welcome

Investing one percent of global wealth, or around $750 billion, into five key sectors from renewable energy to freshwaters would stimulate a Global Green New Deal, advises a policy brief released today by economists and the United Nations. But in a separate assessment today, the International Monetary Fund projects that global economic activity will shrink by one-half to one percent this year.

Issued in advance of the G20 meeting of world leaders in London on April 2, the UN brief says that mobilizing and refocusing the global economy towards investments in clean technologies and natural infrastructure such as forests and soils is the best bet for real growth, combating climate change and triggering an employment boom.

The five recommdned areas of investment are:

• Raising the energy efficiency of old and new buildings
• Renewable energies - wind, solar, geothermal and biomass
• Sustainable transport - hybrid vehicles; high speed rail and bus rapid transit systems
• The planet's ecological infrastructure - freshwaters, forests, soils and coral reefs
• Sustainable agriculture, including organic production

The report details the multiple economic, environmental and social benefits of investing a significant amount of the $3 trillion worth of stimulus packages being provided by most G-20 industrialized and emerging market economies - including the United States, China, Germany, India, Russia, and Saudi Arabia - in these five areas.

Fast train on the Taiwan high-speed rail line (Photo by Sky-Train)

Achim Steiner, who heads the UN Environment Programme said, "The G20 meeting needs to be a milestone in terms of focusing investments that address the crises of today and those emerging from climate change, natural resource scarcity and lack of decent employment for close to two billion unemployed or underemployed people over the coming decade."

"Take energy use in buildings. It can already be cut by 80 percent in a cost-effective manner using existing technologies. Additional investments in this sector would not only stimulate the recovery of the construction and allied industries but also generate tens of millions of jobs.

"An estimated two million to 3.5 million green jobs could be generated in Europe and the United States alone with an even higher potential in developing countries," he said.

"The large scale stimulus investments planned over the coming months and the next two to four years represent a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make a transition to a low carbon, resource efficient society. This opportunity must not be lost," said Steiner.

Pavan Sukhdev, managing director and head of Deutsche Bank’s Global Markets business in India and team leader of the UNEP Green Economy initiative, says, "The sums of money being lined up to stimulate the global economy, unheard of only 12 months ago, will either mortgage the world's future based on a business as usual model or deliver an opportunity to transition to a new and more sustainable path. That courageous choice needs to be made now and accelerated over the coming weeks and months."

"The recommendations for a Global Green New Deal should be discussed over the next few months by world leaders at every major international forum including the G20 Summit; the World Bank/International Monetary Fund Spring Meetings, and the forthcoming Commission on Sustainable Development gathering," said Sukhdev.

But despite the sizeable stimulus packages announced over the past few months, trade volumes have shrunk rapidly, while production and employment data suggest that global activity continues to contract in the first quarter of 2009, the International Monetary Fund says in a new assessment of the global economy.

Global activity is now projected to contract by one-half to one percent in 2009 on an annual average basis - the first such fall in 60 years, the IMF said in the analysis which was provided to the G-20 leaders last month, but made public only today.

Global growth is still forecast to stage a modest recovery next year, the IMF assessment states, "conditional on comprehensive policy steps to stabilize financial conditions, sizeable fiscal support, a gradual improvement in credit conditions, a bottoming of the U.S. housing market, and the cushioning effect from sharply lower oil and other major commodity prices."

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2009. All rights reserved.

Siberia's Baikal Pulp and Paper Mill emitted sulfates, chlorides, phenols and other foul chemicals before shutting down due to the economic crisis

To savvy snowboarders, Baikalsk has long been the beautiful resort where visitors are so few you can feel as though you own the mountain, at least temporarily: for about 5,000 rubles ($175), you can have exclusive use of one of the six long runs for the day and never see another soul as you schuss through forests. Of course, you've had to tolerate a smell that seemed to be a blend of rotten cabbage and New Jersey Turnpike. For in addition to the resort, this town on Siberia's Lake Baikal—the oldest, largest and deepest freshwater lake in the world—is home to the Baikal Pulp and Paper Mill, which has been belching foul-smelling sulfates into the air and chlorides, phenols and other chemicals into the lake since it was built during the Cold War. The pollution killed plants, crabs and fish and threatened the world's only freshwater seal, the earless nerpa. Environmentalists have been trying to shut down the mill since 1964, getting precisely nowhere. But where greens failed, the global recession succeeded all too well. In November, the plant ceased production. "The economic crisis," says Marina Rikhvanova, the head of the environmental group Baikal Wave, worked "like magic."

It is no coincidence that some of the dirtiest industrial operations are falling victim to the global recession. Over the past two decades, much of the world's manufacturing moved to where pollution standards are little more than mild suggestions. Since small, corner-cutting, inefficient facilities tend to both flout pollution laws and be most vulnerable to a sudden drop in demand, the global recession has hit such operations especially hard. Thousands of factories in China's Pearl River Delta have shut their doors since late last year, for instance; output of autos, electronics and other goods from factories in Mexico's Ciudad Juárez, Monterrey and Toluca has fallen so sharply that the amount of cargo trucked across the U.S. border has dropped 40 percent. In India, enough small steel-rolling mills around Delhi have closed that levels of sulfur dioxide (which forms acid rain) fell 85 percent in October 2008 compared with a year earlier. The recession is bringing a green dividend in the developed world, too. Reduced economic activity is projected to cut Europe's emissions of carbon dioxide, the chief man-made greenhouse gas, by 100 million tons in 2009, and the United States' by about the same amount.

Recession is not exactly a long-term environmental strategy, obviously. The challenge is to use the downturn to deemphasize manufacturing in favor of cleaner economic activity, and to reengineer what survives so that when the economy revs up it's not at the environment's expense. Even world-class polluters get it. In China, as factories seek lines of credit to see them through the downturn, local governments are "less likely to help companies that are considered major polluters," says economist Deng Yupeng of Dongguan University.

At Baikal, the post-recession economy is poised to undergo a more radical shift, from pulping trees to serving tourists. One weekend in February the mountain was packed with skiers and snowboarders. Resort manager Yury Shiriak says that in December they had 7,000 visitors, compared with the usual 1,000. "Baikalsk will slowly transfer from an industrial place hated by ecologists into a tourist paradise," he predicts. It will help that the air and water are already cleaner. Only three months after the mill closed, locals already noticed a change. "We are so used to pollution, to the smell of rotting cabbage," said Andrei Pylukh, an artist. "The fresh air feels unusual. I see so many more birds on the lake and in my garden." The challenge for Baikalsk is to invest in hotels, restaurants and other labor-intensive, less-polluting businesses so the mill remains a permanent victim of the green recession but the town—which lost 2,300 jobs when the mill closed—doesn't.

The impact of China's slowing economic growth (6.8 percent in the fourth quarter last year but 13 percent in 2007) has hit hardest in cities in the export-heavy south such as Dongguan. There, roughly 10 percent of the 22,000 factories have closed since last year. In Zhejiang province, just south of Shanghai, at least 60,000 small factories are shuttered. Survivors have slashed production and grounded fleets of diesel-fume-belching trucks. As a result, streams where factories dumped their waste are getting cleaner and the air is less smoggy. In 2008, the number of days with dangerous levels of air pollution in Dongguan fell by 65 from the year before, mostly in the final months of the year. "When there's less work, there's less release of sewage and trash, so environmental pressures have eased," says environmental scientist Liu Zhiming of Dongguan University of Technology.

But as in Baikalsk, the challenge is what to do when orders pick up again. If factories ramp up to 2007 production and pollution levels, the time-out offered by the green recession will have been wasted. There are hints that that might happen. Factory owners in China and elsewhere argue that their top priority should be job preservation, and that spending money on pollution controls or switching to renewable energy has to wait. In Guangdong province, factory owners are lobbying the government to roll back environmental standards that, they argue, have made them uncompetitive with Southeast Asia. And factory managers, under pressure to cut costs, know they can reap easy savings by turning off smokestack scrubbers and dumping waste rather than treating it.

But these may be the last gasps of dying industries. There are also signs that China, which has acknowledged that environmental damage had become a drag on the economy, may use the recession to retool part of its manufacturing sector. Some of a 4 trillion–yuan ($585 billion) stimulus package is targeted at projects that will improve energy efficiency, including wind and solar energy to power the "green economy" that Prime Minister Wen Jiabao called for. The Ministry of Environmental Protection reportedly rejected 11 projects because they consumed too much energy or would have caused too much pollution.

For some victims of the recession, using the downturn to institute greener practices is more of a challenge. About two thirds of Brazil's 200 million head of cattle graze in the Amazon where virgin forest once stood, making cattle the single biggest cause of deforestation there. Now falling beef prices (down 51 percent over the past 12 months) plus the shortage of farm credit have done what "save the rainforest" campaigns didn't: give Amazonia a reprieve. "The economic downturn is a natural brake on forest destruction," says Carlos Nobre, a climatologist at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research. The rate of deforestation from last November through January, the institute just announced, fell 70 percent from the same period a year before. The environment minister believes that's a result of greater enforcement, however, not of the recession's effect on ranchers. But you can say this for the downturn: it's much easier to enforce forest-protection laws when ranchers aren't all that eager to chop down the jungle.

With Anna Nemtsova In Baikalsk, Craig Simons in Dongguan, Duncan Hewitt In Shanghai, Mac Margolis in Rio De Janeiro, Sudip Mazumdar in Delhi and Malcolm Beith in Mexico City

© 2009

This article was originally published by Yale Environment 360 is reprinted here with permission.

Yale University's recently opened Kroon Hall is a state-of-the-art model of where the green building movement is headed. Yet even this showcase for renewable energy highlights the difficulties of creating a building that is 100 percent carbon neutral.

Early this year, a new building opened on the Yale University campus that set out to achieve the architectural Holy Grail in the age of global warming -- getting to carbon neutral. Designed by Hopkins Architects, a British firm with a long history in the green building movement, the new home of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies is, on almost all counts, a striking success. It has simple but beautiful lines, incorporates the latest sustainable ideas and technologies without loudly announcing them, and manages to transform what had been a ruined landscape into a green campus. In a feat of no small symbolic value, the school bullyragged the university into shutting down a fossil fuel power plant that had formerly occupied the site.

Yale's new Kroon Hall promises to change the lives of the people who have begun to inhabit it, and perhaps also beyond, as a model for where the green building movement needs to go next.

But Kroon is also a reminder of what even some of the best hearts and minds in the sustainable design movement cannot yet achieve. For a "green premium" unofficially estimated at about 5.7 percent of construction cost, the Kroon design team managed to reduce projected energy use and emissions by 61 percent below the levels for a comparable building of conventional design. The biggest savings came not from sexy new technologies but from figuring out how to make the design function like an old-fashioned cathedral, with a slender profile for maximum daylighting, an east-west orientation for greater solar gain on the long southern exposure, careful use of shading, and plenty of stone and concrete to store thermal energy. A solar photovoltaic array and geothermal wells will supply much of the remaining energy load. "We got damned close to carbon neutral," boasted a construction manager who initially scoffed at the whole idea of green design. But perhaps inevitably, the school will still have to purchase offsets to mitigate the carbon emissions it could not avoid.

Figuring out how to get the rest of the way to carbon neutral, and not just damned close, has become an urgent question as the timetable for global warming has rapidly worsened.

Last year, the United Kingdom imposed a zero energy building (ZEB) mandate on all new homes starting in 2016 -- just seven years from now -- and on all new commercial structures starting in 2019. Patrick Bellew, a British environmental engineer whose company, atelier ten, worked on Kroon Hall, described the mandate as "a collision of wills between politicos wanting to be seen" to live up to their climate treaty commitments, and developers, designers, and government functionaries, who get stuck with the job of figuring out how to do it.

"Everybody’s freaking about what the potential impact is on the cost of buildings," said Bellew. Then, echoing Samuel Johnson’s remark about the prospect of hanging, he added, "It does do a terrific job of focusing people’s minds."

In the United States, interest in zero energy buildings and neighborhoods has also grown, driven by cost and national security issues, as well as by climate change. The Departments of Energy and Defense are currently researching high-performance and "net zero plus" buildings, which would reduce demand by 70 percent and use renewable energy to supply the balance (and in some cases produce a surplus, hence the "plus"). The World Business Council for Sustainable Development has launched a corporate drive for ZEB development, and a separate proposal to make all new structures and renovations carbon neutral by 2030 is also circulating in the building community.

That 20-year time frame may sound relatively comfortable, but actual energy use per square foot in U.S. buildings has not improved much in the past 90 years, since 1920. Buildings here account for 39 percent of total energy use and 68 percent of electricity -- roughly half of it from coal. And those stark facts have many green building advocates looking for new ways forward. Like Kroon Hall, most attempts at sustainable development now focus on the U.S. Green Building Council's voluntary certification process, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED). Builders accumulate points on a checklist of criteria -- such as site selection, reduced light pollution, construction waste management, and so on -- to achieve a LEED ranking, from LEED certified to LEED silver, gold, or platinum. LEED has functioned, said Bellew, as "a terrific kick up the backside for the industry, raising the level of awareness and understanding." But it has also served more as a status symbol for an elite fraction of new buildings than as a broad response to a global crisis. So far, 2,300 commercial buildings have earned a LEED rating, with another 17,800 projects in the pipeline.

Critics say LEED is not just too narrow, but also undervalues energy performance. "Many of the corporate sponsors of LEED are interested in a focus on products," said Harvey Sachs, a senior fellow with the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy. "That’s nice. But the elephant in the room is energy consumption."

Another voluntary program, run by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, ranks buildings by energy efficiency and awards the Energy Star label to the top 25 percent. But Sachs argued that some LEED silver buildings would not qualify. "A green label building is not necessarily an energy efficient building," he said, and that leaves "the more extreme" critics of LEED "muttering under their breath or shouting to the heavens about greenwash."

In response to such criticisms, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) commissioned a study of energy use in the 552 buildings that had achieved a LEED rating as of 2007. In many cases, the owners and occupants themselves didn’t know how much energy their buildings were consuming. Only half said they would supply records on actual energy use, and only 121 ultimately delivered.

LEED gold and platinum buildings in the study had been designed to be about 37 percent more energy efficient than conventional buildings of the same type, according to the study by the New Building Institute. But they actually performed just 28 percent better. (Some of the conventional buildings in the comparison also dated back as much as a century.) A researcher on the study said smart meters to give commercial building managers real-time data on energy use would cost $2,000-$5,000, with the likelihood of a rapid payback. But few building owners make the investment.

In a recent article, Environmental Building News didn’t quite suggest that LEED "rip plaques off the walls of underperforming buildings" but said that "to continue leading, USGBC needs to reserve the label 'LEED certified' for buildings that have their actual performance documented…" Tom Hicks, a vice president at USGBC, replied that LEED now requires buildings to earn at least two points, out of a possible 69, for energy and atmosphere improvements, and it weighs those points more heavily in its overall rankings. Hicks said USGBC is also working to address a separate criticism that LEED ignores how much energy it takes to get people to and from a building.

While LEED plays catch-up, some state and local governments are working to move sustainable design out into the broader construction community. Boston has implemented a green building code requiring buildings over 50,000 square feet to meet the standards for LEED certification. Portland, Oregon, has developed an ambitious high-performance building program -- but can't go beyond state building codes to make it happen. Instead, the city is now considering a "feebate" system, with new construction permit fees being assessed per square foot, and rebated to buildings that achieve LEED gold and platinum ratings. To address weaknesses in LEED, the buildings would also have to reduce energy use by 35 percent below comparable conventional buildings to qualify for rebates. Building code changes focused on energy are likely to become more widespread because of a residential green building standard approved early this year by the International Code Council, for adoption by state and local governments.

Some jurisdictions are also pursuing a market-based strategy with the idea that simply making people think about how much energy they use will change behaviors and real estate values. In California, commercial buildings now must report their annual energy use to the state, and starting next year they will also have to disclose that information, along with a building's Energy Star rating, to potential buyers and tenants. In Washington, D.C., large commercial buildings will soon have to make their energy performance a matter of public record. In effect, buildings will sell or rent, like cars, with an estimated miles-per-gallon label.

Most builders have so far missed the economic implications of such changes, tending to exaggerate the cost and overlook the rewards. In practice, the green premium may add 2 to 10 percent to construction costs. But the green label added 10 percent to the sale price for Energy Star buildings and 31 percent for LEED certified buildings, according to a 2008 study from the University of Reading. Studies also suggest that the combination of lower vacancy rates and higher rents adds up to a rental premium of 4 to 11 percent a year.

Most builders also seem to be unaware that the cheapest way to avoid wasting energy is to think about it from the start. "You need integrated building and design," said Harvey Sachs, "with the engineers, architects, and owner talking to each other a lot earlier, instead of just throwing the floor plan over the wall to the HVAC guy and saying, 'Live with it.' "

There's actually a sweet spot, said Bill Browning, a partner in the sustainable design firm Terrapin Bright Green, where going aggressively green gets to be cheaper than a more modest approach. Making a building 20 or 30 percent more energy efficient than a conventional design costs more "because you've added more expensive measures to the building, but you haven't cut the basic load enough that you can downsize or eliminate systems," Browning noted. If you can make the fabric of the building do the work instead, as passively as possible, you can cut the fundamental load of a building in half and "very safely start downsizing and eliminating components of the energy system."

But that sweet spot fades away, Browning added, as you get beyond an 80 percent improvement in energy efficiency. Then the builder is back in the position of "throwing gazillions of dollars at it, piling on renewable energy systems till you've got enough to make it fly." That means even the best-intentioned buildings, like Kroon, are likely to run up against the "damned close to carbon neutral" limit, and environmental engineers like Patrick Bellew will have ample reason to keep worrying about how to get to the "zero energy" finishing line.

The rest of the building community, meanwhile, still needs to leave the starting blocks.

Richard Conniff is a 2007 Guggenheim Fellow and a National Magazine Award-winning writer, whose articles have appeared in Time, Smithsonian, The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine and National Geographic. His upcoming book, "Swimming With Piranhas at Feeding Time: My Life Doing Dumb Things With Animals," is due out from W.W. Norton in May. This article was originally published by Yale Environment 360 and can be viewed here. 

Updated March 12, 2009

Buckingham Palace, the main residence of British sovereigns for almost 175 years, leaks so much energy it could be a sieve. That's the upshot of news reports from London detailing results of an energy survey of 170 buildings.

Thermal imaging of the 775-room palace showed heat flowing from closed, curtained windows, pouring from the roof and streaming through cracks in the walls, according to the Telegraph, the Daily Express and other news organizations.

Buckingham Palace

Renewable energy firm Navitron helped conduct the survey that also found St. James' Palace — which is adjacent to Clarence House, the official London residence of the Prince of Wales — to be another energy offender. It took 12th place on a list of the dozen least green buildings, according to the Telegraph.

Other energy inefficient buildings include the Department of Environment, which took second place, the Treasury, the Ministry of Defence and Portcullis House, which opened in 2001 and contains the offices for about a third of the Members of Parliament. The Daily Express reported that the Home Office and the headquarters of MI6 are also on the list.

Then on Thursday, the Daily Mail weighed in with the entire roster of the "Dirty Dozen" as the stir over the energy survey and its results continued:

1. Buckingham Palace
2. DECC (Defra) [The Department of Energy and Climate Change (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)]
3. Ministry of Defence
4. Horse Guards Barracks
5. Shell Building
6. Home Office
7. Houses of Parliament
8. Treasury
9. Portcullis House
10. MI6 HQ
11. Albert Hall
12. St James' Palace

The HSBC Tower complex at Canary Wharf was named the most energy efficient building surveyed.

The Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation tower block in Canary Wharf was named the most energy efficient building, according to news reports.

Balmoral, the royal family's retreat in Scotland, is to become the first energy self-sufficient property among the royal estates. However at Buckingham Palace, where the queen is said to have established an energy saving committee, energy bills tallied some 2.2 millions pounds (an estimated $3 million) in 2008.

Reports of the survey emerged as Prince Charles traveled in South America to advance environmental advocacy. He scheduled to make a major speech on climate change in Brazil on Thursday.

 

 

 

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Thousands of carbon-intensive facilities across the U.S. may have to report their greenhouse gas emissions for the first time beginning in 2011.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday, using its authority under the Clean Air Act, proposed a national greenhouse gas reporting framework that it says will impact roughly 13,000 facilities and cover up to 90 percent of the country's emissions. The first report in 2011 would cover emissions from 2010.

The EPA estimates it will cost reporting companies about $160 million in the first year, and about $127 million in subsequent years.

The reporting rules will apply to facilities generating more than 25,000 metric tons of emissions annually, such as power generators, car manufacturers, industrial chemical suppliers and cement, iron and steel producers, among others.

Livestock operations with manure management systems that emit more than 25,000 metric tons of CO2e would also be subject to the reporting requirements, but most emissions from the agricultural sector won't be covered by the rule, according to the EPA. The agency estimates fewer than 50 large livestock operations meet the reporting threshold.

To cover transportation-related emissions, new vehicle and engine manufacturers will report CO2 to the EPA on a gram-per-mile basis, similar to its existing requirements. The agency is also proposing seeking comment on establishing reporting requirements for fleets, as well the reporting of additional travel activity data from state and local governments.

"Through this new reporting, we will have comprehensive and accurate data about the production of greenhouse gases," EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said in a statement. "This is a critical step toward helping us better protect our health and environment -- all without placing an onerous burden on our nation's small businesses."

Emissions monitoring and reporting is a critical step for future climate policy in the U.S., according to Pankaj Bhatia, the director of the GHG Protocol Initiative at the World Resources Institute. 

"In order to be effective, climate policies require accurate and reliable emissions data," Bhatia said in a statement.

There will be a 60-day comment period once the proposed rule is published in the Federal Register.

MORE FOR POWER: As the government seeks higher returns from state-owned power generators a report from investment bank Goldman Sachs JBWere suggests their retail prices may be too low.

As the government seeks higher returns from state-owned power generators a report from investment bank Goldman Sachs JBWere suggests their retail prices may be too low.

The report by energy analyst Matt Henry indicates only Contact Energy and Trustpower recover long run marginal costs from their retail customers, but as costs rise in the future, even they won't make money.

Prime Minister John Key said last Monday that he expected better results from the SOEs after a series of poor half-year results. The generators should take a "good hard look at their businesses", he said, and come up with ways "to deliver better profits without whacking the poor old homeowner and business owner with higher power prices".

SOE chairmen have been summoned to a meeting with government ministers next month to explain their profit-boosting proposals.

The SOEs have declined to discuss their options publicly, but their scope for boosting profits, without raising prices, could be limited.

Henry's analysis, dated March 13 this year, focuses on benchmarking power company returns against the long run marginal cost of generation, which it estimates at $90MW/h based on combined cycle gas turbine costs. Wind power, which he regards as a more accurate basis for measuring cost, comes out at $105MW/h. At $90MW/h, he says, "only CEN and TPW recover LRMC on their retail customer base. At $105MW/h no retailers recover LRMC".

As a result, "We do not believe that in general the NZ electricity industry's pricing is excessive relative to LRMC."

Analysis of power company returns by the Sunday Star-Times suggests some SOEs may be more nervous about the forthcoming grilling than others.

Over the past six years, state-owned Meridian has paid dividends of $1.79 billion, more than double the $860 million payout made by NZX-listed Contact Energy to its private sector shareholders.

State-owned Genesis paid out the least, at $105.7m. The biggest proportion of profit paid out in dividends was by Meridian, with an average payout ratio of 149%, while the smallest came from Genesis on 23%.

All the SOEs invested more in fixed assets over the period than Contact, with Meridian again top of the pile, but it also carried the biggest debt.

Meridian chairman Wayne Boyd may therefore be more confident about his position than his colleagues at Genesis and Mighty River Power.

Trustpower spokesman Graeme Purches said the SOEs had been disguising inadequate returns by not revaluing their assets, which made their return on asset measures look artificially good. He said Trustpower had analysed one of the SOEs three years ago and found that "if the government were to give away the entire retail business of the SOE, the government would be $60m a year better off. That speaks volumes".

China has long imposed a limit of one child per family in an effort to reduce population growth.

All measures to thwart the degradation and destruction of our ecosystem will be useless if we do not cut population growth. By 2050, if we continue to reproduce at the current rate, the planet will have between 8 billion and 10 billion people, according to a recent U.N. forecast. This is a 50 percent increase. And yet government-commissioned reviews, such as the Stern report in Britain, do not mention the word population. Books and documentaries that deal with the climate crisis, including Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” fail to discuss the danger of population growth. This omission is odd, given that a doubling in population, even if we cut back on the use of fossil fuels, shut down all our coal-burning power plants and build seas of wind turbines, will plunge us into an age of extinction and desolation unseen since the end of the Mesozoic era, 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs disappeared.

We are experiencing an accelerated obliteration of the planet’s life-forms—an estimated 8,760 species die off per year—because, simply put, there are too many people. Most of these extinctions are the direct result of the expanding need for energy, housing, food and other resources. The Yangtze River dolphin, Atlantic gray whale, West African black rhino, Merriam’s elk, California grizzly bear, silver trout, blue pike and dusky seaside sparrow are all victims of human overpopulation. Population growth, as E.O. Wilson says, is “the monster on the land.” Species are vanishing at a rate of a hundred to a thousand times faster than they did before the arrival of humans. If the current rate of extinction continues, Homo sapiens will be one of the few life-forms left on the planet, its members scrambling violently among themselves for water, food, fossil fuels and perhaps air until they too disappear. Humanity, Wilson says, is leaving the Cenozoic, the age of mammals, and entering the Eremozoic—the era of solitude. As long as the Earth is viewed as the personal property of the human race, a belief embraced by everyone from born-again Christians to Marxists to free-market economists, we are destined to soon inhabit a biological wasteland.

The populations in industrialized nations maintain their lifestyles because they have the military and economic power to consume a disproportionate share of the world’s resources. The United States alone gobbles up about 25 percent of the oil produced in the world each year. These nations view their stable or even zero growth birthrates as sufficient. It has been left to developing countries to cope with the emergent population crisis. India, Egypt, South Africa, Iran, Indonesia, Cuba and China, whose one-child policy has prevented the addition of 400 million people, have all tried to institute population control measures. But on most of the planet, population growth is exploding. The U.N. estimates that 200 million women worldwide do not have access to contraception. The population of the Persian Gulf states, along with the Israeli-occupied territories, will double in two decades, a rise that will ominously coincide with precipitous peak oil declines.

The overpopulated regions of the globe will ravage their local environments, cutting down rainforests and the few remaining wilderness areas, in a desperate bid to grow food. And the depletion and destruction of resources will eventually create an overpopulation problem in industrialized nations as well. The resources that industrialized nations consider their birthright will become harder and more expensive to obtain. Rising water levels on coastlines, which may submerge coastal nations such as Bangladesh, will disrupt agriculture and displace millions, who will attempt to flee to areas on the planet where life is still possible. The rising temperatures and droughts have already begun to destroy crop lands in Africa, Australia, Texas and California. The effects of this devastation will first be felt in places like Bangladesh, but will soon spread within our borders. Footprint data suggests that, based on current lifestyles, the sustainable population of the United Kingdom—the number of people the country could feed, fuel and support from its own biological capacity—is about 18 million. This means that in an age of extreme scarcity, some 43 million people in Great Britain would not be able to survive. Overpopulation will become a serious threat to the viability of many industrialized states the instant the cheap consumption of the world’s resources can no longer be maintained. This moment may be closer than we think.

A world where 8 billion to 10 billion people are competing for diminishing resources will not be peaceful. The industrialized nations will, as we have done in Iraq, turn to their militaries to ensure a steady supply of fossil fuels, minerals and other nonrenewable resources in the vain effort to sustain a lifestyle that will, in the end, be unsustainable. The collapse of industrial farming, which is made possible only with cheap oil, will lead to an increase in famine, disease and starvation. And the reaction of those on the bottom will be the low-tech tactic of terrorism and war. Perhaps the chaos and bloodshed will be so massive that overpopulation will be solved through violence, but this is hardly a comfort.

James Lovelock, an independent British scientist who has spent most of his career locked out of the mainstream, warned several decades ago that disrupting the delicate balance of the Earth, which he refers to as a living body, would be a form of collective suicide. The atmosphere on Earth—21 percent oxygen and 79 percent nitrogen—is not common among planets, he notes. These gases are generated, and maintained at an equable level for life’s processes, by living organisms themselves. Oxygen and nitrogen would disappear if the biosphere was destroyed. The result would be a greenhouse atmosphere similar to that of Venus, a planet that is consequently hundreds of degrees hotter than Earth. Lovelock argues that the atmosphere, oceans, rocks and soil are living entities. They constitute, he says, a self-regulating system. Lovelock, in support of this thesis, looked at the cycle in which algae in the oceans produce volatile sulfur compounds. These compounds act as seeds to form oceanic clouds. Without these dimethyl sulfide “seeds” the cooling oceanic clouds would be lost. This self-regulating system is remarkable because it maintains favorable conditions for human life. Its destruction would not mean the death of the planet. It would not mean the death of life-forms. But it would mean the death of Homo sapiens.

Lovelock advocates nuclear power and thermal solar power; the latter, he says, can be produced by huge mirrors mounted in deserts such as those in Arizona and the Sahara. He proposes reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide with large plastic cylinders thrust vertically into the ocean. These, he says, could bring nutrient-rich lower waters to the surface, producing an algal bloom that would increase the cloud cover. But he warns that these steps will be ineffective if we do not first control population growth. He believes the Earth is overpopulated by a factor of about seven. As the planet overheats—and he believes we can do nothing to halt this process—overpopulation will make all efforts to save the ecosystem futile.

Lovelock, in “The Revenge of Gaia,” said that if we do not radically and immediately cut greenhouse gas emissions, the human race might not die out but it would be reduced to “a few breeding pairs.” “The Vanishing Face of Gaia,” his latest book, which has for its subtitle “The Final Warning,” paints an even grimmer picture. Lovelock says a continued population boom will make the reduction of fossil fuel use impossible. If we do not reduce our emissions by 60 percent, something that can be achieved only by walking away from fossil fuels, the human race is doomed, he argues. Time is running out. This reduction will never take place, he says, unless we can dramatically reduce our birthrate.

All efforts to stanch the effects of climate change are not going to work if we do not practice vigorous population control. Overpopulation, in times of hardship, will create as much havoc in industrialized nations as in the impoverished slums around the globe where people struggle on less than two dollars a day. Population growth is often overlooked, or at best considered a secondary issue, by many environmentalists, but it is as fundamental to our survival as reducing the emissions that are melting the polar ice caps.

Growing world population will cause a "perfect storm" of food, energy and water shortages by 2030, the UK government chief scientist has warned.

Water shortages are predicted across large parts of Africa, Europe and Asia

By 2030 the demand for resources will create a crisis with dire consequences, Prof John Beddington said.

Demand for food and energy will jump 50% by 2030 and for fresh water by 30%, as the population tops 8.3 billion, he told a conference in London.

Climate change will exacerbate matters in unpredictable ways, he added.

'Complacent'

"It's a perfect storm," Prof Beddington told the Sustainable Development UK 09 conference.

"There's not going to be a complete collapse, but things will start getting really worrying if we don't tackle these problems."

Prof Beddington said the looming crisis would match the current one in the banking sector.

"My main concern is what will happen internationally, there will be food and water shortages," he said.

"We're relatively fortunate in the UK; there may not be shortages here, but we can expect prices of food and energy to rise."

The United Nations Environment Programme predicts widespread water shortages across Africa, Europe and Asia by 2025.

The amount of fresh water available per head of the population is expected to decline sharply in that time.

The issue of food and energy security rose high on the political agenda last year during a spike in oil and commodity prices.

Genetically-modified

Prof Beddington said the concern now - when prices have dropped once again - was that the issues would slip back down the domestic and international agenda.

"We can't afford to be complacent. Just because the high prices have dropped doesn't mean we can relax," he said.

Improving agricultural productivity globally was one way to tackle the problem, he added.

At present, 30-40% of all crops are lost due to pest and disease before they are harvested.

Professor Beddington said: "We have to address that. We need more disease-resistant and pest-resistant plants and better practices, better harvesting procedures.

"Genetically-modified food could also be part of the solution. We need plants that are resistant to drought and salinity - a mixture of genetic modification and conventional plant breeding.

Better water storage and cleaner energy supplies are also essential, he added.

Prof Beddington is chairing a subgroup of a new Cabinet Office task force set up to tackle food security.

But he said the problem could not be tackled in isolation.

He wants policy-makers in the European Commission to receive the same high level of scientific advice as the new US president, Barack Obama.

One solution would be to create a new post of chief science adviser to the European Commission, he suggested.

WASHINGTON — Congress is moving quickly to expand volunteer national service programs dramatically and to create service corps to help lower-income communities with energy, education, health and veterans' needs.

The House of Representatives voted 321-105 Wednesday to approve the measure. The Senate is likely to pass a similar bill next week.

President Barack Obama, who's pushing hard for the legislation, issued a statement commending the House for passing the measure and summing up why he supports it.

"We know that government alone is not the answer to the challenges we face. It will take all of us taking our share of responsibility. And while government can provide the opportunities to give back to our communities, as I hope it will through this legislation, it is up to each and every citizen to seize those opportunities. It is up to every one of us to do his or her small part to make the world a better place," his statement said.

The effort has been years in the making, and the House debate Wednesday over how to tap the nation's huge reservoir of willing volunteers came in the same building in which lawmakers were expressing outrage over $165 million in bonus payments to executives of the bailed-out American International Group.

"One measure speaks to the immorality of America, and one speaks to the morality of America," said Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee.

The House bill would create 175,000 service positions to be added to the current 75,000. It also would expand the AmeriCorps program and establish new service corps. The total estimated cost would be $6 billion over five years, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

The programs cover virtually all ages. Middle and high school students could enroll in a "Summer of Service" program to volunteer locally and earn $500 toward college costs.

At colleges, the government would award 25 grants to schools for programs that help students perform national service while they take classes. For instance, a student might take a class in community development, and part of the curriculum would involve helping homeless children.

In lower-income communities, four kinds of service corps would be created:

• Clean energy. Would encourage energy efficiency and conservation.
• Education. Would help students stay in school and help them learn.
• Healthy Futures. Would advise people on how to find doctors and how to prevent disease.
• Veterans Service. Would aid veterans in re-engaging with their communities, perhaps by finding jobs or volunteering to help others.

The bill provides no specific dollar figures for those programs and no estimates of how many people could serve in each of them.

People older than 55 could seek one of three awards. The ServeAmerica Fellowships would allow seniors to develop their own plans for serving their communities. Silver Scholarships and Encore Fellowships would help them enter new careers in the public or nonprofit sectors. Awards would be up to $1,000 for 500 hours of service.

Wednesday's debate drew little fire. Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, warned that the bill risks replacing private charities with government institutions.

"We see need all over the place, and we have organizations that are mature, responsible and concerned that serve people," Sessions said. "Now they may have to compete against the government."

Miller dismissed that criticism as ridiculous. "All we're doing is multiplying the number of people who provide service," he said.

Volunteer programs have been popular with presidents for years, with varying results. George H.W. Bush had "a thousand points of light." Bill Clinton created AmeriCorps. George W. Bush, after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, called for all Americans to devote the equivalent of at least two years to service.

AmeriCorps has faced criticism, however.

"AmeriCorps could not retain participants, was unable to attract private-sector funding and quickly looked like another federal jobs program," the conservative Heritage Foundation said in a 2002 study. "Several independent audits of the program pointed out mismanagement and serious cost overruns, with the real cost per participant considerably higher than advertised."

Obama vowed to improve the system. Supporters think the reeling economy presents an unusually good opportunity.

"Service and volunteerism are the bedrock of our emergency preparedness and national security," said Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., a co-chairman of the House National Service Caucus.

AMERICAN scientists are making a ray gun to kill mosquitoes. Using technology developed under the Star Wars anti-missile programme, the zapper is being built in Seattle where astrophysicists have created a laser that locks onto airborne insects.

Scientists have speculated for years that lasers might be used against mosquitoes, which kill nearly 1m people a year through malaria.

The laser – dubbed a weapon of mosquito destruction (WMD) – has been designed with the help of Lowell Wood, one of the astrophysicists who worked on the original Star Wars plan to shield America from nuclear attack.

“We like to think back then we made some contribution to the ending of the cold war,” Dr Jordin Kare, another astrophysicist, told The Wall Street Journal. “Now we’re just trying to make a dent in a war that’s claimed a lot more lives.” The WMD laser works by detecting the audio frequency created by the beating of mosquito wings. A computer triggers the laser beam, the mosquito’s wings are burnt off and its smoking carcass falls to the ground. The research is backed by Bill Gates, the Microsoft billionaire.

It is speculated that lasers could shield villages or be fired at swarming insects from patrolling drone aircraft. “You could kill billions of mosquitoes a night,” said one expert.