Links

1. How to ride in an SUV on aid work

2. How to outsource your own job

Workshop in Bonn on climate, agriculture and trade

Presentations from meeting on climate change, agriculture and trade organized by ICTSD

Black carbon

Black carbon : New rival to carbon dioxide as cause of global warming

Selling a carbon tax to the electorate

Tom Friedman of the NY Times argues for a carbon tax over cap and trade

"People get that — and simplicity matters. Americans will be willing to pay a tax for their children to be less threatened, breathe cleaner air and live in a more sustainable world with a stronger America. They are much less likely to support a firm in London trading offsets from an electric bill in Boston with a derivatives firm in New York in order to help fund an aluminum smelter in Beijing, which is what cap-and-trade is all about. People won’t support what they can’t explain".

Biofuels impact on water quality

The environmental impact of ethanol production, from University of Cornell

"The current focus on ethanol production is
centered on the food versus fuel debate.
While this is understandable, there are
serious environmental consequences from
the implementation of current ethanol
policies, throughout the world. Much of the
current environmental concern focuses
either on habitat loss or GHG emission
during land clearing and tillage operation.

We conclude that continuing the current
direction in ethanol production, particularly
with the focus remaining on grain and sugar
crops as primary feedstocks, has serious
implications for coastal water quality and
will almost certainly worsen, already serious
hypoxic conditions in many locations around
the world".

Killing fish with corn and cows

How does a US govt requirement to grow ethanol end up killing fish?

Put down that Quarter Pounder the fish get it, via WSJ

That’s a conclusion of a new scientific paper that looks at what it would take to produce the amount of ethanol required by the federal government in coming years.

To hit the 2015 ethanol mandate, a lot of land currently set aside in conservation programs and other land used for soybean cultivation would need to be converted to corn. Growing all that corn means more fertilizer, which will feed into the Mississippi River and end up in the Gulf of Mexico.

The increased use of nutrient-enriched crop production is a key cause of “harmful algal blooms … oxygen depletion … and overall fisheries habitat decline,” the authors point out. In other words, to grow enough corn to meet renewable fuel standards will mean increasing the “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico.

UK climate policy destined to fail

From the Tyndale Centre

"The CCC Report (UK Government Policy on climate change) is not in line with the level of global emissions cuts required to prevent breaching the 2°C threshold between ‘acceptable’ and ‘dangerous’ climate change".