news20100124jt1

[TODAY'S TOP STORIES] from [The Japan Times]

[NATIONAL NEWS]
Sunday, Jan. 24, 2010
Ozawa defiant after prosecutors' grilling
DPJ bigwig won't resign following interrogation
Kyodo News

Democratic Party of Japan Secretary General Ichiro Ozawa, who was questioned by prosecutors Saturday, said afterward he has no intention of leaving his post and flatly denied alleged receipts of illegal corporate donations.

"I want to fulfill my duties," Ozawa told a news conference at the Tokyo hotel where the questioning, which lasted more than four hours, took place. He also said neither he nor his former and incumbent secretaries have received any illicit money from Mizutani Construction Co. or any other firms, calling media reports of illegal donations "groundless."

Prosecutors questioned Ozawa on Saturday afternoon on a voluntary basis over an alleged false political fund report related to a 2004 Tokyo land purchase by his fund management body.

The move came after the Tokyo District Public Prosecutor's Office arrested two former secretaries and a current aide to Ozawa earlier this month amid growing public calls for him to resign from the ruling party's No. 2 post or as a lawmaker due to his failure to fully account for his role in the land deal.

In accepting the prosecutors' request to meet with him, Ozawa asked them to conduct one-off questioning, but investigators could ask for another round if they determine his explanations Saturday are insufficient.

The questioning of a ruling party secretary general is a rarity.

In a statement distributed to the media before the start of the news conference, the veteran lawmaker said he "knows nothing" about the alleged false political funds report related to a land purchase in 2004 by his fund management body.

During the news conference, Ozawa apologized to the general public for "causing trouble" and expressed his readiness to provide further explanations about the fund scandal.

The ruling party kingpin also said he will continue to cooperate with prosecutors' investigations. Two lawyers accompanied Ozawa at the press conference.

Hatoyama on Friday avoided saying whether he would retain Ozawa in his present position after the questioning, but analysts believe the support base for his government will be undermined regardless of his decision to retain or sack the party's No. 2.

Ozawa's fund management body, Rikuzankai, allegedly failed to report \400 million in income and roughly \352 million in expenses in connection with the purchase of land in Setagaya Ward in the group's political funds report for 2004.

The prosecutors suspect the money used for the land purchase included illegal donations, possibly from general contractors, but Ozawa has claimed he used his own funds.

The prosecutors arrested DPJ lawmaker Tomohiro Ishikawa, who was Ozawa's privately hired secretary at the time of the alleged accounting irregularities, and Mitsutomo Ikeda, who succeeded Ishikawa as secretary, on Jan. 15, and the DPJ secretary general's current aide, Takanori Okubo, on Jan. 16 on suspicion of violating the Political Funds Control Law over the land deal.

Ishikawa, 36, a House of Representatives member, indicated to the prosecutors that he conveyed to Ozawa the exclusion of the \400 million, which was used to purchase the land, in the 2004 political fund report, investigative sources said earlier.


[NATIONAL NEWS]
Sunday, Jan. 24, 2010
Japan 'lied' to public about U.S. nuke pact
Kyodo News

The government had lied when it said the United States is obliged to hold consultations with Tokyo before U.S. military vessels carrying nuclear weapons make stopovers in Japan or pass through Japanese territory, a late vice foreign minister admitted in an interview for which a researcher claims to have an audiotape.

The government, then led by the Liberal Democratic Party, lied in an attempt to evade grilling by opposition parties, former Vice Foreign Minister Hisanari Yamada said in an interview on Oct. 14, 1981, according to Yoshihisa Hara, a professor at Tokyo International University who held the interview with the now deceased bureaucrat.

The existence of the tape could impact discussions of a Foreign Ministry panel of experts investigating secret pacts between Japan and the United States.

The government had said in the Diet that prior consultations were required under a bilateral security treaty covering the passage and stopover, or transit of Japanese territory, of U.S. military vessels or aircraft carrying nuclear arms.

But such passage and stopovers would be given tacit approval by Tokyo under a secret bilateral pact, according to the interview with Yamada, who served as vice foreign minister at the time the secret pact was agreed in 1960.

According to a U.S. document that has been made public, Japan and the United States agreed on the secret pact when the bilateral security treaty was revised in 1960.

The secret pact effectively allowed the United States to bring nuclear weapons into Japanese territory. Yamada was involved in recording the minutes of discussions on the secret agreement.

A former senior Foreign Ministry official has said Japan and the United States had disagreed over what should be subject to prior consultation.

But Yamada's statement indicates that under the secret pact, there was no difference between Japan and the U.S. over the interpretation of matters requiring prior consultation.

Referring to the negotiations for the 1960 signing of the revised bilateral security treaty, Yamada said how to deal with the passage and stopovers of U.S. military vessels carrying nuclear arms had never been on the agenda.

The requirement for prior consultation covered "bringing large nuclear weapons onto Japanese soil" and the passage and stopovers of U.S. military vessels carrying nuclear weapons do not require such consultations, Yamada said in the interview.

The late U.S. Ambassador to Japan Edwin O. Reischauer stated in 1981 that the transit of a nuclear-armed U.S. vessel was not considered to constitute an introduction of nuclear weapons as he confirmed the notion with the Japanese side in 1963 when he met then Foreign Minister Masayoshi Ohira.

Asked by Hara if Reischauer's remarks on the issue were right, Yamada answered, "That is exactly right."

Hara also asked Yamada whether the Foreign Ministry had included passage and stopovers as matters requiring prior consultation in its mock question-and-answer sheet to counter opposition parties during Diet sessions.

Yamada admitted that the ministry had done so and said, "We had never thought transit should be subject to prior consultation," according to Hara.


[NATIONAL NEWS]
Sunday, Jan. 24, 2010
Yonekura to be next Keidanren chief
Kyodo News

The Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren) plans to pick Sumitomo Chemical Co. Chairman Hiromasa Yonekura as its next chairman, federation sources said Saturday.

Yonekura is to replace Fujio Mitarai, who has led the nation's most influential business lobby since 2006.

The appointment would be the first time a Sumitomo Group executive is named to head Nippon Keidanren.

Yonekura will also be the first person from the chemical industry to take the lobby's helm since Ichiro Ishikawa, the first chairman of Keidanren, a precursor of the current Nippon Keidanren.

Yonekura's leadership with the Sumitomo Group was held in high esteem by Mitarai and other Nippon Keidanren executives.

news20100124jt2

[TODAY'S TOP STORIES] from [The Japan Times]

[Environment]
Sunday, Jan. 24, 2010
OUR PLANET EARTH
Saving the planet through its trees
Now is the time to act on the fact that much of our future is linked to the conservation of forests
By STEPHEN HESSE

Negotiators at the COP15 conference in Copenhagen didn't see eye to eye on much last month, but almost everyone agreed on one thing: To protect the planet we need to save its forests.

{{Natural assets: This idyllic rural scene in Mie Prefecture highlights Japan's wealth of forests, which cover more than two-thirds of the country. However, it will take new nationwide policies to sustainably utilize these timber resources.}
YOSHIKO MIYAMOTO PHOTO}

From Denmark to Japan, where The Japan Times' Nature page columnist C.W. Nicol and others have submitted a new forestry proposal to the government, there is clear consensus that forests must be conserved while they are still intact.

"Healthy, well-managed forests are essential to the survival of our societies: They are home to millions of species of plants, animals and insects, and protect soils and watersheds from erosion. They act as carbon stores, absorbing greenhouse gases and preventing their release into the atmosphere. Maintaining forest ecosystems can help to increase our resilience to climate change," explains the U.N.-REDD Programme Secretariat.

U.N.-REDD is the acronym for a United Nations initiative established in September 2008 calling for Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation.

In brief, the idea is for developed countries to pay developing nations to protect and manage their (primarily) tropical forests in order to reduce the global carbon emissions that result from deforestation and degradation.

A primary attraction of REDD is that it offers developed nations an inexpensive way to offset domestic emissions. For example, if nation X wants to reduce carbon emissions but finds domestic reductions difficult, it could pay nation Y to conserve forests that might otherwise be cut or cleared for agriculture. That way, nation Y would supposedly reduce its deforestation emissions by an amount equal to the needs of nation X.

One U.N. estimate suggests that, under a REDD initiative, Indonesia could be compensated as much as $1 billion a year to reduce its deforestation rate.

Between 1990 and 2005, annual global deforestation averaged some 130,000 sq. km (around four times the area of Kyushu), mostly in the Tropics, and greenhouse-gas emissions from felling, clearing for agriculture, and other means of deforestation, accounted for 17 percent of global emissions of carbon dioxide — second only to the burning of fossil fuels, according to U.N. sources.

Theoretically it's a win-win situation. Developed countries pay for the right to emit greenhouse gases, and developing nations with vast forests are paid to keep them intact.

Thus Paragraph 6 of the Copenhagen Accord states: "We recognize the crucial role of reducing emission from deforestation and forest degradation and the need to enhance removals of greenhouse-gas emission by forests and agree on the need to provide positive incentives to such actions through the immediate establishment of a mechanism . . . to enable the mobilization of financial resources from developed countries."

But establishing and managing a global U.N.-REDD system will be tough.

During a lecture last Saturday at the Chuo Law School in Tokyo, James Prest, a professor at the Australian National University's College of Law in Canberra, noted five difficulties with implementing a REDD program: ensuring the permanence of such a system; preventing REDD from undermining domestic carbon markets; leakage, or emissions displacement, when logging or agriculture stops in one location, but moves to another; and governance and corruption problems. Illegal logging operations account for 25 to 30 percent of the tropical timber products on world markets today, according to Prest.

When it comes to promoting healthy forests in Japan, the first thing to note is that, unlike many other countries, this one is in the enviable position of being able to develop a two-prong forest-protection policy that includes REDD support for developing nations and the promotion of sustainable forestry at home.

Japan is also luckier than most developed nations because it has forests covering more than two-thirds of the country — and it has C.W. Nicol, known to most of us simply as Nic, as a true champion of those forests.

Nic is one of the leaders of Nihon ni Kenzen na Mori wo Tsukuri Naosu Iinkai (Committee to Recreate Healthy Forests in Japan), a citizen-based policy group formed to focus public opinion and government policies on protecting and sustainably using Japan's forests. The committee is made up of 12 scholars, writers, and forestry professionals.

Last autumn, the group handed a set of proposals to Masahiko Yamada, a senior vice-minister in the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, calling on the Japanese government to begin moving immediately toward a low-carbon society that judiciously conserves and capitalizes on its forests.

The committee proposes that Japan should commit to reducing oil use by at least 1 percent per year; begin using the natural energy of forests; become a nation that takes up forestry as a national occupation; and make this country a model for wise use of forest resources.

The group notes that Japan has long been a "wood culture," crafting shrines, temples and houses from wood and respecting the spirit that resides among and within the trees.

During and after World War II, however, Japan cut down most of its natural broadleaf forests. Trees were replanted, but demand for wood pushed the nation to look abroad for timber. Since then, Japanese forestry has been in a slump and Japan now imports some 80 percent of the 80 to 100 million cu. meters of wood it uses annually from overseas.

Fortunately, the trees planted after the war have come of age, and Japan has a unique opportunity to become a nation once again protected and well served by its forests.

Hence the committee suggests that Japan consider the German model. According to the authors, Germany and Japan both have about the same amount of artificial, or planted, forests (around 10 million hectares), but Germany produces 60 million cu. meters of wood per year from its forests through an industry that employs more than a million workers — almost a third more than its car industry.

In stark contrast, Japan's annual timber production is a mere 20 million cu. meters although the country has a total of around 25 million hectares of forest cover (comprising both natural and planted woodlands) occupying two-thirds of its land area. Moreover, the timber volume in Japan is estimated to total some 4.4 billion cu. meters, with annual growth of around 100 million cu. meters — which the authors categorize as "world class with extremely high potential."

But timing is key, and the forests planted 50 to 60 years ago are ready now for managed harvesting. Japan has a choice: It can begin to thin and exploit these postwar forests or let them slowly decline, wasting valuable resources.

Japan could match the production of Germany if it began extracting 50 to 60 million cu. meters of wood per year, but this will require considerable human resources to thin out planted trees and develop healthier forests with more sunlight streaming into them so both old and young trees can thrive.

Raising extraction rates would dramatically cut Japan's wood imports, save energy, and reduce the carbon generated when transporting imports. Forestry could eventually become a \2 trillion-a-year industry, according to the committee.

Since revival of rural areas goes hand in hand with protecting forests, the committee also suggests programs to encourage young people to take up forestry careers. A successful government initiative along these lines could hugely revitalize farming villages now suffering population declines that threaten their very existence.

We will see, and soon, if the Japanese government chooses the wise path toward a nationwide program of forest conservation and sustainable forestry. We will also see what becomes of the last great forests of South America, Africa and Southeast Asia. If we can preserve our global forests, for the most part as they are now, we have a far better chance of adapting to climate change, even as carbon levels and temperatures rise.

But the clock is ticking. "We have already taken nearly half of the productive land to grow food, and now we are cutting and burning the remaining half," warns world-renowned English scientist and author James Lovelock.

"It is all too often assumed that the vast changes to the land surface made by agriculture and forestry have had little or no influence on the sensitivity and resilience of the Earth system," the author of 2005's landmark book, "The Revenge of Gaia," continues. "I think it is probable that the replacement of natural ecosystems with farmland may have altered the dynamics of climate feedback. We have to discard the old-fashioned teaching of both science and religion and begin to look on the forested land surface of the Earth as something that evolved to serve the metabolism of the Earth.

"It is irreplaceable," Lovelock declares.

Stephen Hesse is a professor at Chuo University and director of the Chuo International Center. He can be contacted at stevehesse@hotmail.com

news20100124jt3

[TODAY'S TOP STORIES] from [The Japan Times]

[LIFE IN JAPAN]
Sunday, Jan. 24, 2010
Secrets and lies
By DAVID McNEILL
Special to The Japan Times

Japan marked the 50th anniversary of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty on Jan. 19 amid calls for an inquiry into the dispatch of Japanese Self-Defence Forces to Iraq, which critics say was illegal. But in contrast to the fierce debates over the origins and legitimacy of the 2003 Iraq invasion in both the United States and the United Kingdom, there will be no investigation in Japan.

Yuriko Kondo is recalling her surprise that the state's democratic machinery eventually worked.

{{Lines of duty: ASDF members at Komaki, Aichi Prefecture, stand before an aircraft set to take them to Iraq in December 2003.}
AP PHOTO}

Her three-year demand for information on how the Japanese government had spent billions of taxpayers' yen supporting a "humanitarian mission" in Iraq from January 2004 through to the end of 2008 had been partly answered. And it was worth the wait.

In late September, new Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa unexpectedly authorized the release of a short document under the Freedom of Information Act disclosing that about 67 percent of the 26,000 soldiers transported by the Air Self-Defense Forces between July 2006 and December 2008 wore U.S. uniforms. That is, the ASDF was transporting U.S. forces into and out of combat.

In case anyone missed the point, Kondo, a 60-year-old veteran peace activist from Ogaki in Gifu Prefecture spelled it out: Japan's Constitution bans the SDF from participating in combat activities or transporting weapons or ammunition in a war zone. For two years, the SDF had "snubbed the law," she says, and the government concealed the illegality with blacked-out documents and a standard Defense Ministry verbal firewall to the effect that releasing such information would "hamper operations" and "damage Japan's reputation."

"It was ludicrous and illegal to have sent the SDF to Iraq," she says, alluding to Japan's so-called war-renouncing Constitution. "This document proved that."

Kondo's views found support in one landmark legal ruling.

In April 2008, the Nagoya High Court declared that the ASDF airlifting of coalition troops was unconstitutional, violating both the (war-renouncing) Article 9 clause in the Constitution and specifically the hastily written 2003 "law on special measures for assistance to Iraq in its reconstruction" that provided the legal fig leaf for the SDF dispatch — on condition that Japanese forces would operate only in "noncombat" areas.

"In modern warfare, the transport of personnel and supplies constitutes a key part of combat," concluded Judge Kunio Aoyama.

"The airlift of multinational forces to Baghdad . . . plays a part in the use of force by other countries."

The then Liberal Democratic Party-led government disagreed, still declaring the ruling to be a victory because it rejected compensation claims by the 1,100 plaintiffs in the group action ruled on at Nagoya High Court.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura shrugged off accusations of illegality, quixotically arguing that Baghdad was "a noncombat zone." The ASDF crews stayed on in Kuwait until December 2008, and there the issue stood until Kitazawa's bombshell announcement — a sign, perhaps, that the Democratic Party of Japan that swept into power with a landslide election victory on Aug.30, 2009 is about to reverse years of official mendacity over government policies in Iraq.

Kondo agrees that the announcement was "surprising" and was probably attributable to new DPJ pressure, but she believes that the Defense Ministry simply no longer cares what people think about the SDF.

"It basically figured that the release of this information would not hurt its plans in the future," she says.

That reasoning, Kondo believes, was adopted because the government had already proved it could disregard popular opposition, flaunt the Constitution and ignore the little media flak the war generated. With the precedent set, the way is paved for more military adventures abroad, she argues. "If the government says in the future that we have done this before, Japanese citizens will accept that."

Says Hajime Kawaguchi, a lawyer lobbying for a government inquiry into the SDF dispatch: "We have to get to the bottom of this episode in Japan's history or we will pay the price. But there is no consciousness of the need to challenge the government. Nobody appears interested."

Kawaguchi believes that the archives could tell more. Were the SDF infantry based at Samawah in southern Iraq only engaged in "humanitarian assistance" to the local population? Were local insurgents, as some believe, paid off to prevent them attacking Japanese forces? And on the financial front, how much did the entire five-year mission cost Japanese taxpayers?

History is rarely written by people like Kondo or Kawaguchi, but nearly seven years after it was launched on March 20, 2003, the popular view of the U.S.-led war in Iraq among Japanese people may be closer to theirs than to that of the leaders who started it.

As everyone now knows, the weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) used as the prime justification for the invasion never materialized. Similarly, significant links to al-Qaida were never found, and the nation that was promised democracy and prosperity is now a shattered, sectarian and Balkanized state with ethnic cleansing virtually eliminating the possibility for people of the Sunni and Shiite Muslim faiths to share neighborhoods or cities. More than two million Iraqis have fled abroad, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees; perhaps another 2.7 million have resettled elsewhere inside the country; and the most credible total death toll ranges from 100,000 to well over a million.

The impact back in the United States of the wider "war on terror" has also been profound.

That impact includes the legitimization of torture, the spread of government surveillance, the shredding of habeas corpus, Guantanamo, so-called extraordinary rendition, CIA dirty tricks, and the enormous price tag — a staggering $3 trillion for Iraq and Afghanistan, and counting, according to economist Joseph Stiglitz, who points out that ordinary Americans will be paying the price for George W. Bush's decision to go to war for decades.

But at least in the U.S. and its prime partner in arms, the United Kingdom, athough the war's prime culprit breezily plays golf in Texas, there has been a reckoning of sorts. Stemming from the continuing public debate, there has been a half-hearted mea culpa on torture and Guantanamo from President Barack Obama and a startling recent admission by Britain's prime minister at the time of the Iraq invasion, Tony Blair, that he would have invaded Iraq with or without WMDs. And that came ahead of his testimony to the government's current Iraq Inquiry announced by Prime Minister Gordon Brown in June 2009, which is due to report in June.

In Japan, although the SDF was finally pulled out of Iraq back in December 2008, there has been no government inquiry, no major excavation of the leadup to the war — and no interest by the mainstream media in digging around what happened, laments Takashi Takeshita, a journalist with Akahata, the Japan Communist Party newspaper.

{{Ocean waves: Crew members aboard the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force's fleet-support ship Mashuu bid farewell to a Pakistan Navy vessel after a refueling operation in the Indian Ocean on Jan. 15, 2010. That day, the law authorizing such missions supporting U.S.-led antiterrorism operations in Afghanistan over the previous eight years finally expired.}
KYODO PHOTO}

Takeshita uncovered evidence last year that just 6 percent of the 45,000 people transported by the ASDF between March 2004 and December 2008 worked for the United Nations. The vast bulk were U.S. troops. So much for the "humanitarian and reconstruction assistance" mission on the basis of which the war was sold to the Japanese public, he concludes.

Nobody knows the final price tag for the dispatch, admits senior DPJ lawmaker Shoichi Kondo, who believes a U.K.-style inquiry — which he would support — is unlikely. However, his assessment is that "over half" of his party had problems with the decision to invade Iraq.

"There would be pressure against such an inquiry — ultimately, there are a lot of people who would worry about the impact on U.S.-Japan relations," he believes.

However, Kondo also says that although senior DPJ members, including Naoto Kan, the party's former leader (2000-04), and current Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, disagreed with the prosecution of the war in Iraq, the bureaucracy and the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty signed up to on Jan. 19, 1960, weigh heavily on the political process.

Last November, DPJ Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano effectively smothered any hope of a postmortem on the Iraq adventure when he declared the SDF dispatch legal, reversing the conclusion of Kan, who, as party leader in 2004, had called it unconstitutional.

"As an opposition party, we could not determine if the area where they were sent was a noncombat zone," said Hirano. "But as we (now) recognize it is a noncombat zone, we have judged that the SDF activities there were constitutional."

Peace activist Yuriko Kondo calls that statement "unbelievable" — but she blames journalists as much as politicians.

CONTINUED ON newsjt4

news20100124jt4

[TODAY'S TOP STORIES] from [The Japan Times]

[LIFE IN JAPAN]
Sunday, Jan. 24, 2010
Secrets and lies
By DAVID McNEILL
Special to The Japan Times

CONTINUED FROM newsjt3

"The mass media is the reason the government can dodge responsibility. They drop anything that doesn't make headlines and don't dig up information or do long-term investigative reporting. This allows Japanese citizens to forget the past," she observes.

Yuriko Kondo, Takeshita and Kawaguchi, and their neoconservative opponents — such as former ASDF Chief of Staff General Toshio Tamogami — at least agree on one thing: The roots of Japan's secretive, convoluted defense policies lie in the postwar, U.S.-dominated Allied Occupation, which created the "war-renouncing" Article 9 of the Constitution.

Pacifists cling to Article 9 because it helped construct what appeared to be a new type of modern state: one that explicitly rejected imperialism and war.

Tamogami, who was sacked in 2008 for arguing that Japan was not given sufficient credit for ending white European colonialism in Asia, despises Article 9 for exactly the same reason. "The aim was to weaken Japan," he says.

"That's why Japan's self-defense forces are bound by law and not allowed to move as they wish. That's why the country cannot exercise collective defense, take offensive action, or export weaponry. That's why it is bound by three basic nonnuclear principles. Since the Occupation, the country has been bound hand and foot," he told The Japan Times.

Tamogami is the latest in a long line of political and military figures with views that run counter to the Constitution. In a recent interview, he claimed that "two-thirds" of SDF officers back his views. "I'm also supported by many politicians. I can't say their names because it would cause them trouble. (On being asked whether former prime ministers Shinzo Abe [2006-07] and Taro Aso [2008-09] were among his supporters, Tamogami indicated they were.)

The U.S. defense establishment has long been ideologically closer to Tamogami and his ilk than to the Japanese pacifists who have fought to preserve the Washington-inspired Article 9. In 1946, almost as soon as the ink was dry on the postwar, U.S.-orchestrated "peace" Constitution, Japan's new military ally began pressing for rearmament in the face of Chinese and Russian communism. That threat ushered in a vast expansion of U.S. power and military bases throughout the region.

Even Japan's so-called three nonnuclear principles, outlined by Prime Minister Eisaku Sato in 1967 and formally adopted by the Diet in 1971 — principles that commit Japan to never produce, possess or allow the entry of nuclear weapons into the country — were not safe from the political calculations needed to maintain the facade of pacifism.

As a new government probe launched under Hatoyama will certainly prove, the no-nuke rule was undermined by a backroom deal struck between Washington and Tokyo that was signed by Sato and President Richard Nixon in 1969.

After decades of rumors, that secret pact — allowing nuclear-armed U.S. ships and aircraft to traffic anywhere through or over Japanese territory — was confirmed by a senior Japanese Foreign Ministry bureaucrat last summer. Consequently, it appears uncontestable that the LDP had lied about the existence of the pact for years. Indeed, a team Hatoyama tasked with investigating the secret pact reported last November that it had discovered files at the Foreign Ministry proving its existence.

The deal, agreed during the fraught negotiations to rewrite the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty in 1960, is said to have depended on a "misinterpretation." Tokyo claimed that it believed it would receive prior consultation before any nuclear-armed dockings or flyovers; Washington had no such understanding.

When the LDP discovered otherwise, it kept quiet — "instead of publicly acknowledging a change in position," the leading, liberal-leaning Asahi Shimbun newspaper said last year. In fact, LDP politicians repeatedly denied the deal, even after the Japanese parliament officially adopted the no-nuke principles in 1971, and former Prime Minister Sato even won the 1974 Nobel Peace Prize for his "opposition to any plans for a Japanese nuclear-weapons program."

Today, the official bureaucratic line is still that the pact doesn't exist.

The origins of this and other deceptions go back to 1946, argues John Junkerman, director of a documentary titled "Japan's Peace Constitution," released in 2005 by Siglo Productions (www.cine.co.jp/kenpo/english.html). "The contradiction between Article 9 and the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty almost necessitated this pattern of deception, even in the face of clear evidence to the contrary."

{{Fight club: Then opposition DPJ lawmaker Yuko Mori swarms toward the chairman on July 25, 2003, as she strives in vain to halt the passage of the ruling party's Upper House bill authorizing the dispatch of SDF forces to Iraq.}
AP PHOTO}

The contradictions resonate most clearly in Okinawa, reluctant host to the bulk of America's roughly 47,000 troops in Japan and to about two-thirds of the country's U.S. bases — bases that occupy roughly a fifth of the main island.

Tokyo and Washington have always denied the existence of a secret pact obliging Japanese taxpayers to compensate Okinawa landowners in the leadup to its reversion back to Japanese rule in 1972. However, in June 1971, writing in the popular Mainichi Shimbun newspaper, one of its political reporters, Takichi Nishiyama, famously revealed the existence of just such a deal — and the information that Tokyo had secretly offered to pay $4 billion to Washington as a sweetener. His reward was to be convicted of violating state secrets, and he was drummed out of his profession. He has spent most of his life since then working in his family's fruit-selling business in Kyushu.

"Twice, in 2000 and 2002, diplomatic documents uncovered in the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration proved the existence of the Okinawa secret deal," he recalls.

The deal, confirmed in the memoirs of Kei Wakaizumi, a former professor at Kyoto Sangyo University, referred to the financial sweetener and to American nuclear "rights" in the prefecture.

For example, Wakaizumi reveals the minutes of a communique between Nixon and Sato. The communique insists that the U.S. intends to remove all nuclear weapons from Okinawa by the time of the reversion (in 1972), but adds: "However, in order to discharge effectively the international obligations assumed by the United States for the defense of countries in the Far East including Japan, in time of great emergency the United States Government will require the re-entry of nuclear weapons and transit rights in Okinawa with prior consultation with the Government of Japan."

Wakaizumi notes as well that the U.S. also demanded the retention and emergency activation . . . "of existing nuclear storage locations in Okinawa: Kadena, Naha, Henoko, and Nike Hercules units."

According to the reporter Nishiyama: "Government ministers and bureaucrats continued to deny it. And Japanese newspapers never did a thing to uncover it. I've never heard of a request from a journalist demanding information on what happened."

In an essay for the Tokyo-based Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan published two years ago, Nishiyama wrote: "The reversion of Okinawa was a cause for celebration, but it was also about the U.S. desire to secure a territory that they have used as a strategic base for the past 25 years, at a cost borne by the Japanese government."

Adding that the U.S. has retained its bases while being freed of much of the burden of running Okinawa (which eats up a huge chunk of the total 192.8 billion [in fiscal year 2009] Japanese contribution to the cost of hosting the U.S. military), he calls the deal the "tip of the iceberg."

"There is so much still unknown about that period: How many nuclear weapons were allowed on Japanese territory? What financial deals were struck? What did they agree to do during an emergency? Japanese people have a right to know these things," Nishiyama argues. The same is all the more true for Okinawans.

A fter half a century of virtually unbroken, conservative-led, LDP bureaucratic rule, the key question for Nishiyama and other LDP critics is, whither the new government? Can the DPJ expose decades of official duplicity and perhaps even begin to untangle the formidable contradictions created by the Occupation?

It seems a propitious time. Abe, Aso and other neo-conservatives are out of office, and, despite Tamogami's apparent popularity, they seem for now a spent political force. The DPJ has ridden into power promising to assert control over the bureaucracy and to strike a more independent defense stance after decades of what Hatoyama has termed "subservience" to the U.S.

However, the rawest point in the friction between the old and the new is, predictably, Okinawa, where plans to construct a U.S. Marine Corps air base off the pristine, ecologically important coastline of Heneko have thrown old perceived certainties about the U.S.-Japan relationship into doubt.

CONTINUED ON newsjt5

news20100124jt5

[TODAY'S TOP STORIES] from [The Japan Times]

[LIFE IN JAPAN]
Sunday, Jan. 24, 2010
Secrets and lies
By DAVID McNEILL

CONTINUED FROM newsjt4

Washington has pushed hard for Japan to "honor" an agreement made with the former LDP government promising to replace the aging U.S. Marine Corps base in Futenma with the high-tech Heneko facility. Whatever the final outcome of the dispute, says long-time Japan resident and commentator Gavan McCormack in a submission to the online journal Japan Focus, "the Hatoyama government has so far withstood the most sustained barrage of U.S. pressure, intimidation, insult, ultimatum and threat, and has decided, at least for the present, to say: 'No.' "

But a wider debate on the Constitution seems unlikely. Learning from Abe, who bet then lost much of his meager political capital trying to revise Article 9, Hatoyama is taking no chances, relegating discussion on the Constitution almost to an afterthought on the back page of last year's DPJ election manifesto. The economy is the clear priority for now.

In the absence of a formal inquiry into the SDF dispatch and its aftermath, it is left to Japan's grassroots movements to strive to fill the void. Nagoya was the scene of one of 13 lawsuits at 11 district courts across the country funded and driven by antiwar activists such as Kondo.

Toshiharu Kamata, a retired bureaucrat from the Kanagawa prefectural office, leads a group of about 80 people who refuse to pay their taxes in protest at military spending. Hitoshi Nagaiwa, a Saitama company worker, leads a lawsuit demanding that the treaty be declared null and void on constitutional grounds. "Japan's entire postwar military system is based on falsehoods and secrets," he says. Nagaiwa is conducting his own legal proceedings against the state with a total budget of less than $1,000.

These challenges seem destined to fail, but the campaigning lawyer Kawaguchi believes they perform a crucial public service: preventing the Iraq episode from slipping down the plughole of history.

"We went along with the SDF dispatch because of pressure from the Americans. It harmed our reputation abroad and potentially involves us in an endless war against terrorism. We have to take responsibility for that and admit it was illegal," he insists.

"This whole episode was against the national interest, and we have to say that."


[LIFE IN JAPAN]
Sunday, Jan. 24, 2010
COUNTERPOINT
For all his failings, MacArthur was a fine precursor of Obama's bow
By ROGER PULVERS

Two photographs, separated in time and context by 64 years, may symbolize, as well as anything can, the nature of the postwar Japanese-American alliance. Both in their time gave rise to uproar.

The second of these was the photograph, taken on the occasion of U.S. President Barack Obama's visit to Japan in November 2009, of the president bowing low to the Emperor. Despite the fact that such bowing in Japan is a gesture of respect and propriety, the American media went semi-postal, and Obama was virulently denounced as everything from an "idiot" to a "waterboy" — the latter a blatantly racist remark. Speaking on CNN, commentator Bill Bennett proudly claimed, "We (Americans) don't defer to emperors."

Such sentiments, quite widely held in the United States, are symbolic of something that runs very deep in the American consciousness: an inability to understand elements, however clear and simple, of another culture on any other terms than American ones.

I would venture to say that this has been a major impetus for crudely fashioned and violently executed U.S. foreign-policy blunders around the world for many decades.

The other photograph was taken at the first meeting, in September 1945, between Emperor Hirohito, posthumously referred to as Emperor Showa, and the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers in Japan, General Douglas MacArthur. The Emperor stands at attention in formal attire next to an at-ease general whose hands are not so much on his hips as behind his back. To the Japanese, this casual pose was a striking affront.

MacArthur was born on Jan. 26, 1880; and his upcoming 130th birthday anniversary might be a good time to take a look at this prime mover and shaker of what seems to be fast becoming arguably the world's most important previous relationship.

MacArthur saw Japan as a crucible in which to create a democratic and Christian populace who would be forever beholden to him and his people. To this end, the very first meeting he had with Hirohito was crucial, as he would enlist the Emperor in his holy campaign.

When the two men met on Sept. 29, 1945, the Emperor's bow to the general was a very low one, reflecting an encounter fraught with some fear on his part and self-congratulation on the part of MacArthur. It was a personal liaison made in two heavens — the Japanese descending heaven and America's ascending one. The general would save the Emperor's life and preserve his status, though stripped of its divinity. The Emperor would give the general most-favored nation-builder status, granting him the imprimatur of legitimate ruler over his country, thus ensuring the cooperation of his people in the smooth implementation of Occupation policy.

As for MacArthur, never was there a general so concerned with the appearances of power; and the Japanese, then and now, put great store on appearances. Power in Japan must be seen as being acted on — whether it really is or not can be decided later.

When he was made Chief of Staff of the Army, the youngest in history, MacArthur designed his own military cap, which, along with his corncob pipe, became an emblem of his persona. The cap's mold was made to look more impressive; the peak was lifted and the gold weave of its embroidery was thickened to make the American eagle's glare appear angrier.

As to the character of the so-called American shogun, his pursuit of strategy during his eight-month stint in Australia in 1942 made that quite clear. While there, he wrote his famous pledge, "I shall return" — referring to his flight from his Philippines headquarters on Corregidor island in the face of Japanese attacks in March 1942 — while traveling on The Ghan, a train that to this day runs between Alice Springs in the Northern Territory and Adelaide in South Australia. Afterward, from bases in Melbourne, Victoria, and Brisbane, Queensland, he commanded troops in subsequent battles against the Japanese, achieving victories with a minimal loss of American lives.

In actuality, he sent Australian soldiers into battle as shock troops in New Guinea, giving the Japanese an object lesson using those allied forces as the objects. He then refused to mention the high Australian losses in his communique to Washington, and insisted to Australian Field Marshal Thomas Blainey that U.S. morale was his primary concern.

In other words, MacArthur is the modern prototype of the blinkered American, seeing what he wants to see, acting on the basis of this as evidence, and rewriting history to give it a favorable spin. He was also a man with an ego the size of a church organ, a narcissist of a particular spiritual kind who looked in mirrors and saw not his own face but that of his God.

So, when he arrived on Japanese soil for the first time on Aug. 30, 1945, after war's end, he was photographed without a weapon but with his cap, sunglasses and corncob pipe — and with his hands behind his back. He was posing for history, telling the world that only he was aloof enough, noble enough and godlike enough to subdue the defeated Japanese devil.

Yet MacArthur felt protective, in the way a patriarch does, of all Asians. Of the Japanese he said, "Measured by the standards of modern civilization, they would be like a boy of 12 . . . ." On Sept. 11, 1945, he held a press conference in which he referred to Japan as a "fourth-rate nation." This term — translated into Japanese as yontokoku — assaulted the ears of a proud nation of people. The Japanese almost universally saw its use as a full-frontal humiliation, a reversal in one phrase of everything they had fought for, since the beginning of the Meiji Era in 1868, to raise Japan to a status equal to that of the countries of the West.

But curiously, MacArthur did not see this as an insult in any way. Quite the contrary, he was intent on turning Japan into a bastion of anticommunism in Asia. He saw the Japanese as a nation not of misguided souls but of sinners in need of his (i.e. God's) punishment and his (i.e. MacArthur's) benevolent retribution. To MacArthur, all Asians were childlike, vacillating between a petulant innocence and a vindictive brutality.

He was a complex amalgam of the reactionary and the idealistic. The many reforms instigated by the Occupation — covering a wide swath of societal needs for women's rights, labor-union reform and the abolition of feudalistic practices in schools and government offices — can be traced to his own personal crusade to transform Japan into a first-rate democracy.

This brings us back to the iconic photograph of Obama bowing to the Showa Emperor's son, Emperor Akihito. It says to the world that at least one American leader is willing to show respect for another culture on its home ground and within the framework of its own cultural tenets. That it was derided and damned in the U.S. shows that many Americans still consider themselves the world's superiors, and that, in their eyes, no culture other than their own is worth dying for.

Despite his many faults, and his holier-than-thou faith in himself and his country, MacArthur did not fall for that.

news20100124gdn1

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Fishing]
Piece of cod is becoming a luxury item
Manufacturers turn to pollock for ready meals and fish fingers
Ian Fletcher
The Observer, Sunday 24 January 2010 Article history

Cod is becoming a weekend mealtime treat for British families as the cost of traditional fish-and-chip dinners soars, .

Consumption of cod is falling as prices rise and shoppers no longer see it as an everyday food, according to market research analysts TNS, who found that consumption fell by 1.4% in the year to August 2009. Although sales rose by 4% to £94.4m during the period, due to a rise in prices caused by restrictions on supplies.

The trade magazine The Grocer said the fish was being eaten more frequently at the weekend, suggesting it was perceived as a special purchase, not an everyday food. But Friday remains the most popular day, claiming 27% of cod-eating occasions.

Andrew Franks, managing director of suppliers Fish Fanatics, told the magazine: "The decline of cod sales is due to people being far more aware of declining stocks and the product becoming more scarce, which in turn is making cod more expensive and a treat rather than an everyday meal."

Leading fish processors have increasingly been using alternative species such as pollock for ready meals and fish fingers, and introducing cheaper species such as basa, says Karen Galloway, marketing insight manager at industry body Seafish.

But the organisation has played down fears that cod may slowly disappear from UK menus. Galloway said: "It will remain a favourite with the British consumer and some will be prepared to pay a premium for responsibly sourced cod."


[Environment > Birds]
Continent's harsh winter means boom time for bitterns in UK
The shy wading bird has been spotted in the British Isles in greater numbers than ever, say wildlife trusts
Lisa Bachelor
The Observer, Sunday 24 January 2010

This winter's bitter cold has seen record numbers of bitterns fly to Britain from northern Europe and has led ­others to adopt unusual feeding grounds.

The elusive bird, which is famed for its booming call, has been spotted in bird reserves across the country, in some cases for the very first time; in ­others, in greater numbers than previously recorded.

On the Channel Island of Alderney, two bitterns have been photographed for the first time since 1979, while­ ­Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust had two visit Rutland Water – the highest number of bitterns recorded in 34 years.

Dorset Wildlife Trust reported sightings at its Brownsea reserve, only its second in 10 years, while the trust in the former Welsh county of Montgomeryshire reported its first sighting of the bird. "It was a great surprise to discover one at Llyn Coed y Dinas Nature Reserve," said Tammy Stretton, the biodiversity officer.

Last week, the Birmingham Post reported how one Warwick resident, Linda Radley, got a surprise when the rare bird appeared on a roof near her house.

Nottinghamshire, meanwhile, saw the birds arrive in record numbers. "Each year, we hope to welcome one or two bitterns at the Attenborough Nature Centre, but when we realised we had seven individual birds on site we were amazed," said Mark Speck, a conservation officer for the county's wildlife trust. "This must be one of the largest over-wintering ­populations we have seen in the United Kingdom."

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) says it has also been taken aback by the number of photographs it has been sent of bitterns in unusual places in recent weeks.

"One that particularly stands out was sent by someone at the Department of Work and Pensions in the West Midlands, who spotted one sitting on an office block next door," said Graham Madge, a spokesman for the RSPB. "We also heard of a man from Kidderminster who spotted one in his garden."

The RSPB said that last year 82 male birds were recorded across the country, but that it believes the influx from northern Europe in the past few weeks has been three times as much, as bitterns have tried to escape the freezing conditions on the Continent.

The snow has made the birds easier to spot, and also meant that they have had to move to new locations to look for food because their usual feeding grounds were frozen over.

A number of bird reserves have been feeding bitterns sprats in recent weeks, because frozen lakes and ponds have stopped them fishing for themselves.

Conservation charities are keen to help the birds in any way they can. In 1997, the British bittern population was down to just 11 males: males are easier to record as they make a booming call that can often be heard several miles away.

Improvements to bittern habitats have seen the population increase, but a particularly hard winter can see both bitterns and herons die off in large ­numbers.


[News > Society > Health]
Traffic fumes increase the risks of child pneumonia
Top consultant announces breakthrough study
Denis Campbell, health correspondent
The Observer, Sunday 24 January 2010 Article history

Children who live near a main road are in greater danger of catching pneumonia because pollution from passing traffic damages their lungs. A leading expert in childhood breathing difficulties has made the link between exposure to particles from vehicle exhausts and a child's susceptibility to the chest infection, which can be fatal.

Professor Jonathan Grigg, an honorary consultant at the Royal London Hospital and academic paediatrician at Queen Mary, University of London, made the breakthrough after studying the effect of airborne pollutants on human lung cells. Children whose home is within 100 metres of a main road could be as much as 65% more likely than others to develop pneumonia, he said.

Although the disease is usually associated with the elderly, it is a significant childhood illness. Every year about 20,000 children and young people under 18 end up in hospital after contracting the condition. It can also be fatal. Between 2004 and 2008, it killed between 60 and 77 patients aged under 20 annually, of whom between 38 and 52 were under the age of five, according to data from the Office of National Statistics.

Children under 12 months are the most likely to die. Of the 76 young people under 20 who died in 2008, 29 had not reached their first birthday – 20 boys and nine girls – and 23 others were between one and four.

Grigg took contaminated air particles collected as part of Leicester city council's air-quality monitoring system and recreated their impact in a laboratory. He then added bacteria that would cause pneumonia in a human and assessed how many were sticking to the surface of the cells and getting inside them. In normal lungs a few bacteria do that, but in the lung cells that had been artificially exposed to pollution three to four times more did so.

"These findings strongly suggest that particles pollution is a major factor in making children vulnerable to pneumonia. We've shown a very firm link between the two. The study raises strong suspicions that particles cause pneumonia in children," said Grigg. "This is significant because pneumonia causes many admissions of previously healthy children to hospital." Some children with the disease spend several weeks in intensive care.

Previous studies have blamed proximity to a main road for children having higher rates of asthma, wheezing, coughs, ear, nose and throat infections, and food allergies.

A study this month by the Boston-based Health Effects Institute claimed that toxic emissions from vehicles can speed up hardening of the arteries, as well as impairing lung function.

"Strong evidence" suggested that being exposed to traffic fumes can lead to variations in heart rate and other potentially fatal heart complaints, the study said.

Exposure to the burning of wood or coal, or to tobacco smoke, can also increase a child's chances of pneumonia. One study found that secondhand smoke was to blame for 28.7% of all children under five in Vietnam who were admitted to hospital with the condition.

Professor Steve Field, chairman of the Royal College of GPs, said: "We have known for some time that pollution causes chest problems, such as asthma, in both children and adults. This new research adds to the weight of evidence about the problems of air pollution, especially [from] cars, buses and lorries."

Childhood pneumonia was important because it often led to admission to hospital, costing the NHS hundreds of pounds per bed per day.

The research underlined the need for Britain to move towards greener forms of transport in order to protect public health from traffic fumes, he suggested.

news20100124gdn2

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Observer Ethical Awards 2010]
The Observer Ethical Awards 2010
This is your chance to nominate the people working hardest for a greener future. Lucy Siegle introduces this year's Observer Ethical Awards

There is a power-to-the-people air about the green scene as we launch the fifth Observer Ethical Awards in association with Ecover. This is not altogether surprising post-Copenhagen, where the political process failed to get the "ambitious and binding strategy" that we hoped for. This decade the message is clear: if you believe in social and environmental justice, instigate change yourself. Fortunately there are rich pickings in the UK, where millions of individuals, communities and companies are turning their ethical beliefs into action. These awards honour the best and the brightest ideas.

The Ethical Living postbag used to be dominated by questions about recycling. Now you write looking for advice on how to challenge people or organisations that stand in the way of you doing the right thing: woe betide the council with an under-par recycling unit, or planning departments that veto double glazing or solar thermal. We are now determined to speak up. It is no coincidence that one of last year's big ethical stories concerned Tim Nicholson, a senior executive who was fired from his job over his commitment to fight climate change (including objecting to a colleague flying from London to Ireland to pick up a BlackBerry). It is this type of dynamism and commitment to doing the right thing that we want to honour in our Grassroots Project award.

Of course, the UK is no stranger to informed protesters who challenge the status quo. The new generation of environmental campaigners that includes climate activist Tamsin Omond carry on this tradition, refusing to let society turn a blind eye to the use of coal-fired power stations and the expansion of airports. Vote for the person who has opened your eyes in our Campaigner of the Year category.

I was recently invited to Pendle Community High School, joint winner with Stockbridge Junior Rangers of last year's Ethical Kids award. The school, which caters for 90 children and young adults with special educational needs, is flourishing, as is their outdoor classroom on Lomeshaye Marsh. Their bursary goes towards increasing access to their outdoor classroom by creating a viewing platform and shelter. Now we're asking for this year's inspiring nominations.

A few weeks ago, a major high-street fashion chain was rumbled slinging bags of unsold merchandise into the rubbish outside one of its New York stores. Metres away, homeless people were sleeping rough in the snow. This illustrates the profit-making focus of fast fashion. By contrast, the designers and retailers we want to reward in our Ethical Fashion category, sponsored by Marie Claire, will be all about breaking the cycle of overconsumption, waste and exploitation. We also want applications from non-fashion businesses committed to breaking the consume-and-chuck mould or using business as a positive force.

Once again, we've assembled a stellar panel of engaged celebrities and top sustainability minds and practitioners to receive your votes and nominations. We're really looking forward to hearing from you.

For information on how to nominate and vote, please go to www.observer.co.uk/ethicalawards

news20100124nn

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 23 January 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2010.30
News
Early humans wiped out Australia's giants
Climate not to blame for the extinction of Australia's big animals.
Cheryl Jones

{{The half-tonne Palorchestes azael may have been exterminated by the activity of early humans.}
Peter Schouten}

Humans, not climate change, caused the mass extinction of Australia's giant animals, such as huge kangaroos, tens of thousands of years ago.

Scientists have long argued over what killed off about 50 species of animals weighing more than 45 kilograms, including the gigantic kangaroo, Procoptodon, and the two-tonne wombat-like marsupial Diprotodon, late in the Pleistocene epoch, which stretched from 2.6 million until about 12,000 years ago.

Some have proposed that the ancestors of Australian Aborigines, who reached the continent between 60,000 and 45,000 years ago, rapidly hunted the animals to extinction. Others have argued for environmental disruption from human-lit fires — a 'slow burn' to extinction as people set the bush alight to clear pathways or flush out prey, altering the continent's vegetation, hydrology and climate. In the climate change camp are scholars who blame the most recent Ice Age, which peaked about 21,000 years ago.

Temporal overlap?

Evidence for a human cause has been mounting over the past decade. One study dated the extinction of the 2-metre-tall, 200-kilogram flightless bird Genyornis to about 50,000 years ago, soon after human colonization, and at a time when the climate was benign¹. That work, on the bird's eggshell, was later backed up by a coast-to-coast project dating the extinction of giant marsupials, reptiles and birds across the continent to about 46,000 years ago².

However, one site, Cuddie Springs in New South Wales, has been held up as evidence for a long overlap between humans and megafauna, seemingly clearing people of being the main agents of the extinction of the animals. It is the only site with megafauna remains and Aboriginal artefacts in the same sedimentary layers. Those layers had been dated by radiocarbon and luminescence methods to between about 40,000 and 30,000 years old.

But some researchers doubted the results, which dated the megafauna only indirectly, through charcoal and sand grains in the layers bearing the fossils and stone tools. They said the site had been disturbed, with megafauna fossils from older deposits working their way into younger deposits. Lacking the protein collagen, the bones could not be dated directly by the radiocarbon method.

Dating discrepancy

Now a team led by Rainer Grün, a geochronologist at the Australian National University in Canberra, has used electron spin resonance (ESR) and uranium-series techniques to date the megafauna teeth directly. Their laboratory is the only one in Australia — and one of only a few worldwide — using ESR in this way.

All of the specimens of extinct species are at least 50,000 years old, some much older, the team reports in a paper in press with Quaternary Science Reviews³. The results debunk claims of the late survival of the giant animals and a long period of coexistence between them and people. The findings weaken arguments for climate change as the main cause of the demise of the megafauna.

But they do not discriminate between the two possible mechanisms of the catastrophe — rapid 'blitzkrieg' and slow burn — because the date of colonization and the date of extinction are not known with sufficient precision.

"Our results eliminate a strong argument against the blitzkrieg hypothesis but do not prove it," says Grün.

Richard Roberts, a geochronologist at the University of Wollongong, Australia, and biologist Barry Brook, of the University of Adelaide, Australia, say in a commentary⁴ in Science that "human impact was likely the decisive factor", possibly through hunting of young megafauna. Increased aridity during the last Ice Age might have reinforced this effect, but Australian megafauna were well adapted to dry conditions because they had survived repeated droughts in the past, they say.

Chris Johnson, an ecologist at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia, says the direct dates from Cuddie Springs mean the site now "falls in line with a mass of other evidence" for the rapid extinction of the Australian megafauna between 50,000 and 40,000 years ago.

Archaeologist James O'Connell of the University of Utah says the jury is still out. O'Connell, who has worked extensively in Australian archaeology — including on the Cuddie Springs site, says there might have been a long period of overlap between megafauna and people, regardless of which Cuddie Springs dates are correct. "Climate may not be the only factor, but it can't be eliminated as a significant consideration," he says.

References
1. Miller, G. H. et al. Science 283, 205-208 (1999).
2. Roberts, R. G. et al. Science 292, 1888-1892 (2001).
3. Grün, R. et al. Quat. Sci. Rev. advance online publication doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2009.11.004 (2009).
4. Roberts, R. G. & Brook, B. W. Science 327, 420-422 (2010).

news20100124reut

[Top News] from [REUTERS]
[Green Business]
Michael Szabo - Analysis
LONDON
Fri Jan 22, 2010 4:42pm EST
Climate bill setback forces clean development rethink

LONDON (Reuters) - Still reeling from disappointing UN climate talks in Copenhagen in December, clean energy project developers were dealt another blow this week when U.S. Democrats lost their Senate supermajority, potentially killing a federal cap-and-trade scheme for years to come.

Although the passage of a U.S. bill to cap greenhouse gas emissions in 2010 was far from certain, the election of a Republican in Massachusetts to the Senate on Tuesday derailed any momentum President Obama had following his healthcare push toward introducing a cap-and-trade scheme this year.

This, coupled with a disappointing UN climate summit in the Danish capital last month where leaders from over 190 countries failed to agree a legally-binding pact to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, is causing concern for some clean energy project developers and forcing them to reassess their game plan.

"I'm not as bullish as I was a year ago," said Sascha Lafeld, an executive board member at First Climate AG. "The U.S. pre-compliance market is cautiously developing, so our strategy is also one of caution ... We're on hold, we'll keep our two U.S. offices open but we're not expanding this year."

Frankfurt-based First Climate has a global project portfolio of some 250 projects, including around 20 projects in the U.S., that generate carbon offsets by cutting carbon dioxide.

Observers say the spotlight in the U.S. now shifts back to state and regional schemes launched by a handful of states during George W. Bush's presidency, when the prospect of a federal U.S. carbon market was a distant mirage.

"It's not ideal but we welcome this as a fallback solution," said Alexander Sarac of JP Morgan-owned EcoSecurities, one of the world's biggest aggregators of carbon offsets.

"Some states are prepared to address climate change rather than defer action, (but) we urge legislators to set up these regional schemes in a way that they can be easily linked to a national one."

Sarac, general counsel for EcoSecurities, said the company was confident about its U.S. approach. "Our strategy has been to get to know the market, work on our brand and develop a product that U.S. buyers like, so no reason to change that," he added.

CALIFORNIA OFFSETTIN'

Under these regional schemes, polluters like steel plants and power generators can outsource their carbon cuts by buying offsets, making it cheaper for them to meet emissions targets.

Lafeld said the most promising is California's Assembly Bill 32 (AB 32), which established statewide emissions reduction targets of 1990 levels by 2020, and cutting that by 80 percent by 2050. "AB 32 looks like the future. We believe California will be the U.S. hub for emissions trading," he said.

The bill recommends launching a cap-and-trade programme by 2012, covering 85 percent of the state's emissions, that would link to the Western Climate Initiative (WCI), a collaboration between seven U.S. states and four Canadian provinces.

Another scheme called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) was launched in 2009 by 10 northeastern U.S. states, but critics say its loose emissions caps will keep carbon permit prices low and limit offset demand.

RGGI currently allows offsets from five different types of clean energy projects including capturing methane from landfills and livestock manure, while WCI is considering a similar list.

Developers said these two schemes have already sparked U.S. demand for offsets and, remembering the barren regulatory landscape under President Bush just over a year ago, said too much focus was suddenly put on the prospect of a federal bill.

"While some debate whether a federal market will exist or not, there's already a deep market for offsets," said Sindicatum Carbon Capital CEO Assaad Razzouk, adding that his firm gets strong interest for every offset its U.S. projects generate.

Sindicatum has a portfolio of 20 clean energy projects in the U.S. and Asia.

THE CDM, POST-COPENHAGEN

With so much uncertainty in the U.S., many developers have maintained a focus on the Kyoto Protocol's larger, more lucrative Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) offset market.

Worth $6.5 billion in 2008, the CDM is the main source of offsets for Europe's emissions trading scheme, allowing participants to procure from a wide range of carbon-cutting projects in countries like India, China and Brazil.

But that scheme's future was thrown into jeopardy following the Copenhagen talks' failure, meaning the CDM could expire along with Kyoto in January 2013.

Scott McGregor, CEO of Camco International, said although Copenhagen fell short of what he expected, there was no clear opposition to keeping the CDM, so Camco will continue to develop projects and originate offsets.

"There will be healthy demand for offsets from the EU and we see other countries like Australia being very keen on them as well, so in terms of developing CDM projects our strategy is still one of expansion," First Climate's Lafeld said.

(Editing by Sue Thomas)


[Green Business]
Matthias Williams
NEW DELHI
Sat Jan 23, 2010 9:48am EST
U.N. climate chief rejects resigning over glacier gaffe

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The head of the U.N.'s panel of climate scientists promised on Saturday to tighten research procedures but dismissed talk he should resign over an erroneous projection that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035.

A 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said global warming could cause the thousands of Himalayan glaciers to vanish if it continued at its current pace.

Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the panel, told reporters in New Delhi that he regretted including the forecast in the report but said the mistake should not obscure mounting evidence that climate change was a real threat.

"Our procedures are very robust, they are very solid," he said. "All we need to make sure about, is the fact that we adhere to implementing these procedures."

Pachauri brushed aside questions about whether the error would strengthen the hand of climate change skeptics and should prompt him to step down.

"Rational people ... see the larger the picture. They are not going to be distracted by this one error, which of course is regrettable," he said. "I have no intention of resigning from my position."

India and some climate researchers have criticized the IPCC for overstating the shrinking of Himalayan glaciers, whose seasonal thaw supplies water to nations like China and India.

Were the glaciers to disappear, it would badly disrupt water flows in Asia that are vital for irrigation.

Flaws in IPCC reports can be damaging since the findings are a guide for government policy.

In its core finding from the 2007 report, the IPCC said it was more than 90 percent sure that mankind was the main cause of global warming, mainly through its use of fossil fuels.

The offending paragraph reads: "Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate."

IPCC leaders have noted that the projection about the Himilayan glaciers did not make it into its final summary for policymakers in 2007.

In a statement ahead of his media appearance, Pachauri said the error was caused because procedures were not properly followed and played down the chance of more flaws.

"The possibility is minimal -- if not non-existent," he said. "We would be reviewing and strengthening our processes henceforth."

(Editing by Noah Barkin)


[Green Business]
HOUSTON
Sun Jan 24, 2010 12:31am EST
Tanker collision sends oil into Texas waterway

HOUSTON (Reuters) - A barge collided with a tanker on Saturday in the port of Port Arthur, Texas, sending thousands of gallons of crude oil into the water, the U.S. Coast Guard said.

The tanker was carrying crude oil to Exxon Mobil Corp's refinery in Beaumont, Texas, located north of Port Arthur. The waterway, through which tankers carry oil to four refineries in Port Arthur and Beaumont, Texas, remained shut on Saturday night.

A 15-foot-by-8-foot (4.6 meter-by-2.4-meter) hole was torn in the side of the 807-foot (246-meter) tanker Eagle Otome in the collision with a barge being moved in the port, the Coast Guard said. No injuries were reported due to the crash.

Vapors from the estimated 450,000 gallons of spilled crude oil triggered warnings of a hydrogen sulfide release near the port where three refineries are located, leading authorities to recommend nearby residents leave their homes.

"I think about 12 people went to the shelter," said Port Arthur Police Chief Mark Blanton. "The vapors quickly dissipated."

The crude oil spill was being contained by booms put out by state and federal environmental agencies.

The remaining crude oil on the Eagle Otome will be loaded on another ship and the tanker will be moved out of the waterway by early next week.

Refineries in Port Arthur and Beaumont have a combined refining capacity of 1.15 million barrels, equal to about 6.5 cent of the total U.S. capacity.

None of the refineries in Port Arthur and Beaumont have reported problems since the waterway was closed. Refineries store significant amounts of crude oil in giant tanks on their grounds.

(Reporting by Erwin Seba; Editing by Will Dunham)