Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

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US Economists Want Clean Technologies

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I have just found the following statement amongst emails from December last year. Why didn’t the ‘leading economists’ mention the Kyoto Protocol? Is the Protocol too prescriptive and regulatory in nature? Would they endorse the upcoming meeting in Sydney on Wednesday of the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate?

Policy Solutions

United States Needs Incentive Based Policy to Reduce Carbon Emissions
________________________________________
Statement by leading economists
December 7, 2005

The signatories below are all senior economists with expertise in the application of economics to environmental policy. We believe it important that the United States should move to control greenhouse gas emissions. There is now no credible scientific doubt that the composition of Earth’s atmosphere is changing, that this change is driven in part by the emission of greenhouse gases from human activities, and that this change in atmospheric composition is changing Earth’s climate. The United States’ emissions of greenhouse gases constitute a major contribution to this process. The consequences of the climate change can be expected to be disruptive. Specific details of these effects at this stage remain uncertain. Nonetheless it is clear that any delay in the pace of change reduces the costs of adjustment. It serves as public insurance against more dramatic impacts and damages that can be expected when opportunities to adapt are limited.

It is important that greenhouse gas emissions be managed using an incentive based policy, such as a market-based approach to capping and reducing such emissions. This type of strategy provides clear incentives for changes in business practices and the development of new technologies. It assures that economic forces are directed to keeping the cost of reducing emissions as low as they can be. Many industrial nations have now adopted policies intended to limit greenhouse gases. As a result we can expect that the market for clean technologies will continue to grow over time. Adding industries in the United States to the other sources of these demands will help to reinforce this process.

George Akerlof, University of California at Berkeley
Kenneth J. Arrow, Stanford University
Edward Barbier, University of Wyoming
Robert T. Deacon, University of California at Santa Barbara
Walter P. Falcon, Stanford University
Hossein Farzin, University of California at Davis
Anthony C. Fisher, University of California at Berkeley
A. Myrick Freeman III, Bowdoin College
Lawrence H. Goulder, Stanford University
Theodore Groves, University of California at San Diego
Peter Hammond, Stanford University
Michael Hanemann, University of California at Berkeley
Geoffrey Heal, Columbia Business School
Gloria Helfand, University of Michigan
Larry S. Karp, University of California at Berkeley
Paul R. Kleindorfer, Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania
Charles Kolstad, University of California at Santa Barbara
Roz Naylor, Stanford University
Jason F. Shogren, University of Wyoming
V. Kerry Smith, North Carolina State
David A. Starrett, Stanford University
Joe Stiglitz, Columbia University
David J. Vail, Bowdoin College
Jeffrey Vincent, University of California at San Diego
James E. Wilen, University of California at Davis

Mountain Cattlemen Defy Government Ban

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Last June the Victorian State Government banned cattle grazing in the Alpine National Park. A protest website emerged at about the same time.

According to the most recent newsletter from this website:

Several small mobs of cattle are continuing to move slowly across the Alpine National Park. This is a week-long protest by many Mountain Cattlemen’s families against the loss of their grazing licences and subsequent treatment by the Victorian Government.

While the focus was on one of the small and symbolic herds yesterday, today it is becoming apparent that there are several groups of cattlemen, each with a small mob of cattle. This protest is clearly being supported by mountain cattlemen from all sides of the Alpine National Park, all wanting a return to alpine grazing.

The cattle and their drovers will be on the track for the next seven days as they travel to the annual Cattlemen’s Get-Together to be held at Rose River near Whitfield next weekend. The cattle are not in the Park to graze, they are travelling through.

The protest is being fully supported by lobby group Country Voice and the Mountain Cattlemen’s Association and many other groups concerned at the direction the Victorian Government is taking with public land and national park management

These small mobs are travelling on the original stock routes and bridle tracks across the Victorian High Country. The mountain cattlemen have been banished by the Bracks’ Government from the Alpine National Park for its political gain but at Australians cultural expense. end quote

According to Peter Attiwell quoted at my blog post of 16th June last year:

The critics of alpine grazing use science to support the basic tenet that grazing is incompatible with use of the land as a national park, as encapsulated in the slogan ‘National Park or Cow Paddock?’. The slogan is totally misleading. A cow paddock, once abandoned, will never return to the ecosystem that was destroyed to create it.

In contrast, there is no evidence that cattle grazing in the High Country has eliminated rare and threatened species, nor has species composition or diversity been irrevocably altered. Indeed, 170 years of controlled cattle-grazing has left by far the greater part of the High Country in excellent condition. Clearly, at the long-term and landscape levels, cattle grazing over some part of the High Country can be accommodated within management plans to achieve specific goals without an irreversible deterioration in biodiversity. end of quote

It is interesting to ponder that grazing was only allowed in about 15 percent of the Alpine National Park. Many may argue that there should be no grazing in National Parks. But what about Ramsar Wetlands? Most of the Ramsar Wetland listed Macquarie Marshes is grazed and there is evidence that this is having a significant negative impact, click here for earlier blog post.

We have a very adhoc and political approach to environment protection in Australia.

Last Year: Hottest on Record!

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It is official, last year was the hottest on record in Australia. The following graph from the Bureau of Meterology shows 2005 was exceptionally warm and more than a degree warmer than the 1961-1990 average which is the standard reference period for calculating temperature anomalies.

Temp Anomalies for Australia to 2005.JPG
Many of Australia’s warmest years, including 1988, 1998 and 2002, had temperatures boosted by significant El Nino events. However, 2005 was not an El Nino year, making the high temperatures even more remarkable.

According to the Bureau:

1. Australian temperatures have increased by approximately 0.9C since 1910, consistent with global warming trends.

2. Both daytime and night-time temperatures were high in 2005. The annual mean maximum temperature was 1.21C above average (equal highest), while the mean minimum temperature was 0.97C above average (2nd highest).

3.Temperature anomalies varied throughout the year but autumn 2005 was particularly warm. April had the largest Australian mean monthly temperature anomaly ever recorded, with a monthly anomaly of +2.58C breaking the previous record of +2.32C set in June 1996.

The Bureau noted in its assessment that:

Australian mean temperatures are calculated from a country-wide network of about 100 high-quality, mostly rural, observing stations. The Bureau of Meteorology Research Centre and National Climate Centre have undertaken extensive quality checking to ensure that the temperature records from these sites have not been compromised by changes in site location, exposure or instrumentation over time.

Shortage of Gas, Not Oil

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While discussion in 2005 was about imminent oil shortages – often under the title ‘peak oil’ – interesting the first significant energy crisis in 2006 is all about gas. How difficult the future is to predict.

A good summary of the situation in Europe, where Russia was blocking supply to the Ukraine, is perhaps at Germany newspaper Deutsche Welle, it begins:

European editorial writers are keeping an eye on the gas dispute between Russia and Ukraine, which has been likened to an energy policy earthquake, the effects of which are being felt across Europe.

Rome’s La Repubblica called the dispute a “threat to the entire region.” “The gas dispute has already moved beyond the borders of Russia and Ukraine,” the paper wrote, adding that it will spread to wealthy western European countries and then to poorer nations as well. The paper doesn’t regard Moscow’s promise to guarantee gas delivery to the EU as stable, writing: “Moscow caved in to the pressure from the European Union, but warned that it won’t be able to continue covering for theft by the Ukrainians.”

The Independent, from London, asked why Ukraine has been singled out by Russia for a price hike in natural gas when other former Soviet states also pay less than the going market rates. The paper concluded that it was a political decision. “Vladimir Putin intends to destabilize Russia’s western neighbor in the hope of unseating its leader, Viktor Yushchenko,” the Independent wrote. “The Ukrainian president has been a thorn in the Kremlin’s side since he was swept to power amid mass demonstrations against Russian influence. With elections looming in Ukraine, President Putin regards this as the right time to exert pressure.” The paper said that the crisis has made it clear that Europe is urgently in need of a common energy policy.”

I gather Britain had been moving to increase its reliance on Russia for energy from gas. Perhaps Russia blocking supply to the Ukrainian will make a second generation of nuclear power plants that much more likely for Britain- a tough call for Tony Blair?

A New Year’s Resolution: No More Organic Food

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Joe Fattorini writes in The (Glasgow)Herald about his new year’s resolution which is to give up eating organic food:

It’s self-indulgent, wasteful and frankly immoral. But you know how it is. I was swept along with the trend, and it felt good at the time. But I don’t want to be a hypocrite. So I’m giving up organic food in 2006.

The incident that stiffened my resolve was a white rubber-banded wrist thrusting across me to grab organic apples. Here was someone who professed solidarity with the world’s hungry. Yet they support a farming method that would starve over half the world.

The world was farmed entirely organically as recently as 1900. Since then the global population has increased over 3.5 times.

Unfortunately, the area cultivated for food has merely doubled. Even so, collectively we’re better fed. In the past 50 years, the number who are starving has halved as the population has doubled. This almost miraculous turn of events is down to nitrogen fertilisers.
When it comes to basic needs such as food, the most important development of the last century has been the creation of nitrogen fertilisers. By replacing the nitrogen lost when a crop is harvested you can continue to plant the same plot of land each year without losing productivity. This means the same area of land produces anything up to double the quantity of food.

… So I know what you’re thinking. “Yes, but I don’t want to feed the world organically. Just my precious family.” I’m sorry, but that’s rather along the same lines as: “I know they guzzle petrol like there’s no tomorrow and are far more likely to kill pedestrians. But my family is special. I really need a beast of an SUV with spinning alloy wheels and DVD players in the headrests.”

At the very least, in a country like ours that produces excess food, organic farming robs land that might otherwise be used to promote bio-diversity. That’s because organic fields need to be left fallow, growing leguminous crops or livestock whose faeces can be used to return nitrogen to the soil. Yes, you read that correctly. The inefficiencies of organic land use make it less environmentally friendly than conventional farming whose efficiencies mean we can return land to nature. But there’s a more sinister perspective. In our lifetime we’ll see global population top 10 billion. We’re lucky it won’t be more.

That alone means finding 35% more calories to feed the world. On decreasingly fertile land. But if we are self-indulgently to insist that we are so important that we should be fed organically, with its yields some 20% to 50% lower, that can only put an additional, unnecessary strain on feeding the planet. Every organic mouthful makes it more difficult to feed the most vulnerable. As the distinguished Indian plant biologist CS Prakash put it: “The only thing sustainable about organic farming in the developing world is that it sustains poverty and malnutrition.”

Now if this all makes you feel a little gloomy, then I’m delighted to report that like all the best resolutions, giving up organic food makes you feel better almost immediately. I already feel freed from the hypocrisy. Organic food sales have doubled since 2000. According to Mintel the greatest growth is currently among “lower-income consumers” and those concerned about the health impact of pesticide use in conventional farming.

But wait a minute. Organic food – because it’s so inefficient to produce – is considerably more expensive than conventionally farmed food. Yet it brings no health benefits and doesn’t even taste better. If it did, then the Advertising Standards Authority wouldn’t have upheld complaints against the Soil Association for describing organic as “healthier” than conventionally farmed food. Or as the Food Standards Agency put it in 2004: “Organic food is not significantly different in terms of food safety and nutrition from food produced conventionally.”

… I can see a few hackles rising at the suggestion that organic food is a “middle-class indulgence”. And you’re right. It’s more a brand, or perhaps a religion. “Organic” sits up there with McDonald’s, Microsoft, Starbucks, Tesco, Shell and Lucky Strike as one of the great brands of the twentieth century.

Read the full article here: http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/53522.html
Published in the Glasgow Herald on 3rd January, 2006

X-Democrat Senator Heads Queensland Farm Lobby

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In March last year one-time Australian Democrat Senator John Cherry became CEO of the Queensland Farmer’s Federation, click here for ABC news report.

At the time I wondered how an x-Democrat who has been an outspoken critic of GM food crops could be appointed to head a farm lobby know to be very dependent on the cotton industry which is very dependent on GM. I have been sort-of watching for Cherry to say something positive about GM – but haven’t noticed anything. When he was a Senator he seemed to have a close relationship with Greenpeace and I note they are still running his old press releases, click here.

Yesterday the Courier-Mail newspaper ran a story about the new Paradise Dam – built following a lifetime of lobbying from sugar industry leaders in the Bundaberg region of SE Queensland.

The dam is apparently already at 30 per cent capacity, having captured about 70,000 megalitres from the Burnett River system.

According to the newspaper report: Queensland Farmers Federation chief executive officer John Cherry said the dam was good for the region but farmers were concerned its water might be too expensive.

Who would have imagined, say just one year ago, that John Cherry would be speaking on behalf of irrigators in favour of a dam and possibly in favor of cheaper water? Then again, what was he really saying in the newspaper report?

Now what is the QFF/John Cherry position going to be on GM – or is the QFF going to ignore this most important of rural issues? I can’t find anything at their website on GM – but I’ve only had a quick look.