news20100306gdn1

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[News > Politics > Conservatives]
'Tory madrasa' preaches radical message to would-be MPs

Candidates trained by rightwing group that rubbishes NHS, dismisses global warming and backs waterboarding
Robert Booth
The Guardian, Saturday 6 March 2010 Article history

{{Eric Pickles, the Conservative party chairman, has addressed the Young Britons' Foundation, described by its own founder as a 'madrasa'.}
{Photograph}: Nils Jorgensen/Rex Features}

Tory parliamentary candidates have undergone training by a rightwing group whose leadership has described the NHS as "the biggest waste of money in the UK", claimed global warming is "a scam" and suggested that the waterboarding of prisoners can be justified.

At least 11 prospective Tory candidates, an estimated seven of whom have a reasonable chance of winning their seats, have been delegates or speakers at training conferences run by the Young Britons' Foundation, which claims to have trained 2,500 Conservative party activists.

The YBF chief executive, Donal Blaney, who runs the courses on media training and policy, has called for environmental protesters who trespass to be "shot down" by the police and that Britain should have a US-style liberal firearms policy. In an article on his own website, entitled Scrap the NHS, not just targets, he wrote: "Would it not now be better to say that the NHS – in its current incarnation – is finished?"

Blaney has described the YBF as "a Conservative madrasa" that radicalises young Tories. Programmes have included trips to meet neo-conservative groups in the US and to a shooting range in Virginia to fire submachine guns and assault rifles.

The group's close ties to the Tories were cemented this week when the Conservative party chairman, Eric Pickles, and the shadow defence secretary, Liam Fox, spoke at the annual YBF parliamentary rally at the House of Commons, which was chaired by Blaney.

The links are likely to be deeply embarrassing for the Tory leader, David Cameron, who has pledged to make the NHS his top priority if he becomes prime minister and has attempted to present his party as the choice for green voters. The Conservatives have also talked tough on torture, with the shadow foreign secretary, William Hague, saying torture "helps terrorists justify their hostility to us".

Jon Cruddas, a Labour MP who is heading a campaign against rightwing extremism in the election, said: "It beggars belief that the Conservative party should be so reliant for the training of some of its candidates and thousands of its young activists on an organisation headed by people with such extremist views."

The former deputy prime minister John Prescott said: "Cameron must disown the YBF now. This calls into question whether this organisation reflects the true face of the Tory party."

When asked about their involvement with the YBF, Fox and Pickles both tried to distance themselves from it. Fox, who has spoken at previous YBF events, said: "I am not endorsing them. I was there explaining Conservative party policy on defence. I speak to lots of organisations; it doesn't mean I support them."

Pickles said he did not know about Blaney's views and asked to be sent links to his blog, where many are posted. He subsequently failed to return calls.

Conservative Central Office insists it has no official links with the YBF and does not pay it for its services, but it strongly recommends activists attend Blaney's courses.

Since the YBF's inception in 2003, six other Tory frontbench spokesmen, including the shadow education secretary, Michael Gove, and the shadow arts minister, Ed Vaizey, have addressed YBF events. Former ministers John Redwood and David Davis have spoken at YBF weekend retreats. The group's president, Daniel Hannan, a Conservative MEP, caused outrage last year when he described the NHS to a US television network as a 60-year old mistake.

Writing openly on his own website, Blaney, a Kent-based solicitor, has argued that "humiliation or psychological interrogation techniques are, in my view, not a problem … Waterboarding doesn't do the prisoner any permanent physical harm although he may be reluctant to shower or use a flannel again in the future when/if he is freed."

In October last year, when Greenpeace activists scaled the Palace of Westminster to protest against climate change policy, he called on police to "next time shoot them down … start with water cannon and if that doesn't work, maybe crank it up a level or two".

Last month, the YBF's executive director, London barrister Matthew Richardson, told a major conference of conservative activists in Washington DC that the NHS is "the biggest waste of money in the UK" and in the same speech, he also described global warming as "a scam".

Shortly after the Guardian asked Blaney and the Conservative party to comment on his views, the blog on which they were openly posted was placed behind password protection.

Blaney has stressed the distinction between his personal views and the position of the YBF, which he has said is a broad church open to anyone who believes in the freedom of the individual. He has said that taking students to a firing range was an opportunity for them to experience another culture and that waterboarding is not torture under US law.

It is understood that he considers his remarks calling for police to shoot down green protestors as humour, while on healthcare he has said the NHS should provide free care for those who cannot afford insurance, while everyone else should be privately insured.


[Environment > Climate change]
Ian McEwan: Failure at Copenhagen climate talks prompted novel rewrite

Author's forthcoming novel, Solar, is about a scientist working on a technology to address global warming
David Adam, environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Friday 5 March 2010 16.20 GMT Article history

{{Author Ian McEwan's forthcoming novel is about a scientist working on a technology to address global warming.}
{Photograph}: Eamonn McCabe}

The novelist Ian McEwan changed the finished manuscript of his new book about a scientist working on a technology to address global warming to reflect the failure of the Copenhagen climate talks, he said today.

McEwan told the Guardian he watched the outcome of the Copenhagen summit in December "very closely and with some despair" and then went back to his novel, Solar, to rewrite a section a few pages from the end.

The end of the book is set in summer 2009, and McEwan introduced a scene in which Michael Beard, the chief protaganist and a Nobel-prize winning physicist, recieves an email that invites him to address a meeting of foreign ministers at the coming summit. "I just slipped something in to reflect the spirit of sadness," he said. "Everything has collapsed around him [Beard] and he knows that Copenhagen will be just the place for him. It is where he would be heading to add his confusion to everybody else's."

Had the summit produced a successful deal, as McEwen wanted, Beard and his failures would not have fitted in. "I would not have wanted my man anywhere near it," said the author. "I didn't want him there, believe me."

McEwan said he had spent four years gathering material for the book, though he had wanted to write about climate change since the mid 1990s. "I couldn't see a way in. A subject so weighted with moral and political value is not helpful to a novel. I couldn't see a way of making it come alive."

That changed during a visit of artists and scientists to the Arctic in 2005, when he said he was struck by the contrast between the idealistic evening discussions about global warming and the chaos of the equipment room.

In an interview in tomorrow's Guardian Review section, he says: "Clothes and equipment there to save our lives, which we should have been able to look after very easily would go missing, and I thought, for all the fine words and good intentions, maybe there was a comic inadequacy in human nature in dealing with this problem."

McEwan said he was "baffled" by the media storm over the emails released from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the mistake made in the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). "I think those involved, in the UEA press office and the IPCC, need to get a little more nimble. These things just surge across the blogosphere."

He said was happy to class himself as "warmer" — a term increasingly used by climate sceptics to describe those who agree with the scientific consensus that human activity drives warming. "Though I am quite tempted sometimes to be a calamatist. There is something intellectually delicious about all that super-pessimism."

McEwan added that his research on climate had forced him to reconsider opposition to nuclear power. "We just don't have anything else that can run our cities on a windless night in February." Better nuclear energy than coal, he said. "It is rare that virtue and necessity collide. Sooner or later we're going to have to find a new energy source for mankind."

news20100306gdn2

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Conservation]
Conservationists unveil plans to restore bison to North American plains

Recovery 'roadmap' would see large herds roaming free over thousands of hectares but hinges on an overhaul of government regulations and a rethink of public attitudes to the animal
Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Friday 5 March 2010 17.41 GMT Article history

{{Bison in the Grand Teton national parks. The IUCN study says the animals are critical to the restoration of the prairie grasslands.}
{Photograph}: Steve Zack/WCS/IUCN

Bison, the iconic animal of the American west, could once more roam wild across the great plains under a recovery roadmap prepared by international scientists.

A report by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) (pdf), prepared by dozens of scientists and bison experts from Mexico, America, and Canada, says there is a chance of a second recovery, nearly a century after the animals were rescued from the brink of extinction.

But success depends on allowing large herds to roam free over thousands or perhaps millions of hectares, an overhaul of government regulations, and a rethink of public attitudes to the animal.

Currently, there is only one population of plains bison, in Yellowstone national park.

"The next 10-20 years present opportunities for conserving American bison as a wild species and restoring it as an important ecological presence in many North American ecosystems," the study says. It says the animals are critical to the restoration of the prairie grasslands.

But Americans, especially ranchers in the west who view the animals as competition for grazing lands or a potential source of disease in their cattle, need to accept its presence on the plains.

"The greatest challenge is to overcome the common perception that the bison, which has had a profound influence on the human history of North America, socially, culturally and ecologically, no longer belongs on the landscape," the study says.

Tens of millions of bison once grazed the rolling hills and prairies of North America, from Alaska to northern Mexico. But by the beginning of the 20th century, the great herds had almost completely wiped out by hunters trying to satisfy the European fur trade.

Early efforts managed to save the bison from the brink of extinction, and about 31,000 now roam free. But conservationists say more needs to be done to protect the genetic diversity of such herds to assure their long-term survival.

Aside from harsh winters, bison in the wild face a range of diseases from anthrax to BSE, or mad cow disease.

The study says the new conservation strategy should aim to recreate the traditional range of the bison.

"While substantial progress in saving bison from extinction was made in the 20th century, much work remains to restore conservation herds throughout their vast geographical range," said Cormack Gates, a University of Calgary conservationist who co-edited the study.

Several states continue to view bison as livestock rather than wild animals and about 400,000 bison are being raised in commercial herds. Some 55,000 of those belong to Ted Turner, the media magnate and CNN founder, who has ranches in seven states.

"The key is recognition that the bison is a wildlife species and to be conserved as wildlife, it needs land and supportive government policies," Gates said.

But persuading the public the bison should be free and not food may not be easy. In 2002, Turner's ranches were so successful in raising bison that he opened up a chain of bison burger restaurants that now stretches from Montana to Florida.


[Money > Energy bills]
Solar panels the hot new item as pay-as-you-save launches

Get a loan of up to £15,000 to green your house – but the scheme could falter if the government loses the election
Miles Brignall
The Guardian, Saturday 6 March 2010 Article history

{{Solar water heaters and PV panels are expected to top most householders' wish list.}
{Photograph}: Andrew Butterton/Alamy}

If you want to install solar panels on your roof and take advantage of lucrative new feed-in tariffs but have been put off by a lack of funds, you could soon get a loan to cover the whole cost.

This week the government unveiled plans to offer homeowners 20-year loans of up to £15,000 to allow families to invest in green technologies, safe in the knowledge that their loan would be taken over by the purchaser if they move before it's paid off.

This follows an announcement by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) that it will start paying feed-in tariffs to households installing green technologies, most notably solar water heaters, typically costing £4,000, and electricity generating photovoltaic (PV) systems, which will set you back around £12,500. Households with south-facing roofs able to install a solar PV system will receive payments and savings totalling between £900 and £1,100 a year from 1 April.

Until now households wanting to introduce these carbon-reducing measures had to pay the upfront installation costs, or borrow the money, leading to accusations that they were only affordable for the well-off. Equally, spending thousands on solar power made little sense to anyone planning to move home a few years later.

The government has tried to answer both criticisms this week by introducing a pay-as-you-save scheme, which follows a pilot run in a number of cities.

Although details of how the scheme will work are yet to be finalised – and it looks like the election could be a major stumbling block to its introduction – we now have a rough idea:

> The loans, typically between £10,000 and £15,000, are expected to come from commercial organisations rather than government funds. As well as the big six energy companies, Sainsbury's, B&Q, Co-op Bank and HSBC are among those expressing an interest.

> Once taken out, the loans would effectively become a charge against the house in the same way as a mortgage. They are expected to be paid back over 20-25 years, but, unlike a mortgage, if you move house before the loan is paid off, the new buyer would take over the payments. Of course, they also take over the savings, and any feed-in tariffs payable, which DECC says would always be greater than the repayments. It should make the home more attractive to any purchaser.

> The interest is yet to be determined – 6% has been mentioned, but as the loans will be coming from the private sector rates will reflect the market at the time. It is likely the rate would be similar to a long-term fixed-rate mortgage, typically 5%-6%. If you have lots of equity in your home, and you are remortgaging, you might find it cheaper to add the cost to your mortgage.

> Households would be able to spend the money on a variety of technologies. Solar PV and water heaters will be favourites, but so will solid-wall insulation which is aimed at homes that were built without cavity walls. It is much more expensive than cavity wall insulation, but can bring down energy bills significantly. Ground and air source heat pumps and wind turbines will qualify.

DECC says it is aiming for 7m households – owner-occupier and rented – to benefit by 2020. It wants to make the loans available to the widest possible group rather than just the well-off. It aims to have a single point of contact for those hoping to get a loan, pushing applicants to the most appropriate commercial supplier.

One option could see the power firms, which already have responsibility for paying the feed-in tariffs, also overseeing the loans and simply paying the customer the surplus at the end of each month. This would enable those with less-than-perfect credit histories to install carbon-reducing measures.

However, before you start rubbing your hands in expectation, there is one major hurdle: DECC says the initiative will require primary legislation, and it will not be put before this parliament. If Labour is returned, parliamentary time would almost certainly be found to enable the first loans to be awarded in 2012. But if the Conservatives win, or if there is a hung parliament, its introduction looks more shaky.

The Tories have said they support feed-in tariffs and would not overturn their introduction. However, new governments tend to arrive with a host of legislation they want to introduce, and measures proposed by previous administrations, however laudable, have struggled to get parliamentary time in the past.

Questions are also being raised as to whether the scheme offers best value to taxpayers.

This week environmental campaigner George Monbiot launched an attack on the government's feed-in tariff, saying it would cost more than £8bn and only save 7m tonnes of carbon by 2020. While acknowledging that these measures make great financial sense for the households installing them, he described them as "comically inefficient". He recommends that the money be invested in big renewables schemes that deliver significant economies of scale.

This week the Guardian reported there could also be possible delays to the feed-in tariffs unless the government moves ahead swiftly with the enabling legislation.

The first payments are due to be made in less than a month, on 1 April.

news20100306bbc

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

[Science & Environment]
Page last updated at 21:28 GMT, Friday, 5 March 2010
By Paul Rincon
Science reporter, BBC News, The Woodlands, Texas
Probe may have found cosmic dust

{Stardust landed back on Earth in January 2006}

Scientists may have identified the first specks of interstellar dust in material collected by the US space agency's Stardust spacecraft.

A stream of this dust flows through space; the tiny particles are building blocks that go into making stars and planets.

The Nasa spacecraft was primarily sent to catch dust streaming from Comet Wild 2 and return it to Earth for analysis.

But scientists also set out to capture particles of interstellar dust.

The material was gathered by the Stardust probe in a seven-year, 4.8-billion-km (2.9 billion miles) interplanetary voyage.

{{So far this particle is unique... if we drop it on the floor, it will cost $300m to get another one}
Dr Andrew Westphal, University of California, Berkeley}

It extended a retractable device containing cells filled with a material called aerogel, a porous substance designed to trap dust molecules.

A capsule containing the precious samples was then returned to Earth in January 2006.

Team members have now reported the possible discovery of two contemporary interstellar dust grains in the Stardust Interstellar Dust Collector (SIDC) deployed during the mission.

Dr Andrew Westphal, from the University of California, Berkeley, announced the find at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) in The Woodlands, Texas.

'Cautiously excited'

The discovery was made by a member of the public, using the Stardust@Home internet application, which invited participants to search the aerogel collection medium for tiny particles of the dust.

"There are two particles, but they are in the same track. So when they hit the aerogel, they were together - they are two components of the same particle," Dr Westphal told BBC News.

"But they are very different from each other. That in itself is interesting, because if this does turn out to be interstellar dust, then it is a bit more heterogeneous than people thought."

{{All the heavy atoms in this room were in interstellar dust}
Don Brownlee, University of Washington}

The initial speck, known as particle 30, was spotted by Bruce Hudson, from Ontario in Canada. Under the agreement made between the science team and participants in Stardust@Home, Mr Hudson was allowed to choose a name for the particle; he called it Orion.

After preliminary analyses, the scientists found another grain upstream, which Bruce Hudson named Sirius.

But Dr Westphal stressed that the find "could be a false alarm".

"The right way to say it is we're cautiously excited," he told me.

"We have very limited data on it so far and the reason is deliberate. The analyses we are doing have the potential to do some minor damage to the particles. We don't think it will and we'll be careful to limit our analyses.

"So far this particle is unique... if we drop it on the floor, it will cost $300m to get another one."

Heavy atoms

Scientists have identified 28 definite impact "tracks" in the interstellar dust collector. But most of these come from angles indicating they are little particles of debris from impacts with the spacecraft's solar panels. However, particle 30 is one of seven with ambiguous trajectories.

Interstellar dust is formed when gas is ejected from stars and condenses to form grains. This dust then has to survive in the interstellar medium - the matter which exists between stars - where it is battered by cosmic radiation and shock processes.

It carries with it the heavy atoms that go into making the stars and planets. Our own Solar System was also constructed with these building blocks.

{Stardust flew by Comet Wild 2 in 2004}

The possible dust grains were collected as Stardust travelled with the interstellar dust stream which passes through our Solar System.

The spacecraft's chief scientist, Dr Don Brownlee from the University of Washington in Seattle, told BBC News: "All the heavy atoms in this room were in interstellar dust... so we want to know what this stuff is."

He added: "This dust, once it's formed, and once it's heated or changed [initially] it is set for billions of years.

Dr Westphal told BBC News: "It is very fine-grained material, which is what you'd expect for interstellar dust. It has an elemental composition which is consistent with what you would expect for interstellar dust. And it has a composition for other elements which are not inconsistent, but a bit surprising."

The researchers have so far analysed magnesium, aluminium, iron, chromium, manganese, nickel, copper and gallium from the particles.

A new mineral found in a type of particle known as interplanetary dust has recently been named Brownleeite after Dr Brownlee, who is regarded as a founder of the field of cosmic dust research. The discovery has been published in the journal American Mineralogist.

Though highly prized by Stardust's team, interstellar dust can be a nuisance in optical astronomy, because it can obscure objects in regions of the sky targeted for observation.


[Asia-Pacific]
Page last updated at 13:23 GMT, Friday, 5 March 2010
Japan's Princess Aiko 'bullied at school'

{Princess Aiko has been absent from school since leaving early on Tuesday}

Japan's Princess Aiko has been off school since early this week after complaining of being bullied, a royal household official has said.

The princess, eight, had come home from school in a state of anxiety and saying she had stomach pains, he said.

It was found she and other students in her class had been "treated harshly" by boys in another class, he added.

Princess Aiko, daughter of Crown Prince Naruhito and Princess Masako, attends Gakushuin Primary School in Tokyo.

The royal spokesman, Issei Nomura, did not give details of when the princess, who is a granddaughter of Emperor Akihito, was expected to return to lessons.

{Princess Aiko is the only child of Crown Prince Naruhito and Princess Masako}

She left early on Tuesday and has not been back since.

Mr Nomura said the palace had asked the school to address the matter and had been given permission to publicise the princess's situation, the Japanese news agency Kyodo reports.

A school director told reporters the princess had been frightened on Tuesday when a boy had run out of a classroom, which "must have reminded her of the rowdy behaviour of several boys in the past, who may have thrown things and made her uneasy", Kyodo says.

Princess Masako has rarely been seen in public for several years as a consequence of a nervous condition attributed to the stress of life in the royal household.

news20100306cbs

[Today's News] from [CBS News.com]

[World]
TOKYO, March 5, 2010
Japanese Princess, 8, Bullied at School

Emperor's Granddaughter Misses Several Days of School after Allegedly Suffering "Violent Things" from Boys in Class

(AP) Japan's Princess Aiko, granddaughter of the emperor, has missed several days of classes because of bullying by boys at her elementary school, a spokesman for the royal family said Friday.

The news provided a rare glimpse into the private affairs of the world's oldest hereditary monarchy, which usually abides by strict, formal protocols and is tightlipped about personal matters.

The 8-year-old princess complained of a stomachache and expressed deep anxiety and has not attended school since coming home early Tuesday, the spokesman for the Imperial Household Agency said. He declined to provide his name, citing agency policy.

An investigation by the agency and the school revealed that she and several other students had suffered "violent things" from boys in another class, the spokesman said, declining to elaborate.

The story is likely to shock Japanese. The imperial family is treated with deep reverence in the country, where Aiko's great-grandfather, Emperor Hirohito, was worshipped as a living god until Tokyo's defeat in World War II.

But an official at the elite Gakushuin Primary School in Tokyo's central Shinjuku district attended by Aiko said the incident may have been a simple misunderstanding.

"She had decided to leave school, and just as she had returned from changing into her normal shoes from her school shoes, I hear it was two boys that approached very suddenly and nearly collided with her, which scared her," school director Motomasa Higashisono told reporters.

Japanese schoolchildren often have a separate pair of shoes for school use.

Aiko is the daughter of Crown Prince Naruhito, son of the current emperor, and Princess Masako. The agency spokesman declined to comment on the reaction of her parents or when she would return to school.

Naruhito is to visit Africa starting Saturday but won't be accompanied by Masako, who hasn't attended official duties for several years. She has long suffered from a nervous disorder attributed to the difficulties of adjusting to palace life and the pressure to bear a son.

After suffering a miscarriage in 1999, Masako gave birth to Aiko in 2001. The lack of a male heir fanned a movement to change the law to allow Aiko to succeed her father.

But Naruhito's younger brother, Prince Akishino, and his wife Princess Kiko had a baby boy in 2006, who is now third in line to the throne.

news20100306reut1

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Poornima Gupta
SANTA BARBARA, California
Thu Mar 4, 2010 1:32pm EST
Electric cars will get more popular, predicts Shell CEO

(Reuters) - Royal Dutch Shell Plc expects electricity-powered vehicles to account for as much as 40 percent of the worldwide car market by 2050, Chief Executive Peter Voser said on Thursday.

Voser, speaking at The Wall Street Journal's ECO:nomics conference in Santa Barbara, said technological improvements and increases in the cost of producing gasoline will give a boost to vehicles that run on alternative power.

"We think between now and 2050, we will go from 1 billion cars to 2 billion cars worldwide," he said. "We think by 2050, roughly 40 percent of those 2 billion cars will be electric."

In the next 40 years, the market needs low-carbon fuels, more efficient engines and hybrid vehicles, Voser said.

"I think there will be room and space to develop all of them," he added.

Gasoline demand in developed countries like the United States has started to decline, partly as vehicles running on alternative fuels have entered the market. Companies such as Shell and BP are spending more money on those newer technologies, including for next-generation biofuels.

Automakers such as Ford Motor Co and Nissan Motor Co Ltd are racing to launch electric cars, betting these will be the environmentally friendly transportation of the future. Small players like Tesla Motors already sell electric vehicles.

Voser said Shell was investing 25 percent of its research and development budget into renewables, including wind power and biofuels.

Shell has bet big on ethanol by striking a deal with Brazil's Cosan to create a $21 billion a year ethanol joint venture.

The 50-50 joint venture, with almost 4,500 filling stations nationwide, will better position Cosan and Shell to compete with the two top players in the market, state oil giant Petrobras and Ipiranga, a unit of Brazil's Grupo Ultra.

(Reporting by Poornima Gupta. Editing by Robert MacMillan)


[Green Business]
Gilles Guillaume and Helen Massy-Beresford
GENEVA
Thu Mar 4, 2010 1:33pm EST
Bollore, Pininfarina set electric car plans

(Reuters) - An electric car developed by French financier Vincent Bollore and Italian car designer Pininfarina SpA may be available by autumn, Bollore told Reuters at the Geneva auto show.

As Europe gears up for electric car launches from major carmakers such as PSA Peugeot Citroen, Renault and Nissan, the two companies will launch the Bluecar initially for rental and later for sale.

The car will be available as soon as this autumn, depending on the results of crash tests, Bollore said.

Bollore, head of the Bollore group, said two battery plants that have recently been inaugurated in France would each have an annual production capacity of 15,000 30 kWh batteries per year by 2013.

"With this capacity we can make 30,000 Pininfarina cars or 10,000 buses, or 60,000 small urban vehicles," Bollore said. "Our objective is a mix of the three," he said.

Pininfarina Chief Executive Silvio Angori told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday he expected to ship 2,000 of the electric cars in 2011.

Bollore is throwing its weight behind lithium-metal-polymer batteries -- a different technology from the lithium-ion batteries other carmakers are using.

Bollore said support from Italian banks for Pininfarina meant the Italian company was free from problems. Angori said the group's net loss would narrow markedly this year.

(Editing by David Holmes)


[Green Business]
Aloysius Bhui
JAKARTA
Fri Mar 5, 2010 12:08pm EST
Indonesia says Unilever move on palm oil "unfair"

(Reuters) - A move by Unilever to stop buying palm oil from Indonesia's top supplier Sinar Mas and to blacklist another supplier PT Duta Palma was "unfair," Indonesian Agriculture Minister Suswono said on Friday.

Green campaigners and consumers have turned up the heat on European firms such as Unilever, saying these companies' palm oil suppliers are responsible for deforestation and peatland clearence that can speed up climate change.

"If there is a dispute we should ask an independent to judge objectively what was the weakness. A unilateral decision by Unilever I think is unfair," the minister told reporters.

Unilever, the world's top palm oil buyer, blacklisted Duta Palma last month, after previously halting a $33 million supply contract with Sinar Mas unit PT SMART.

"We have to prove if the accusations are right so going forward there will not be misunderstanding," added Suswono, who uses one name like many Indonesians.

The move by Unilever, and other campaigns by NGOs, has prompted palm planters in Indonesia and Malaysia to set up a forum to cooperate in promoting sustainable practices and to be united in the face of pressures from buyers.

"There have been accusations that palm oil expansion has caused deforestation, destroyed biodiversity, the natural home of orangutan and peat land," said a joint statement between Indonesian and Malaysia palm oil groups.

The palm oil industry, which has come under fire from green groups and Western consumers, set up the Roundtable of Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) in 2004 to develop an ethical certification system that includes commitments to preserve rainforests and wildlife.

However, there have been rifts between members with consumer giant Unilever stopping buying crude palm oil from the two Indonesian producers, both of which are fellow members of RSPO.

"Without Indonesia and Malaysia, RSPO could collapse," said Datuk Mohammad Saleh, chairman of the Malaysian Palm Oil Association (MPOA).

(Additional reporting by Yayat Supriatna; Editing by Ed Davies)


[Green Business]
Ed Stoddard and Tom Doggett
DALLAS/WASHINGTON
Fri Mar 5, 2010 6:08pm EST
U.S. to protect bird, oil drilling likely restricted

(Reuters) - The iconic sage grouse that once roamed the western U.S. plains in great numbers needs protection, a move that will still curtail some energy development, the U.S. Interior Department said on Friday.

The bird will not be listed under the Endangered Species Act, but the department will put special emphasis on preserving the chicken-sized bird on lands where oil companies want to drill and wind companies want to erect their massive turbines.

The bird which feeds off the sage brush in states such as Wyoming has lost about half of its habitat over the past several decades, with its numbers slashed by 90 percent to between 200,000 and 300,000.

Bob Abbey, director of the Bureau of Land Management, said the agency will review drilling permits that have already been approved.

"Certainly, we would be reviewing those applications with a lot more scrutiny in areas where we have determined they are major populations of sage grouse and as a result of that determination...we would likely attach some additional stipulations on that drilling," he said.

It was not immediately clear which projects will be affected, but efforts to protect the bird have already thrown some projects into uncertainty, including a 198-turbine, $600 million wind farm in Wyoming proposed by Horizon Wind Energy.

The Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States said it was concerned about how energy development would be affected but was relieved that a full listing of the bird was avoided.

"We're concerned that land managers will nevertheless implement this decision by introducing very restrictive policies that prevent companies from investing and creating high-paying jobs in local communities," the group said.

U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said he wanted to move ahead with energy development while working with the states and private landowners to ensure the sage grouse thrives.

POLITICAL FLAP?

Republicans, who have branded President Barack Obama's attempts to pass a climate change bill as a job killer, said efforts to protect the sage grouse was another example of a green agenda that was bad for workers.

"Wyoming is still left with a black cloud over our job market," said the state's U.S. senator, John Barrasso.

With an unemployment rate of 9.7 percent, the economy will be a politically charged issue in a congressional election year where Democrats are seen in trouble in many districts.

The bird did not attain full endangered status but as a candidate species, federal and state government agencies will be expected to work harder to protect its habitat, so industry could still face restrictions.

Wyoming had already taken steps to protect the bird in a bid to stave off an endangered species listing, which the sage grouse could still attain down the road.

The Bureau of Land Management in early January issued guidelines to protect the bird, which Wyoming officials and environmentalists say will effectively preclude wind power development in about 20 percent of the sprawling state.

According to National Geographic, the bird's range is spread over 11 western states but is concentrated in Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and Nevada.

(Editing by Jim Marshall and Rebekah Kebede)

news20100306reut2

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
CALGARY, Alberta
Fri Mar 5, 2010 5:11pm EST
Canada shift on reviewing energy projects critiqued

(Reuters) - Ottawa's plan to shift responsibility of environmental assessments to Canada's main energy regulator fails to address fundamental problems surrounding major oil and gas projects, a green think tank said on Friday.

But the oil industry, which had complained that the regulatory process for such developments as oil sands projects and pipelines was overly cumbersome and expensive, welcomed the streamlining initiative.

Canada's federal budget, delivered on Thursday, contained a provision to move impact assessments from the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency to the National Energy Board and Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, which the government said have more expertise than CEAA.

"The way to actually streamline the assessment process is to address some of the environmental issues up front and do the planning there. I don't see how that's going to be helped by making that move," said Simon Dyer, oil sands program director for the Pembina Institute, which is critical of the approval policy for major energy developments.

He said federal authorities should formulate regional standards for such things as water use, wildlife habitat and monitoring so developers can address them in the early planning stages rather than fostering an adversarial process.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced the assessment measure as part of an effort to cut red tape in industry.

The C$16.2 billion ($15.7 billion) Mackenzie Gas Project in the Far North, for instance, has been vetted by both the National Energy Board and a Joint Review Panel that included the federal assessment body. The process has taken several years.

The JRP released its report on the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of Mackenzie at the end of last year and the NEB is expected to hear final arguments in April, so the changes will not affect that project.

But future oil and gas developments will benefit from the government's move, said Greg Stringham, vice-president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.

He said he did not believe that environmental standards would suffer under the new system.

"To have the CEAA delegated to the NEB does provide a cleaner single window going forward," Stringham said. "It doesn't change the regulations that all these projects have to go through, but as we've seen with some of the joint review panels and so on, putting it with the NEB really will, I believe, improve the process."

(Reporting by Jeffrey Jones); Editing by Frank McGurty


[Green Business]
Poornima Gupta
SANTA BARBARA, California
Fri Mar 5, 2010 5:14pm EST
U.S. needs fresh look at nuclear waste issue: Chu

(Reuters) - U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said on Friday that the United States needs to come up with a better system for storing or disposing of radioactive nuclear waste than a planned repository near Las Vegas.

"The president has made it very clear that we are going to go beyond Yucca mountain. You should go beyond Yucca mountain," Chu said. "But instead of wringing my hands, let's go forward and do something better."

The Obama administration, in January, announced it was stopping the license application for a long-planned multi-billion dollar nuclear waste storage site at Yucca Mountain near Las Vegas, which is opposed by environmental groups.

The Energy Department formally asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission this week to withdraw the application.

Chu said when the waste site was first started, there were conditions put in the requirements for the repository that didn't really mesh with what scientists knew even back then.

"Long, long ago, it began looking less and less ideal," he said. "As time wore on, it's got to be one of those things: 'oops this might have happen, oops the Supreme Court says this...',"

"Wouldn't it be nice to step back and take a fresh look?" he asked.

The energy secretary said he would like to have the new blue ribbon panel of experts the administration recently created study the issue of managing nuclear waste on a long-term basis rather than spend money building a waste storage facility.

"Yucca mountain was designed at a time when we didn't think we would start the nuclear industry again," Chu said.

The Yucca mountain storage site, planned about 90 miles from Las Vegas, has endured years of bureaucratic delays and scientific foul-ups.

Yucca Mountain was designed to store millions of pounds of radioactive waste from 104 U.S. nuclear power reactors along with tons of leftovers from the country's nuclear weapons program.

Currently, spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste are stored at 121 temporary locations in 39 states across the country.

(Reporting by Poornima Gupta; editing by Carol Bishopric)


[Green Business]
FRANKFURT
Fri Mar 5, 2010 8:49am EST
Q+A: Germany's nuclear extension debate

(Reuters) - Germany's government is committed on paper to extend the life-cycles of its 17 nuclear reactors beyond what is laid down in a 10-year old law saying operators must pull out the technology by 2021 at the latest.

As there are many stakeholders and political sensitivities, there are fierce debates about the issue ahead of a wider national energy plan expected in October, which will assign nuclear a role alongside other fuels and favored renewables.

WHY DOES GERMANY WANT TO RENEGE ON THE EXODUS PLAN?

Left-wing and green forces that pushed for the withdrawal plan 10 years ago highlighted security and waste risks. They did so at a time when carbon emissions, of which nuclear is mostly free, were not penalized through costly cap and trade systems.

Conservative and liberal forces argue the world has changed, dictating a more environmentally friendly regime, in which nuclear must have a place.

They also say the technology is becoming safer and uranium is available without creating dependency on exporters.

Jobs are at stake and industrial consumers need reliable nuclear supply to continue choosing Germany as a base.

WHAT ARE THE MAJOR POLITICAL POSITIONS IN THE DEBATE?

While the conservative CDU wants longer life-cycles, its own Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen wants only a 40 year maximum for nuclear followed by total closure, to allow renewables to provide the bulk of power more quickly.

He says the population is not in support of nuclear and Germany must instead take a lead in renewable technologies.

Economy Minister Rainer Bruederle of the Free Democrats wants a longer period and a more diverse energy mix overall.

Utilities and engineers say that renewable energy supplies will always be unstable and need back-up such as nuclear.

A party donations scandal in Germany's most populous state of North-Rhine Westphalia has questioned the CDU's re-election chances in state polls on May 9, which raises the possibility of a local partnership with the anti-nuclear Greens.

The CDU might have to pay for that at national level via concessions on nuclear run times and by allowing bigger public use of additional nuclear power earnings.

Fierce nuclear opponents vow to demonstrate against the technology in the streets.

WHAT HAPPENS IF NO EXTENSIONS ARE MADE?

The last reactor will go permanently offline in 2021. At least a quarter of power production will have to come from other sources as demand is forecast to keep rising, if only slightly.

Although the population will no longer be exposed to the plants they must be decommissioned and waste stored permanently.

Power bills are likely to increase because neighboring European markets do not have surpluses to export to Germany and utilities will pass on additional costs to consumers.

WHAT HAPPENS WITH PROFITS IF LONGER LIFE CYCLES ARE GRANTED?

Amid a raft of estimates, UniCredit bank believes 7.5 billion euros ($10.26 billion) a year could be reasonable additional earnings by the four nuclear operators, RWE, E.ON, EnBW and Vattenfall Europe.

At least half of the monies will have to go into public uses including helping fledgling renewable industries to reach commercial maturity to the benefit of customers.

WHAT IS THE INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT?

Despite opposition in many industrialized countries, nuclear plants continue to be planned and built, including in Britain and Finland, involving German plant builders and utilities.

Germany's neighbor France has 58 reactors. Switzerland and the Czech Republic plan new reactors and a Dutch reactor has just been allowed to operate for 60 years. The Obama administration is also planning to build new plants in the U.S.

(Reporting by Vera Eckert)