news20100321lat

[Today's Newspaper] from [Los Angeles Times]

[Science & Environment]
Sandstorm sweeps into Beijing

The sky turns orange and residents are warned of the hazards.

{{A woman in Lanzhou, capital of Gansu province, contends with sand as best she can.}
(Associated Press / March 20, 2010)}
Associated Press
March 21, 2010

Beijing
Tons of sand turned Beijing's sky orange Saturday as the strongest sandstorm this year hit northern China.

A thin dusting of sand covered the capital, causing workers and tourists to muffle their faces in vast Tiananmen Square. The city's weather bureau gave air quality a rare hazardous ranking.

Air quality is "very bad for the health," China's national weather bureau warned. It said people should cover their mouths when outside and keep doors and windows closed.

China's expanding deserts now cover one-third of the country because of overgrazing, deforestation, urban sprawl and drought. The shifting sands have led to a sharp increase in sandstorms, the grit from which can travel as far as the western United States.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences has estimated that the number of sandstorms has jumped sixfold in the last 50 years to two dozen a year.

The latest sandstorm also hit the Chinese regions of Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia and the provinces of Gansu, Shanxi, Shaanxi and Hebei, affecting about 250 million people over an area of 312,000 square miles, the state-run New China News Agency reported.

As the sandstorm moved southeast, South Korea's national weather agency issued an advisory for Seoul and other parts of the country.

Chun Youngsin, a researcher at the Korea Meteorological Administration, said the storm would produce "the worst yellow dust" this year.

Some flights at Beijing's international airport were delayed but eventually took off, said a woman answering phones at the airport hot line.

Skies cleared in the city by midday, but a warning of more dusty weather remained.

"I think this kind of natural disaster is caused by human activity, but I don't know the exact reason, and I don't know exactly what we can do to prevent this," said Beijing resident Shi Chun- yan.

China has planted thousands of acres of vegetation in recent years to stop the spread of deserts in its north and west, but experts have said the work will take decades.

And the pressures of China's development aren't easing. "Arid and semiarid areas can only support one or two people per square kilometer [about 0.4 square mile]. In China, population density in these areas is over 10 people per square kilometer," Jiang Gaoming, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Botany, wrote for the online environmental magazine China Dialogue in 2007.

The residents once were nomads, "but now they have settled, increasing the pressure on the environment and inevitably damaging it."

The worst recent sandstorm to hit Beijing was in 2006, when about 300,000 tons of sand were dumped on the capital.

news20100321gdn1

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Endangered species]
African nations at loggerheads over auction of ivory stockpiles

Tanzania and Zambia are seeking permission to sell off their stockpiles to Japan and China
Xan Rice Nairobi
The Observer, Sunday 21 March 2010 Article history

It is the most divisive environmental issue in Africa. Last week the temperature in the already heated debate over whether to allow ivory sales rose sharply as Tanzania and Zambia sought permission to sell their stockpiles to Japan and China. The request was made at a conference on the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites), which opened a two-week meeting in Qatar last week. The move is being opposed by 23 other African countries, which argue that the legal trade will stimulate poaching of elephants.

The worldwide trade in ivory has been banned since 1989, but several one-off sales of stockpiled tusks have been allowed on condition that the proceeds were spent on conservation. The last auctions occurred in 2008, when South Africa, Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe sold 108 tonnes of ivory to Japan and China. At the time, the elephant population in the four countries topped 312,000, with the numbers increasing.

Tanzania and Zambia want to lower their protection status, which would enable governments legally to sell 112 tonnes of ivory. Zambia argues that its stockpiles, which consist mainly of tusks from animals that died naturally, are too costly to maintain, and says the $1m it raises will be spent on improving elephant strongholds.

A counter-proposal has been launched by seven African countries including Mali and Tanzania's northern neighbour, Kenya, which prohibits hunting and culling. The countries are seeking a 20-year moratorium on all sales of stockpiled ivory. Kenya argues that the special sales in 2008 expanded the international market for ivory and stimulated demand, contributing to a sharp rise in the number of elephants killed in the country. This position is supported by the International Fund for Animal Welfare, which says any official sale will boost trade in illegal ivory.

But Traffic, an organisation that collects data on ivory smuggling and elephant killings, disagrees, saying there is no evidence of a link between previous stockpile sales and a rise in poaching. A decision is expected at the coming Cites meeting.

KENYA


[Money > Ethical money]
Ethical funds feel investment surge

Global meltdown and worries about the climate have prompted a new way of looking at funds. Lisa Bachelor reports
Lisa Bachelor
The Observer, Sunday 21 March 2010 Article history

{{Climate change worries have prompted a surge of cash into ethical investment funds.}
{Photograph}: Momatiuk-Eastcott/Corbis}

The global banking crisis, coupled with an increased awareness of issues such as climate change, has seen a surge in money being poured into ethical funds in the past few months.

The Investment Management Association reckons investors put £62.2m into ethical funds in the fourth quarter of last year, the highest since the same three months of 2007. And the enthusiasm looks set to continue with the end-of-tax-year Isa season in full swing. Research from ICM conducted last month on behalf of Cooperative Financial Services shows 13% of investors are planning to opt for ethical or sustainable funds with their Isa allowance.

Ten years ago ethical investment was seen as a high-risk gamble. But now the demographic is much wider, says John Ditchfield of Barchester Green, an independent financial adviser specialising in ethical investment. "There are so many more investment funds now, partly as a result of public interest," he says. "This has been compounded by the banking crisis, which has forced people to look at what's in their portfolio. Just the other day we had a client who wanted to change his portfolio to take in only investments that are useful to society."

Fund managers' approach to ethical funds has traditionally been based on screening: negatively screened funds exclude companies involved in alcohol, tobacco or gambling; positively screened funds take a "best-in-class" approach to investing by including stocks that might seem unethical, such as banks or oil companies, but only where they have demonstrated socially responsible practices.

More recently, however, a raft of funds have sprung up, many with climate change as their focus, seeking a more proactive approach to stock picking, targeting companies with solutions to particular environmental issues.

One of the latest to launch – last summer – was the WHEB Sustainability Fund. It is run by Clare Brook, who has been in charge of a number of ethical funds since 1990, including Jupiter Ecology. The fund invests in three themes: climate, water and demographics.

Brook, who runs the fund alongside Nicola Donnelly, says: "We felt that the time had come to move away from the best-in-class approach by investing in 'pure' players. This is partly because companies that are looking for the solutions to environmental issues are bigger and more prolific."

She cites the example of Johnson Controls, a big US company in her portfolio which used to be a "very boring automotive parts company" but which has shifted to providing batteries for electric and hybrid vehicles, and making buildings energy efficient.

She picks out Itron, a company many ethical fund managers have a stake in. "It makes water meters and has just won a contract with Yorkshire Water. The EU wants meters in the majority of homes by 2020, so what it is doing is crucial."

The demographics of the fund includes companies like Zimmer, which produces hip and knee replacements. "That is a growth area with the demands of an ageing population," Brook says.

Despite the new types of fund, anyone interested still needs to take the same approach to deciding where to put their money. "Investors really need to think about their values, and what they are happy to include and exclude," Ditchfield says. He still believes there is a place in portfolios for funds that involve themselves in constructive engagement with companies such as banks and oil companies. "The funds can improve the level of social corporate responsibility in that sector and that is a good thing," he says. Whatever investors go for, gone are the days when they would use their Isa allowance to invest in one fund.

"A typical client will hold a 'dark green' ethical fund such as Jupiter Ecology but look to offset this with a lower-risk fund," Ditchfield says.

In the higher risk category, he likes Jupiter Ecology and Henderson Industries of the Future, an international equity fund which invests in some smaller companies as well as First State's Age of Sustainability Fund. For moderate risk he highlights Aegon's Ethical Equity fund and for a lower-risk investment, WHEB fund.

Green Tops

Smile and Fair Investments have both scored five stars in a survey to find the best fund supermarkets for green and ethical stocks and shares Isas.

Hargreaves Lansdown and Interactive Investor got four stars, while three star ratings went to Barclays Stockbrokers, Bestinvest, Cavendish Online, Chartwell, Chelsea Financial Services, Fidelity Funds Network and Selftrade Share Centre, TD Waterhouse and Willis Owen.

A mystery shopping exercise assessed how easy fund supermarkets made it for investors to identify green and ethical funds, and what resources they provided to help investors understand the options available to them. UKSIF – the sustainable investment and finance association, the firm which conducted the research to highlight the National Ethical Investment Week (8-13 November), said that those rating five or four stars stood out because they provided up-to-date guides and tools to filter relevant funds.

news20100321gdn2

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[News > UK news > Budget]
Budget 2010: Darling to launch £1bn green infrastructure fund

Alistair Darling will announce plans to back low-carbon transport and energy projects in 'budget for growth'
Heather Stewart
The Observer, Sunday 21 March 2010 Article history

Alistair Darling will this week announce a £1bn fund to kick-start investment in green transport and energy projects as part of a "budget for growth".

With Wednesday's budget coming weeks before an expected general election, the chancellor will use his plans for the new low-carbon infrastructure scheme to contrast Labour's support for industry with the Conservatives' more hands-off philosophy.

Business secretary Lord Mandelson, who has spearheaded the government's new, more interventionist approach, told the Observer that the Conservatives "wouldn't lift a single finger" to help manufacturing.

With the public finances tight, the new green fund will be relatively small in scale, but the government hopes to use the cash to tempt private investors to back innovative new ideas. "It's about saying there are ways in which the government can play a role, which are not necessarily multibillion-pound projects," said a Treasury source. He cited the model of the Sheffield Forgemasters plant, where Mandelson last week used an £80m loan from taxpayers to secure a £170m financing package that included support from the European Investment Bank and nuclear supplier Westinghouse.

The Sheffield Forgemasters deal – which will create 180 jobs initially and provide 1,000 apprenticeships – was one of several new industrial investments announced in recent weeks that have been secured with the help of public subsidy.

Mandelson said: "People say: why am I securing Vauxhall, why am I securing the Nissan electric car to be produced in Sunderland, why am I securing the development and production of Ford's green technologies, why did I go to Sheffield Forgemasters to deliver funding for a 15,000-tonne press? It's because if the government doesn't act here, some other government will. If we hadn't bridged the final mile in the way that we did, because the market couldn't or wouldn't provide, then the investment would have gone elsewhere."

With the government committed to reduce UK carbon emissions by 80% by 2050, radical changes in infrastructure and power generation will be needed over the coming decades. Labour hopes that by boosting low-carbon energy such as wind, wave and solar power, and helping to upgrade the transport system to use cleaner fuels, it can help to meet those targets while creating thousands of new "green-collar jobs".

But environmental campaigners warned that £1bn would not go very far. Andrew Simms, director of the New Economics Foundation, said: "If what they're talking about is less than one five-hundredth of the amount that was thrown at the banking system, at a point where investment banks have bonus pots bigger than £1bn, then while the idea is right, the size of the ambition smacks of skewed priorities."

Comparing the task of preparing for a new low-carbon era to the long drive from London to Edinburgh, he said: "You won't get very far on a teacupful of petrol." The Stern review on the economics of climate change suggested it would cost more than £10bn a year to prepare the economy for cuts in emissions on the scale needed.

Mandelson stressed that as well as underpinning growth, the budget would also reaffirm Labour's determination to tackle the public deficit. The latest official figures showed that the public finances are in a healthier state than the chancellor feared at the time of December's pre-budget report, and he could reduce his £178bn estimate of this year's deficit by as much as £10bn.

But Mandelson said that would not alter the government's plans for tax rises and public spending cuts in the years ahead. "We will maintain a tough deficit reduction programme: there's no question about it. It's necessary for the health of the economy, for the confidence of the markets. We will make it absolutely clear that what we have committed to, we will follow through."

However, Darling will also stress that – unlike the Conservatives, who would start cutbacks immediately – Labour will "lock in recovery" by maintaining its financial support for the fragile economy for another year.

The UK emerged from recession in the final quarter of 2009, growing by 0.3%, but Bank of England policymakers have left low interest rates in place, making clear they remain nervous about the sustainability of the upturn.

Separately, Mandelson is also likely to be given the task of overseeing a new state-backed investment bank, which will help to support businesses struggling to secure funding from banks.

news20100321reut1

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
CAIRO
Sat Mar 20, 2010 11:01am EDT
Egypt to host Dutch solar materials plant

(Reuters) - Egypt is to host a factory producing raw materials and gas used to generate solar energy, with $460 million of investments in total, state news agency MENA reported on Saturday.

Egypt is giving priority to boosting its renewable energy output and Investment Minister Mahmoud Mohieldin said he supports the project, according to MENA's article, which said the factory will be run by a Dutch company it did not name.

The new plant is expected to produce annually 3,000 tons of polysilicon, a key material in most solar cells, and 1,500 tons of a gas also used in the manufacture of cells.

Officials say Egypt's combined oil and gas reserves will last the most populous Arab country roughly three decades, encouraging a shift to alternative energy sources, including wind, solar and nuclear.

Solar projects in Egypt have lagged behind wind schemes, but the country's first solar power plant will start production by the end of 2010, Egypt's electricity minister said earlier this year.

The new project will also include a research unit on solar energy technologies. According to MENA the plant will be built on a 200,000 square meter site northwest the Suez Canal.

The country has strong solar energy potential due to low levels of rain and clouds, and year-round sun.

The North African country, an oil and gas producer, has been developing wind power along its eastern Red Sea coast, where it has wind farms at Zafarana and Hurghada, and has so far installed capacity of 430 megawatts of wind energy.

Egypt expects to see its wind power capacity reach 7,200 megawatts by 2020 and is boosting it to 550 megawatts by May.

(Writing by Yasmine Saleh; editing by John Stonestreet)


[Green Business]
BEIJING
Sat Mar 20, 2010 4:48pm EDT
China's urban elite fights trash wars

(Reuters) - Thousands of China's urban elite took to the streets last year in protest against expanding garbage incinerators, angered by the threat to both their health and the value of their homes, a report launched on Friday said.

The stability-obsessed government fears growing public anger among the country's middle class, who once focused largely on securing jobs and homes but are becoming increasingly assertive -- sometimes forcing authorities to back down on unpopular plans.

City residents in the capital Beijing and the relatively well-off coastal provinces of Jiangsu and Guangdong all came out in 2009 to try and block new constructions or expansions of incinerators, an annual review by one of China's oldest and best known environmental groups, Friends of Nature, said.

"Health and safety are people's bottom line. When they feel threatened, and there's no other way to defend themselves, they protest," said Yang Changjiang, a journalist and co-author of the fifth annual "Green book of the Environment" report.

Some of the protests are successful. The government in southern Guangzhou city put off plans to install one incinerator when hundreds of people demonstrated, demanding that the facility be relocated.

But China has already surpassed the United States as the world's largest producer of household garbage as increased prosperity brings increased consumption.

The government is struggling to find new ways and places to dispose of the growing heap of rubbish, the report said. With space already at a premium in a country struggling with a shortage of farmland, incineration is an obvious alternative.

Beijing and Guangzhou now generate around 18,000 tons of garbage per day, but only have capacity to process 10,400 tonnes and 12,000 tonnes respectively, state media have reported.

TIME FOR A CHANGE

Protests included rallies, petitions, sit-ins, online forums and group efforts to dig into the financial affairs of officials who might be benefiting from any construction.

"We're tired of what the experts and officials said," one user of an anti-garbage-burning forum set up by residents of southern Guangdong province wrote. "We had no choice but to obey their decisions. It's time for change."

They are part of a sea-change in the nature of environmental protests that first gained widespread attention with efforts to block a chemical plant planned for the port of Xiamen in 2007.

Previously, most of those who challenged officials were farmers living with huge levels of pollution. The impact on their lives or livelihood was disastrous enough to outweigh the potential risks of taking on the government.

The concerns of the middle classes, about the future of their health or assets, brought a different kind of protest.

"Many people involved in 2009 cases are rich," said Xie Xinyuan, project coordinator at Friends of Nature.

"They are able to hire people to do professional research and present it to the public. Or they are so well-educated that they can do it by themselves," Xie said.

"People who live in less developed areas may also be harmed by the garbage crisis, but there is not so much they can do." So far Beijing at least has stuck to plans for more incinerators, adding three by 2012, and a further four by 2015.

By then, 8,200 tonnes of garbage could be going up in smoke -- much of it foul-smelling and potentially toxic -- around the capital each day.

"I'm not optimistic about the situation this year," Yang said. "Nationwide, 41 new incinerators will be built. It could cause some very serious problems."

(Reporting by Emma Graham-Harrison and Beijing Newsroom; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)

news20100321reut2

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Jane Sutton
MIAMI
Sun Mar 21, 2010 8:12am EDT
Cruise lines hope to sink U.S.-Canada pollution plan

(Reuters) - Cruise companies are balking at a proposal to create a low-emissions buffer zone around the United States and Canada, saying it sets arbitrary boundaries based on faulty science that overstates the health benefits.

The proposed Emissions Control Area would extend 200 nautical miles, which is 230 statute miles, around the coast of the two nations and set stringent new limits on air pollution from ocean-going ships beginning in 2015.

The International Maritime Organization (IMO), the U.N. agency that sets regulations for ships operating internationally, is expected to adopt the proposal at its weeklong meeting that begins on Monday in London.

Cruise executives at an industry meeting in Miami said the plan would force them to switch to low-sulfur fuels that would dramatically drive up costs.

"Our estimate is that in today's market it's probably 40 percent more expensive," said Michael Crye, executive vice president of technical and regulatory affairs for the Cruise Lines International Association, known as CLIA.

It "essentially means all the current fuel that we burn cannot be burned within 200 miles," Stein Kruse, chief executive of Holland America Line, told the Cruise Shipping Miami conference.

Proponents, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, say the plan would clear the air around polluted port cities and save up to 8,300 lives a year in the United States and Canada. It would limit emissions of sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter, pollutants that are linked to asthma and cancer.

The Environmental Defense Fund activist group cheered the plan, saying "the dangerous air pollution from these floating smokestacks is a serious health threat to tens of millions of Americans who live and work in port cities."

But cruise executives say there is no reason to extend the boundary that far out to sea because the pollutants do not travel even a quarter of that distance, and that a more precisely tailored boundary would suffice.

They said the IMO research ignored the effects of prevailing winds, which push emissions ashore in some problem areas such as California, but push them away in other areas.

"Putting it out to 200 miles is completely arbitrary," said Kruse, whose line is part of Carnival Corp. "The reality is that the problem exists in a few very, very large cities."

CLEANING UP

The plan would require ships in the buffer zone to use fuel with a sulfur content of no more than 0.1 percent, compared with 2.5 percent in the fuel most ships now use, Crye said.

The IMO has already agreed to set the standard at 0.5 percent worldwide as of 2020, he said. Cruise officials contend the health benefits of the proposal were overstated because the IMO compared the proposed sulfur limits against current ones rather than against those already set to take effect in 2020.

Cruise ships comprise about 12 percent of the world's 46,000 commercial ships, according to the U.S. Congressional Research Service. They use the same type of fuel as freighters and tankers. Their impact can be large since they visit the same ports repeatedly.

Cruise executives say they want to be good environmental stewards and they support fair and logical regulation.

They say they have cleaned up their act, installing better wastewater treatment systems and adopting comprehensive recycling programs, following a few highly publicized prosecutions in the 1990s for dumping trash at sea and discharging oily bilge water.

They say their ships have been designed to be more fuel-efficient than older models and that they have voluntarily switched to using land-based power sources in some ports, rather than running their engines when docked in cities where air quality is poor.

They are also testing exhaust gas scrubbers similar to those used by many electric utilities on shore, CLIA said.

But industry officials feel they are being unfairly singled out. Some pulled ships out of Alaska after it levied hefty taxes and adopted pollution controls they viewed as excessive.

"The cruise ships are being held to a higher standard than any facility shoreside in Alaska," Kruse said. "We cannot even take on fresh water in some ports in Alaska because ... it has a higher copper content than what Alaska allows us to discharge in Alaska. That's how crazy it's gotten."

Cruise executives see the buffer zone as another example of overzealous regulation that threatens their industry.

"Some days you get up and you feel that new regulatory efforts are coming from almost every direction, from every government from every part of the world ... and that does propose a lot of issues for the industry," Carnival Cruise Line Chief Executive Gerald Cahill said.

(Editing by Eric Beech)