davies
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 13 October 2009 17.25 BST Article history

France's ecology minister today called for an inquiry into reports that EDF, the world's biggest nuclear reactor operator, is storing hundreds of tonnes of depleted uranium in open-air sites in Siberia.

According to a documentary due to be broadcast on the Arte channel tonight, 13% of the spent fuel from the utility giant's French nuclear reactors is shipped to Russia and left there indefinitely in metal containers.

Environmentalists say the material – the result of nuclear reprocessing – is proof that the industry's claims to be almost entirely "recyclable" are misleading.

But EDF, which bought British Energy in a £12.5bn deal last year and recently announced plans to build four more nuclear reactors in the UK, insists that the material stored near the Siberian town of Seversk is being kept securely for future use. It says it deals with all its toxic waste safely within French borders at the La Hague storage facility in Normandy.

"It is only the recyclable uranium which is transported to Russia to be enriched," the firm said in a written statement, adding that the arrangement was carried out within "the framework of commercial agreements" in several countries including Russia and the Netherlands.

Speaking on French radio this morning, junior minister for ecology Chantal Jouanno said an inquiry was necessary in order to "confirm or reject" the allegations. "We cannot allow the slightest possibility of suspicion that there is a problem," she said. "It has to be completely transparent."

Environmentalists have long complained that the nuclear industry, which provides most of France's energy needs, is shrouded in secrecy. EDF says that reprocessing – a chemical operation during which "useful" fuel is separated from highly radioactive waste in order to be sent back and used again - provides a "clean" low-carbon energy source.

But many experts say that the actual reuse rate is far lower than the 96% claimed by the industry because much of the uranium is so depleted at the end of the reprocessing that it is almost completely useless.

"This product is polluting and it contains very little uranium 235 [an isotope necessary for nuclear energy]," Vladimir Tchouprov, head of Greenpeace Russia's energy campaign, told Libération. "It's a real pain to use. For us, it is final waste."


[Environment > Flooding]
Environment Agency warns of climate change flood risk
Britain is experiencing a 'new kind of rain', according to Chris Smith of the Environment Agency
Press Association
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 14 October 2009 12.02 BST Article histo
ry

The head of the Environment Agency warned today of the growing flood risk for towns and cities as a result of climate change.

Chris Smith said the increase in heavy downpours in the future would have serious repercussions for urban centres vulnerable to surface-water flooding.

By paving over large areas of permeable ground in cities such as London, "we've made things worse for ourselves", he said, welcoming the change in the law requiring planning permission for the concreting-over of gardens.

In a speech to the Insurance Institute of London, Smith also said recent floods such as the 2007 disaster, which affected large swaths of the country, showed "that we are now experiencing what can only be described as a "new kind of rain" – deluges in which a lot of rain falls quickly in one place.

He called on the insurance industry to help householders reduce the risk of flooding, through measures such as cutting premiums for people who have taken steps to protect their properties from the danger and had signed up for the Environment Agency's free flood warning service.

And he said insurance companies should help rebuild homes that had been affected by flooding in ways that made them more resilient to flooding rather than simply return them to their original state where they would be as much at risk as before.

In advance of talks aimed at tackling climate change this December in Copenhagen, Smith called on heads of state to attend the negotiations in person – as the prime minister, Gordon Brown, has pledged to do – to ensure a deal to cut emissions is secured.

He said rich countries must get serious about providing finance to poor nations to help them cope with climate change and reduce their emissions and that a solution to the problem must involve governments, businesses and the public.

His comments came as engineers said open drainage ditches beside urban roads could be among measures used to protect UK's cities from flash flooding.

Members of the Royal Academy of Engineering said techniques used in countries that regularly cope with torrential downpours could be applied in this country in the future.

They could include open drains up to two metres deep which could channel large amounts of water in a short space of time, common in Malaysia which regularly deals with tropical storms, Prof Roger Falconer of Cardiff University said.

The UK could also use other methods, such as allowing flood water to run through certain streets, as in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Michael Norton of engineering consultancy Halcrow said.


[Environment > Climate change]
Wildlife expert claims gorilla dung is critical to containing climate change
> Ian Redmond's argument could lead to new protections
> Cites animals' role in propagating plants on jungle floor
Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 13 October 2009 19.22 BST Article history

Gorilla dung could conceivably be the salvation of the planet.

A leading UK wildlife expert today said protecting the large primates he called the "gardeners of the forest" could provide the easy fix for global warming envisaged by international reforestation programmes.

America and other industrialised countries are looking to reforestation programmes in Africa, South-east Asia and South America to help contain the effects of climate change.

But Ian Redmond, the UN ambassador for the year of the gorilla, said the industrialised countries would be making a mistake if they did not commit specific funds to protecting the gorillas as part of the discussion on reforestation efforts at the climate change negotiations at Copenhagen next December.

"If we save the trees and not the animals then we will just see a slow death of the forests," Redmond said. "What I am urging the decisionmakers at Copenhagen to consider is that the gorillas are not a luxury item. If you want a longterm healthy forest you have to take action to protect them."

The gorillas - or "gardeners of the forest" as Redmond called them - were crucial to fighting climate change, he said. Gorillas, which are herbivores, feed on fruit and plants. The digested food, as it passes through their systems, helps seeds to germinate.

The full extent of the gorillas' role in propagation is unclear. But Redmond said a number of plant species could not flourish without them, or wild elephants, the other large mammal crucial in germination.

The gorillas - caught up in the region's civil wars, preyed on by poachers, and crowded out of their homes by mining and logging industries - are already endangered across Africa.

But Redmond's argument could help give the animals a new level of protection.

The world's forests act as a natural trap for carbon emissions, sucking up some 4.8bn tonnes of carbon a year.

Economists such as Lord Stern have said that spending some $15bn a year on reforestation programmes would be the cheapest way of cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

In the run-up to the meeting on climate change in December, there has been a growing focus on reforestation programmes in Africa, South-east Asia and South America.

However, there has been no direct recognition of the role played by large animals - such as gorillas - in propagating plants on the jungle floor.

Redmond said gorillas were crucial in maintaining the lifecycle of the rainforests in the Congo basin. The forests themselves suck up more than 1bn tonnes of carbon every year.

"This is what the species are for. They are not ornaments. They are not just interesting things to study. They are part of an ecosystem," he said.

All of the big apes are now considered endangered. Nearly 20 years of civil war in the Great Lakes region of Africa have seen an explosion in illegal mining and logging by militias seeking money for guns.

Two gorillas are killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo each week and their corpses sold as bush meat, an investigation by Endangered Species International found.

Many gorillas live outside the relatively small protected enclaves of national parks.

Those gorillas are losing their habitat because of rapid urbanisation. Villagers are venturing deeper into the forest to cut down trees for cooking charcoal.

news20091014nn1

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 13 October 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.999
News
Particle physicist 'falsely accused', claims brother
As Adlène Hicheur is investigated for terrorist links, his brother speaks out.
By Geoff Brumfiel

The LHCb experiment might help explain the imbalance of matter and antimatter.CERNThe brother of a particle physicist under investigation for having possible links to terrorism says that the charges are "completely false" and his brother is innocent.

Yesterday, French authorities placed Adlène Hicheur, a postdoc at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), under formal investigation for possible 'criminal association in relation to a terrorist undertaking'. He has been held by police since 8 October, after a raid at his family's home in the town of Vienne, southeastern France.

According to press reports, anti-terrorism police apparently have evidence that the 32-year-old may have had e-mail correspondence with "al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb" — the North African branch of the terrorist organization al-Qaeda — about potential targets for terrorist attacks within France. The public prosecutor's office in Paris, whose anti-terrorism unit is in charge of the case, said they could not comment as the case was ongoing.

But speaking exclusively to Nature, Adlène Hicheur's brother Halim Hicheur claims that the charges are unjustified. He does not deny that family members frequently trade e-mails with people in Algeria. But he categorically denies there was any email correspondence with al-Qaeda. "Most of my family is from Algeria," he says. But he maintains that there is nothing in his family's background "that would have made us think about violence".

"We are Muslims, we have never hidden this," Halim adds.

Contrary to several press reports, Halim is a 30-year-old postdoc in biomechanics working in Germany and says that he was not arrested with Adlène on Thursday. "I have never been contacted by the police," he says, explaining that it was their 25-year-old youngest brother who was picked up by police and released without charge on 10 October.

Based on conversations with other family members, Halim believes that Adlène's arrest is probably connected to a land purchase in Algeria. Halim told Nature that just before the police raid, Adlène withdrew €13,000 (US$19,200) in cash with which to purchase land near the family's ancestral home of Setif in northeastern Algeria. He says that the police were initially asking questions about the money.

Atom smasher

Colleagues of Adlène consider him to be a shy but brilliant young physicist who specializes in esoteric data analysis and the alignment of massive particle detectors. "For everybody here it's really a surprise," says Jérôme Grosse, a spokesperson for EPFL, where Adlène has worked since 2006.

Adlène was born one of six siblings — three brothers and three sisters — to a working-class French-Algerian family. In 2000 he enrolled at the University of Savoie near Chambéry in France, where he finished first in his class in advanced particle theory. While pursuing his PhD, he studied the oscillations of particles containing bottom quarks, working at the BaBar experiment at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, California.

"He was very brilliant," says one physicist who has worked with Adlène but declined to be named because of the ongoing investigation. He often kept to himself but, the physicist adds, in a lab of theoretical physicists, his reserve was not seen as odd. "This personality is quite usual for our staff," he says.

Adlène graduated in 2003, then later moved to the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Didcot in Oxfordshire, UK, where he helped with the alignment of ATLAS, one of the detectors on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) — the world's most powerful particle accelerator located at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland. At EPFL, he worked on another LHC experiment known as LHC beauty (LHCb), testing and preparing a giant detector to collect more data on bottom quarks. Understanding such quarks and their anti-quark partners, physicists hope, could help explain the imbalance between matter and antimatter in the Universe.

In a statement, CERN said that it "does not carry out research in the fields of nuclear power or nuclear weaponry" and that it addressed "fundamental questions about the nature of matter and the Universe". The physicist who worked with Adlène adds that there is nothing from Adlène's high-energy physics training that could have been used in a terrorist attack. "We don't have any material or anything you could use for bad things," he says, "except maybe a hammer."

With additional reporting by Declan Butler


[naturenews]
Published online 13 October 2009 | Nature 461, 855 (2009) | doi:10.1038/461855a
News
Fusion delays sow concern
Construction on ITER won't begin until 2010.
By Geoff Brumfiel

{The ITER site: ready for buildings. ITER}

Construction at the site of ITER — the multibillion-euro project to prove controlled nuclear fusion — has been at a standstill since April, Nature has learned.

The stoppage comes as European contributors negotiate how to pay for their share of ITER, a collaboration between Europe, Japan, South Korea, Russia, the United States, China and India. The European Union (EU) is by far the largest participant, providing some 45% of construction costs, including the buildings that will eventually house the giant machine in St Paul lez Durance, in the south of France.

Excavations for the buildings, slated to begin this autumn, will not start until spring 2010 — roughly a year after site preparations were completed.

European officials say that the reasons for the delay are technical rather than political, and that they will be able to meet the 2018 deadline for completing construction. "The project is not on standby," says Catherine Ray, a spokeswoman for research for the European Commission in Brussels.

But some researchers are concerned that the political impasse could push back ITER's start date. "I'm worried that whatever we lose now could delay the project's completion," says Günther Hasinger, scientific director of the Max Planck Institute of Plasma Physics in Garching, Germany.

When completed, the machine will heat and compress hydrogen isotopes until they fuse into helium, releasing energy.

In 2006, ITER was slated to cost around €5 billion (US$7.4 billion) to construct and another €5 billion to operate over a 20-year period. But following an extensive design review, the construction costs are now expected to at least double (see Nature 459, 488; 2009).

Ray says that the EU had budgeted nearly €10 billion for construction, operation and decommissioning over a 35-year period. But now the 27 EU member states, plus Switzerland, must come up with additional commitments to cover the cost increase. Hasinger says that until they provide a plan for funding, construction is unlikely to begin. "The problem in the European situation is that they need the whole commitment for construction before they can award the contracts," he says.

Sources close to the negotiations say that a number of options are being considered. One would be to secure additional commitments from member states. Another would be a promise from the European Investment Bank, headquartered in Kirchberg, Luxembourg, to provide loans for any additional funds needed.

Such a loan scheme would not be unprecedented: in 2002 CERN, Europe's high-energy physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, took out a €300-million loan to pay for construction costs for the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator.

Officials say that the situation is under control. Although the budget delays could cause problems down the line, "I am not limited by the amount of money for right now," says Didier Gambier, the director of Fusion for Energy in Barcelona, Spain, which oversees the contracts for ITER's buildings.

Gambier says that the decision to delay contracts was purely technical, and driven in part by the fact that the design of ITER is still being finalized. "We still need to have more information from the other parties," he says. Nevertheless, he says, "we are pushing as hard as we can".

ITER is expected to be completed in 2018 and to conduct its first power-producing experiments in 2026.

news20091014nn2

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 13 October 2009 | Nature 461, 854-855 (2009) | doi:10.1038/461854b
News
Cancer metastasis scrutinized
Researchers shift focus to catch secondary tumours.
By Elie Dolgin

BOSTON

Most cancer research has focused on blocking primary-tumour growth, even though cancer cells that cut loose from tumours and invade other tissues account for 90% of cancer-associated deaths.

But at the first conference on Frontiers in Basic Cancer Research, hosted by the American Association for Cancer Research last week in Boston, Massachusetts, cancer biologists reported that this focus is changing. Many experts are turning to study the secondary tumours that form when circulating cancer cells infiltrate and colonize other organs — a process known as metastasis.

"The time is now ripe for scientifically deconstructing the process of metastasis in different types of cancer," says Joan Massagué of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.

At the conference, Daniel Haber of the Massachusetts General Hospital in Charlestown described a microfluidic chip that can detect vanishingly rare tumour cells circulating in the bloodstream. This technique, he says, could identify rogue cancer cells long before metastases form.

And using a novel genetically engineered mouse model of lung cancer, Tyler Jacks of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and his postdoc Monte Winslow found that a transcription factor called Nkx2-1 is a metastatic suppressor, specific to lung cancer, that is active in primary tumours but shut off in secondary cancers. "This is probably the closest thing you have to taking metastasis from a patient," says Winslow.

Whether a metastatic cancer cell triggers a new tumour is "a big if", says Massagué. What's more likely, he says, is that these cells reseed the same tumour from which they originated. Massagué presented data from mice showing that the circulating cells express genes allowing them to infiltrate tissues. But the primary tumours from which the cells came release signals to attract them back, so if they don't land in a new organ they return home and aggravate tumour growth there. "The tumour is selecting for the worst of its children," says Massagué. He is testing whether these tissue-adapted metastatic cells account for the high rates of relapse seen following many cancer therapies.

Robert Weinberg of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, linked metastatic cells to cancer stem cells — rare cells thought to fuel primary-tumour growth — through a common molecular transformation called the epithelial-mesenchymal transition. Weinberg says that this transition allows the metastatic cells to become both motile and self-renewing. Many aggressive secondary tumours might form from newly converted cancer stem cells, he notes, overturning the standard dogma that stem cells generate non-stem cells.

Meanwhile, Sijin Liu of Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston reported one of the first drug compounds that can directly block metastasis, in a mouse model of breast cancer. Liu showed that inhibiting the ROCK signalling pathway with a small molecule led to around 35% fewer metastases, as well as decreasing the mass of the resulting secondary tumours by nearly 80%.

Until such therapies exist, however, understanding primary tumours remains a major route to indirectly mitigating metastasis, Jacks says. "It could be that we will enter an era of cancer management," he says, "in which our understanding of how tumours advance through these early stages will present us with preventative strategies to block the emergence of later lesions."


[naturenews]
Published online 13 October 2009 | Nature 461, 854-855 (2009) | doi:10.1038/461854a
News
Japan to slash huge grant scheme
Upstart government brings fresh priorities to science.
By David Cyranoski

{Deputy prime minister Naoto Kan has laid out a plan to cut back on Japan's big-science funding.}

In September, 30 research groups in Japan, led by some of the country's biggest scientific names, were celebrating their selection to a new \270-billion (US$3-billion) funding programme. But the programme is now under fire from both politicians and researchers, and its funding may be cut by almost two-thirds.

The projects were selected on 4 September — five days after the ruling Liberal Democratic Party lost an election in a landslide, and 12 days before it had to yield power to the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). The DPJ needed money to fund campaign promises, such as stipends for families with children (see Nature 460, 938; 2009), and asked all ministries to cut back by at least \3 trillion the \14.7 trillion that had been allocated this spring as part of a government supplemental funding package.

On 6 October, the science and education ministry announced that it would cut 21% from its supplementary budget. It has not revealed details of where those cuts would be made, but Japan's deputy prime minister Naoto Kan has reportedly laid out a framework by which the Funding Program for World-Leading Innovative R&D on Science and Technology (FIRST) would be reduced from \270 billion to \100 billion. According to the plan, which had not been made official as Nature went to press, \70 billion would be cut altogether and the other \100 billion would be used for smaller grants to other groups or transferred to a scheme for sending young scientists abroad.

The 30 groups scheduled to receive FIRST funding span a variety of fields, from math­ematics to neurogenetics and nano­biotechnology. The list includes many of Japan's most famous scientists, including Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University, who received funding to set up a stem-cell bank for the induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells he created; Shizuo Akira of Osaka University, for a project on manipulating immune responses; and Nobel laureate Koichi Tanaka of Shimadzu Corporation in Kyoto, for a mass-spectrometry project on drug discovery and diagnosis.

The shortage of new faces, critics say, could stem from a rushed application and selection process. The 3-week application period ended on 24 July; a team of 24 scientists then gunned through the 565 proposals to reduce the field to 60. One team member told Nature that the committee often had to abstain or make ill-informed judgements based on skimming materials. "It's incredible to give that kind of money with no long-term feasibility study or in-depth analysis," says the member, who asked to remain anonymous.

Takafumi Matsui, a planetary scientist at the Chiba Institute of Technology who sat on the second-stage committee that chose the final 30 grantees, defends the process. "I normally read about a lot of fields of science," he says, "so I could quickly judge their merits."

Many critics took exception to the premise of funding such large-scale, focused projects, saying that fundamental research could be losing out. For instance, on 3 October Shinichi Aizawa, president of the Japanese Society of Developmental Biologists, called for policy-makers to better balance applied research with basic science.

Yamanaka told Nature that he was reserving comment until the DPJ makes an official statement about the fate of the programme.

Atsushi Sunami, director of the science and technology policy doctoral programme at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo, also thinks that the grants are too big. "With this kind of funding, you could do more high-risk, high-return smaller projects," he says. "What will the extra funding achieve for these groups that are already funded? It's not clear. You're pouring water into something that's already full."

But two aspects of the FIRST programme could set a good precedent for Japan, Sunami says. Grantees can take the funding to any institution they please — an attempt to introduce competition and fluidity among research centres. And the grants are given for five-year terms so that grantees don't need to rush to spend, and potentially waste, money at the end of each fiscal year.

news20091014bbc1

[One-Minute World News] from [BBC NEWS]

[Asia-Pacific]
Page last updated at 02:46 GMT, Wednesday, 14 October 2009 03:46 UK
Australia fails to plug oil leak
{Environmentalists fear oil is heading towards an area where whales breed}
A second attempt to stop oil pouring into Australian waters after a rig accident in the Timor Sea has failed.
By Phil Mercer
BBC News, Sydney

It is almost two months since oil began flowing from the West Atlas drilling platform that lies about 200km (125 miles) off the West Australian coast.

The rig's operators have said that plugging the leak is an "extraordinarily complex" task.

Environmental groups have warned that the slick is threatening wildlife, including endangered turtles.

Conservationists have said this is Australia's most damaging oil spill in 25 years.

Each day for almost two months, hundreds of barrels have been flowing into the Timor Sea, although officials have conceded that it is impossible to know just how much oil has been spilt.

The slick is about 160km from the Western Australian mainland, and slightly further from the Indonesian coast.

Two attempts to plug the leak have failed.

Engineers have tried to cap a small hole 25cm wide that lies deep beneath the seabed.

Extraordinary difficulty

They are expected to have another go towards the end of the week.

Scott Ludlam, a Senator for the Australian Greens, says it is a complex task.

"It underlines the extraordinary difficulty that they are facing in plugging the well," he said of the latest failure.

"They are trying to hit a needle in a haystack 2.5km below sea level. So, it is not surprising, I suppose, that they've failed to plug the well on their second attempt.

"This is the worst oil spill in Australian waters since the mid-1980s and it really does not give us high hopes for the huge expansion of the oil and gas industry that is planned in the region," he added.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority has said the flow of oil from the damaged well appears to be slowing.

Boats have been spraying chemicals to help disperse the slick and stop it spreading.

A spokeswoman has insisted that the impact on wildlife had been minimal.

Environmentalists, however, worry about the long-term effects of contamination on vulnerable marine species, including flat-back turtles, dolphins and whales.


[Asia-Pacific]
Page last updated at 04:15 GMT, Wednesday, 14 October 2009 05:15 UK
New flying reptile fossils found
{The reptile possessed primitive and more advanced traits}
Researchers in China and the UK say they have discovered the fossils of a new type of flying reptile that lived more than 160 million years ago.
By Matt McGrath
BBC science reporter

The find is named Darwinopterus, after famous naturalist Charles Darwin.

Experts say it provides the first clear evidence of a controversial type of evolution called modular evolution.

The 20 new fossils found in north-east China show similarities to both primitive and more advanced pterosaurs, or flying reptiles.

The research is published in the journal, Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Missing link

Pterosaurs, sometimes called pterodactyls, were flying reptiles that flourished between 65 and 220 million years ago.

{Darwinopterus could offer evidence of modular evolution}

Until now, scientists had known about two distinct groups of these creatures - primitive, long-tailed pterosaurs and more advanced short-tailed ones, separated by a gap in the fossil record.

But the discovery of more than 20 new fossil skeletons in north-east China sits in the gap in this evolutionary chain.

Darwinopterus is a hawk-like reptile with a head and neck just like advanced pterosaurs - but the rest of the skeleton is similar to more primitive forms.

Researchers say that this could be evidence of what they call modular evolution - where natural selection forces a whole series of traits to change rapidly rather than just one.

"Darwinopterus came as quite a shock to us" said Dr David Unwin, from the University of Leicester, UK.

"We had always expected a gap-filler with typically intermediate features such as a moderately elongate tail - neither long nor short.

"But the strange thing about Darwinopterus is that it has a head and neck just like that of advanced pterosaurs, while the rest of the skeleton, including a very long tail, is identical to that of primitive forms."

With its long jaws and rows of sharp-pointed teeth, these creatures were very well suited to catching and killing other flying species.

The fossils were found in rocks that are 160 million years old, making them 10 million years older than the first bird, Archaeopteryx.

Dr Unwin collaborated on the study with researchers from the Geological Institute in Beijing, China.


[Asia-Pacific]
Page last updated at 06:11 GMT, Wednesday, 14 October 2009 07:11 UK
Koreas in talks after dam deaths
{The Imjin River swelled after the water release}
Officials from North and South Korea are holding talks on flood control measures on a cross-border river after the drowning of six South Koreans.

The meeting was requested by the South after the six were killed when North Korea unexpectedly opened a dam on its side of the border last month.

The North has reportedly expressed regret, but it is unclear whether the South will accept this as an apology.

Reunions of families separated by war in the 1950s will also be discussed.

Correspondents say the talks are a sign that dialogue between the two countries has not lost momentum, despite short-range missile tests by the North on Monday.

Lesser evil

A spokeswoman for the South's unification ministry said Pyongyang had conveyed its regrets for the release of water from a dam across the Imjin River.

The North had said it had to discharge the water to avoid a bigger catastrophe.

The talks are taking place in Kaesong, north of the border, where South Koreans run an industrial park.

Ties between North and South Korea have been frosty since South Korean President Lee Myung-bak linked improvements in the North's dismantling of its nuclear programmes to aid deliveries.

However, the North has appeared willing to tackle humanitarian issues, and their joint running of the Kaesong industrial plant, in recent months.


[Asia-Pacific]
Page last updated at 11:48 GMT, Wednesday, 14 October 2009 12:48 UK
Manila seeks Filipino rebel help
{Father Sinnott has spent over 40 years helping various Filipino communities}
The Philippines has asked the country's largest Muslim separatist group to help find and free a kidnapped Irish priest.

Reports say Michael Sinnott was seized by gunmen in Zamboanga then put on a speedboat and taken to Lanao, both on the southern island of Mindanao.

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front has vowed to work to free Reverend Sinnott.

A Philippine military spokesman says it has not ruled out the abductors could be Muslim rebels who have disobeyed a guerrilla edict on ransom kidnappings.

Military intelligence suggests a "notorious pirate" in Zamboanga, Guingona Samal, was behind the plot and provided the speedboat used by up to six armed gunmen to whisk Michael Sinnott away, reports say.

Samal is said to be well known in the region for robberies against fishermen and kidnap-for-ransom attempts.

'Heart problems'

Father Sinnott - a Columban priest who is in his late seventies - is being held in a jungle camp somewhere near Sultan Naga Dimaporo, where rebels of the MILF have a heavy presence, Maj Gen Benjamin Dolorfino said.

"He is very frail because of recent heart surgery. We will exhaust all peaceful means to get him, although there is always [the] military option," he added.

A senior rebel commander with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, Mohaqher Iqbal, says forces have been mobilised to pinpoint the exact location of the Catholic priest.

"We are ready to help the government recover the priest," the rebel leader told reporters.

The Philippine military says hundreds of army troops have circled the area where Father Sinnott is believed held and that their greatest concern is that the abductors may have dealings with the radical Abu Sayyaf group, who have links to al-Qaeda.

A tentative ceasefire is still in place between the Philippine army and rebels of the MILF, believed to number around 11,000, who just a few months ago were involved in heavy fighting in the south of the country in which hundreds of people were killed and hundreds of thousands more displaced.

news20091014bbc2

[One-Minute World News] from [BBC NEWS]

[Asia-Pacific]
Page last updated at 10:17 GMT, Wednesday, 14 October 2009 11:17 UK
Tsunami drill across Indian Ocean
{People in Indonesia take part in a tsunami drill}
Eighteen countries around the Indian Ocean have held a mass drill aimed at testing tsunami early warning systems.

The UN-backed drill simulated the 2004 quake off the coast of Sumatra which killed more than 200,000 people, half of them in Indonesia's Aceh province.

The exercise comes two weeks after a tsunami in the Pacific Ocean killed almost 200 people in Samoa, American Samoa and Tonga.

UN officials are due to issue an assessment of the drill within days.

Exercise Indian Ocean Wave 09 tested warning systems and preparedness in nations in Asia, Australasia, the Middle East and Africa.

{In 2004, the only warning most people had was the sight of a giant wave}

Along the coast of Aceh hundreds of people - including schoolchildren - carried out a mock evacuation as ambulance crews stood watch.

But some residents were too traumatised by memories of the 2004 tsunami to take part.

"My chest has gone tight and I am shaking," Hamiyah, 58, who lost her in-laws, four children and five grandchildren, told AP news agency.

"If there's another disaster, I prefer to take shelter in the mosque so that if I die, I'd die in the mosque," Halimah, 43, told Reuters news agency as she watched the drill, but refused to take part.

Not all 18 participating countries involved the public in the exercise. The authorities in India and Thailand said they had concentrated instead on co-ordination between government agencies.

Officials from around the region declared the drill a success.

Since the 2004 tsunami, early warning systems ranging from beach sirens to deep ocean monitor buoys have been set up at a cost of about $150m (£94m), officials say.

Much of the money for the equipment has come from international donors, including Germany, Japan and China.

The test will determine whether the Indonesian authorities have spent that money wisely, and whether the local population is prepared for a future catastrophe, says the BBC's Karishma Vaswani in Banda Aceh.


[Asia-Pacific]
Page last updated at 08:19 GMT, Wednesday, 14 October 2009 09:19 UK
Decline in Chinese trade slowing
Chinese official export figures for September have suggested improvements in economies in the rest of the world.

Exports from the world's third largest economy fell to $115.9bn (£73bn), which was down 15.2% from September 2008, but the smallest fall in nine months.

China's $596bn stimulus package has helped prop up its economy, but it needs a global recovery to boost trade.

Imports fell 3.5% to $103bn, which was the smallest decline since imports began to slide in November 2008.

The slowing decline has been taken as a sign that the stimulus package is working.

China's trade surplus stood at $135.5bn (£85bn) for the first nine months of 2009, falling 26% compared with the same period a year ago, according to the General Administration of Customs.

{{ANALYSIS}
By Chris Hogg, BBC Shanghai correspondent
Most people accept that China is now enjoying an economic recovery. What they want to know is, is that recovery sustainable?
September's trade figures are encouraging. Exports and imports fell, as they have done every month since late last year, but the rate of decline wasn't as bad as the month before.
The government's stimulus package has helped boost domestic demand. It has increased China's appetite for imports of commodities needed for the big infrastructure projects now under way.
The effects of that stimulus package will last for some time, but not for ever, so the challenge for the country's policymakers is to find alternative ways to keep people here working and spending.}}

"Overall, export performance will be much better in the months to come. I think it's going to be sustainable and it's going to accelerate," said Dong Tao, an economist at Credit Suisse in Hong Kong.

"There are some rush orders coming to China for Christmas, so I expect probably a pretty strong rebound in November and December," he said.

The slowing decline in imports was mainly a result of record iron ore shipments to China of 64.6 million tons in September.

The iron is needed to make steel, which is in demand as the stimulus package boosts construction.

Between January and August, China's total trade with the European Union fell 19.4% while trade with the US fell 15.8% and trade with Japan declined 20%.

China's Vice Minister of Commerce Zhong Shan recently said that China's exporters were still facing a tough time.

To support exporters, China has raised value added tax rebates on exports several times in the past year, increased tax refunds and improved export credit insurance.

The central bank has also effectively halted the yuan's rise against the dollar since July 2008.

news20091014reut1

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
EU's big 3 van makers put brakes on CO2 curbs
Tue Oct 13, 2009 12:04pm EDT
By Pete Harrison and Julien Toyer

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - France, Italy and Germany have written to the European Union's executive asking for a delay or softening to planned curbs on carbon dioxide emissions from new vans, EU diplomats say.

The European Commission is mulling proposals this month that would force van makers such as Fiat and Mercedes to cut emissions from new vans by 14 percent to 175 grams per kilometer by July 2013 or face fines.

But the powerful auto makers have pushed hard for the goal to be gradually phased in and for fines to be weakened, just as they argued last year over curbs to CO2 from cars.

Such investment in energy efficiency is not possible in times of economic crisis, they argue.

Paris, Rome and Berlin asked in their letter last week that the Commission yield to the industry's demands by phasing in the curbs around 2017. The 175 g target has not been challenged.

"The governments have deemed it inappropriate to put forward this proposal on light commercial vehicles and have asked to delay it to a more appropriate time," said one EU diplomat. "The impact assessment must be more detailed."

The launch of the proposal has been delayed twice in recent weeks as officials in the Commission's industry and environment units wrangle over the details.

An earlier draft of the rules envisioned fines for van makers that overshoot the targets of 120 euros per gram of CO2 per vehicle, but the fines have been cut to around 95 euros in recent talks, EU sources say.

Those that miss by less than 3 grams will receive softer penalties.

"The Commission has to decide now between putting forward a diluted version before the end of October, or putting it on hold until next year," a second EU diplomat said.

The three automaking nations are also challenging Commission proposals for a long-term target of 135 g by 2020.

"We don't support the long-term target as it is now," said a third source in the negotiations. "It must be realistic, cost-effective and based on a thorough impact assessment."

(Additional reporting by Ilona Wissenbach; Editing by Dale Hudson)


[Green Business]
Ministers agree 20 big CCS plants needed by 2010
Tue Oct 13, 2009 12:05pm EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - Twenty commercial scale carbon capture and storage projects need to be started by 2010 to cap emissions from fossil fuel burning, energy ministers at the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum agreed on Tuesday.

"The 20 industrial-scale demonstration projects by 2010 endorsed by the G8 are vital," the forum, a ministerial-level grouping of 23 countries, said in a statement after a meeting in London.

(Reporting by Daniel Fineren; editing by James Jukwey)


[Green Business]
World needs big drive for carbon capture: IEA
Tue Oct 13, 2009 12:42pm EDT
By Daniel Fineren

LONDON (Reuters) - The world needs to build 100 major projects for capturing and burying greenhouse gases by 2020 and thousands more by 2050 to help combat climate change, International Energy Agency chief Nobuo Tanaka said Tuesday.

Energy ministers meeting in London said the world must start building by next year at least 20 commercial-scale pilot projects to test a technology which U.S. energy secretary Steven Chu said could solve "20 percent of the problem" to curb carbon.

The drive, mostly to capture emissions from coal-fired power stations, would cost $56 billion by 2020 alone, said Tanaka. Carbon capture funding could be a key part of a new U.N. climate treaty due to be agreed in Copenhagen in December.

"We will need 100 large scale projects by 2020, 850 by 2030 and 3,400 in 2050," Tanaka told the ministers at a carbon capture and storage (CCS) conference, adding that the rich world must take the lead but most projects must be in non-OECD countries by 2050.

A few industrial-scale projects are in operation, including in Norway, Canada and Algeria, but none tests all parts of the capture process. Heat-trapping carbon dioxide can be taken from the exhausts of a coal-fired power plant, for instance, then piped underground into porous rocks.

The IEA estimates that after the $56 billion investment in CCS globally from 2010-2020, a further $646 billion will be needed from 2021 to 2030, Tanaka told the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum.

U.N. studies have indicated that CCS could do more to limit greenhouse gas emissions this century than a shift to renewable energies such as wind or solar power. CCS has been limited by high costs.

COPENHAGEN SUCCESS

"We call upon the delegates to the United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen to recognize the importance of CCS in mitigating climate change," said a closing statement of the 15 ministers, including those from the United States, Europe and China.

"The world's biggest coal-using nations recognize we cannot continue with business as usual on coal," British Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said. "We need a mechanism which will at least provide the opportunity for developing countries to get help with financing some of the incremental costs of their projects."

A promise of big aid via technologies such as CCS could encourage developing nations led by China and India to sign up in Copenhagen for more action to limit rising emissions.

Talks on the new U.N. climate deal made little progress at a two-week session that ended in Bangkok last week, partly because of disputes between rich and poor nations about sharing out the burden of curbs on greenhouse gas emissions.

It is unclear if the U.S. Senate will pass laws before Copenhagen to cut national emissions, and recession is dampening willingness to act.

In Australia, a survey Tuesday indicated that saving jobs was the top priority for voters. Fighting climate change fell to seventh, two years after Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was swept to power on a promise to tackle global warming.

The government said it was committed to an emissions trading scheme which, if defeated in November, could bring a snap election. "Our policy is not determined by polls," Climate Minister Penny Wong said of the survey.

So far, few nations have agreed to invest heavily in carbon capture technologies -- nations including the United States, Australia, Britain and China have projects.

Still, in a national budget Tuesday, Norway said it would almost double funding of carbon capture research to $620 million next year. Norway has the oldest commercial carbon capture site, set up in 1996 at the Sleipner gas field in the North Sea.

-- Additional reporting by Gerard Wynn

(Writing by Alister Doyle; Editing by David Stamp)

news20091014reut2

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
China, U.S. can bridge global climate divide: group
Tue Oct 13, 2009 5:45pm EDT
By Timothy Gardner

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States and China could bring the world together on tackling climate change even though U.N. talks have been bogged down, members of a sustainable business group said.

Rich and developing countries remain divided on how to share the burden of slowing global climate change ahead of a December UN meeting in Copenhagen where 190 countries are slated to hash out the extension or replacement of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.

"The critical element in bridging that divide is the dialogue between the U.S. and China," Bjorn Stigson, the president of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, a group of 200 companies, told reporters on Tuesday.

China recently became the top polluter of greenhouse gases, surpassing the United States, where emissions on a per capita basis are far higher. Together they account for more than 40 percent of global carbon emissions.

But China has begun to move rapidly on climate change. It will become the world leader in production of wind power this year and is also a leading maker of solar panels. China wants to use renewable energy at home to increase energy security and protect its people and agriculture from pollution. It also seeks to build its renewable energy export market.

Jorma Olilla, the chairman of Royal Dutch Shell Plc, said some of the best news is now coming from China. "It's the attitudinal change in leadership ... as well as the actions that are underway there," he said.

The government has also put fuel efficiency limits on cars that are tougher than those in the United States.

China wants technology sharing agreements with U.S. companies on things like carbon capture and storage, where emissions are siphoned from power plants and pumped underground for permanent storage, said Stigson, who also advises Beijing on sustainability issues. And increasingly it is developing its own technologies.

In the United States, many technology companies can benefit by working with the huge market China represents, the business leaders said.

RUNG BY RUNG

To be sure, much daylight remains between rich and poor countries on climate in the U.N. talks, with China saying many rich countries have failed to live up to their past climate commitments.

Still, many business leaders say prospects for cooperation between the two countries has given lots of hope there will be progress. "A huge amount is happening," said Olilla. "Even if we get a disappointment in Copenhagen, these things would continue to make an impact."

Jim Rogers, president and CEO of U.S. power generator Duke Energy Corp said U.S. and Chinese companies are building a ladder of cooperation on climate "rung by rung."

He pointed to agreements between his company and Chinese ones on carbon capture and storage from coal plants. He China could be a good laboratory for those technologies because it gets 80 percent of its power from coal which is rich in carbon dioxide, while the United States gets 50 percent of it from the fuel.

(Editing by Christian Wiessner)


[Green Business]
Q+A: Why should we care about a new climate agreement?
Tue Oct 13, 2009 11:06pm EDT

The global economy is still is bad shape, people are worried about their jobs and just paying the bills is a major challenge, hardly the right environment to get people focusing on climate change.

With so much to worry about, it can be hard to understand all the fuss about reaching a tougher U.N. climate deal in December in the Danish capital Copenhagen.

Following are some questions and answers on the importance of crafting a new agreement from 2013.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO ME?

A new deal will change the way energy is used, priced and created. In short, it will change the global economy.

Scientists say rich nations must find ways to make deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions from power stations and steel mills to refineries and transport to prevent dangerous climate change.

For you and me, this will most likely mean higher fuel and electricity bills, while catching a plane will also become more expensive, as will buying imported food and drink. Insurance premiums covering storm damage or other natural disasters are also likely to rise.

In short, we'll be forced to make tougher lifestyle choices.

The flip side is that governments will help make renewable energy and greener transport more attractive, allowing people to make the switch to cleaner alternatives. Wind farms, solar, plus geothermal, wave and tidal power along with hybrid and fuel cell cars should become more commonplace as costs come down.

Financing from rich nations could also drive a green revolution in developing countries, boosting investment, creating jobs and cutting emissions.

HOW WILL THIS WORK?

It all hinges on putting a price on every tonne of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, produced by industry, transport or through deforestation, or saved from being emitted, such as building wind farms or saving tropical forests that soak up CO2.

Emissions trading through cap-and-trade schemes that give industries incentives to clean up will also be essential. Europe already has such a scheme, while Australia and the United States are working on their own versions.

Key to these schemes are tougher 2020 emissions reduction targets under a new climate treaty. The tougher the targets, the greater the financial incentive for industries to act.

WHAT'S THE URGENCY? CAN'T WE WAIT?

The world has already warmed on average 0.7 degrees Celsius over the past century through the burning of fossil fuels, such as oil, coal and gas. Prior to the latest financial crisis, emissions growth was increasing annually at a rate beyond past projections, driven largely by soaring coal and oil consumption in big developing nations, such as China and India.

Scientists say that the world is on course to pump enough carbon dioxide into the air to raise global temperatures by at least 2 deg C in the next few decades, a level they say will lead to more chaotic weather, rising seas, melting glaciers, water shortages and falling crop yields.

Such disruption poses major security threats because the world's population is expected to keep rising. Pollution and health problems are also growing risks.

Even if you don't believe in climate change, the world has only about 41 years of oil left based on proven reserves and 2008 consumption levels of nearly 31 billion barrels a year. As reserves fall and oil becomes harder to extract, prices of crude will continue to rise, making greener energy more attractive.

WHAT CAN JUST ONE PERSON DO?

A lot. Switch to compact fluorescent lighting in the home and office, use public transport, buy locally produced food and recycle your rubbish. Take re-useable bags when shopping and switch off unused appliances at home.

Every little bit helps because it entrenches behavior and gets people talking.

(Writing by David Fogarty; Editing by Nick Macfie)

news20091014reut3

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Obama's climate-change hopes get a boost
Tue Oct 13, 2009 11:07pm EDT
By Louis Charbonneau and Gerard Wynn

UNITED NATIONS/LONDON (Reuters) - Official Washington sounded more upbeat on Monday than it has for weeks in sizing up U.S. President Barack Obama's chances of progress on a climate-change bill in Congress this year.

U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer predicted the committee she leads would approve a bill before a U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen in December while Obama's Energy Secretary Steven Chu said he hoped all of Congress would pass a law by then.

Their positive comments contrasted with those of Carol Browner, head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency who said 10 days ago she did not expect the U.S. Senate to act in time.

Progress in Congress is viewed as vital to unblocking an impasse on carbon emissions targets and financing at the United Nations-led talks. Leading U.S. lawmakers had forecast it had no chance until next year at the earliest.

"Whether there will be a bill on the president's desk and he'll sign it, I'm hopeful it will be," Chu told reporters on the sidelines of a meeting on clean coal technologies in London.

"It'll be tight (but) there's a good shot."

OBAMA UNDER PRESSURE

Obama has come under pressure from other countries to show progress, all the more so since he won a Nobel Peace Prize on Friday which cited what it called his "more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting.

Climate change is competing for attention in Congress with Obama's proposals to bolster a battered economy and overhaul healthcare, which have consumed lawmakers all year.

Senators Boxer and John Kerry, both of Obama's Democratic party, have unveiled legislation that would cut U.S. industry emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by 20 percent below 2005 levels by 2020.

Further boosting Obama's hopes was an opinion piece in The New York Times on Sunday co-written by Kerry and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who broke ranks with his party to outline a compromise to limit carbon emissions.

Graham is one of a few dozen fence-sitters who Kerry and Boxer have been courting in order to amass the 60 votes needed for passage in the 100-member Senate. The Kerry-Boxer proposal, opposed by Graham, embraces central elements of a bill passed in June by the Democratic-led House of Representatives.

"I believe we will get this bill out of my committee soon," Boxer, who chairs the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee, told reporters after meeting U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the United Nations on Monday.

"Certainly before Copenhagen, and we're hoping maybe to even have it on the floor (of the Senate)," she said.

COPENHAGEN MILESTONE

In a sharp reversal from his predecessor George W. Bush, Obama has vowed to impose mandatory limits on the emission of climate-warming greenhouse gases and made tackling global warming a signature issue of his administration.

The Bush administration had opposed mandatory emission limits, arguing that they would damage the competitiveness of U.S. industry.

Chu would not comment on whether the U.S. could commit to a near-term carbon target in Copenhagen without a bill passed. "We're not going to lay out plans B, C and D. It doesn't make any sense. We're going to try make plan A work," he said.

The Copenhagen meeting is meant to seal agreement on a new, tougher pact to extend or replace the existing Kyoto Protocol.

"We are confident that a legitimate bipartisan effort can put America back in the lead again and can empower our negotiators to sit down at the table in Copenhagen in December and insist that the rest of the world join us in producing a new international agreement on global warming," Graham and Kerry wrote in the Times piece.

The Kerry-Boxer proposal still faces serious opposition from Republicans -- and from Democrats in states heavily dependent on coal. But Dan Lashof, director of the climate center at environmental group the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the joint Kerry-Graham statement was significant.

"It's hard to overstate the significance of this joint declaration. It ensures that the Senate bill will be bipartisan. It demonstrates that there is a pathway to 60 votes to overcome a filibuster," he wrote.

(Additional reporting by Timothy Gardner and Andy Sullivan in Washington; Editing by Howard Goller and David Storey)


[Green Business]
Push to exempt Australian farmers from carbon laws
Wed Oct 14, 2009 6:09am EDT
By James Grubel

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia's government will be asked to exempt farmers from carbon trading in order to pass landmark emissions laws through parliament under changes being pushed by opposition lawmakers on Wednesday.

Legislation to set up carbon trading from July 2011, the world's second domestic trading platform after the European Union's scheme, remain locked in parliament's upper house, where the government needs opposition support to pass the package.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd could call an early election if the laws are rejected for a second time in November. Agriculture is shaping as a key sticking point.

"You do everything in your power to turn the volume on this ridiculous tax down, so I suppose we'll support an amendment to take agriculture out," said Senator Barnaby Joyce, leader of the junior opposition National Party in the upper house.

The opposition Liberal and National Parties will hold a special meeting on Sunday to endorse changes they want to the carbon-trade laws in return for their support for the scheme, which would cover around 75 percent of Australian emissions.

The opposition also wants a Senate vote delayed until early 2010, but the government wants its laws passed by late November, ahead of global climate talks in Copenhagen in December.

CLOSELY WATCHED

In the run-up to Copenhagen the Australian debate is being closely watched in other countries including the United States, where lawmakers are also crafting emissions trading laws.

Under the Australian scheme, the top 1,000 companies will need a permit for every ton of carbon emitted, putting a price on pollution and providing an incentive to clean up operations.

But the biggest polluting export companies will receive up to 95 percent of permits for free in the initial years of the scheme, with the carbon price at A$10 ($9.12) a ton for the first year.

Agriculture, which accounts for 16 percent of Australian emissions, will be exempt in the early years, with a decision to be taken in 2013 on whether farmers should be included from 2015.

The National Party, which traditionally represents rural Australia, and major farm lobby groups want farmers to be permanently exempt from the carbon trading system.

In Beijing, Climate Change Minister Penny Wong said the government was willing to negotiate amendments in good faith, but the opposition needed to consider the cost of changes.

"They are going to have to be more responsible than to simply put forward the latest wishlist from some aspects of industry," Wong told reporters.

Australia, the world's biggest coal exporter, accounts for about 1.5 percent of global carbon emissions, but is one of the world's highest per capital emitters.

($1=A$1.097)

(Additional reporting by Emma Graham-Harrison in Beijing; Editing by Alex Richardson)