Indonesia — If, as you read this, you're tucking into a KitKat or dipping into a tube of Pringles, you might be interested to know that these products contain palm oil that is linked to the destruction of forests and peatlands in Indonesia. As our new report "How the palm oil industry is cooking the climate" shows, it's a recipe for disaster. The manufacturers of these products - Nestlé, Procter & Gamble, and Unilever - are sourcing their palm oil from suppliers who aren't picky about where they site their plantations. As the volunteers at the Forest Defenders Camp in Sumatra have seen, this includes tearing up areas of pristine forest then draining and burning the peatlands. Indonesia's peatlands act as huge carbon stores so replacing them with plantations them not only threatens the amazing biodiversity, including the rare Sumatran tiger, it also releases huge volumes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. They only cover 0.1 per cent of the land on Earth, but thanks in part to the activities of the palm oil industry they contribute 4 per cent to global emissions. If expansion of the palm oil industry continues unabated, that figure can only rise. What's to be done? The Indonesian government should urgently introduce a moratorium on forest and peatland destruction, which will provide a chance to develop long-term solutions and prevent further emissions from deforestation. And our eyes are fixed firmly on the UN climate meeting in Bali next month, where the next phase of the Kyoto Protocol will be discussed. With deforestation accounting for up to a fifth of global emissions, including financing for forest protection as a core part of the plan to tackle climate change is essential.

The UN Development Programme (UNDP) for the first time in its human development report has analysed the impact of climate change. The Human Development Report 2007-08 – Fighting climate change : Human solidarity in a divided world is released at a time when the climate change agenda is slowly gaining its entry in the WTO negotiations and the discussions on the review of the work under Kyoto Protocol is slated to take place in Bali in Indonesia in December, this year. The report documented the impact of climate change across the world also projected the likely scenario for the future. Making out a case for alternative sources of energy and fuels like bio-fuels, the UNDP report said that global trade has a major role to play. It said :

International trade could play a much larger role in the expanding Markets for alternative fuels. Brazil is more efficient than either the European Union or the United States in producing ethanol, Moreover, sugar-based ethanol is more efficient in cutting carbon emissions. The problem is that imports of Brazilian ethanol are restricted by high import tariffs. Removing these tariffs would generate gains not just for Brazil, but for climate change mitigation.

Negotiations on emissions limits for the post-2012 Kyoto Protocol commitment period can – and must – frame the global carbon budget. Saying so it noted most developed countries like Canada fell short of the targets. Though the European Union and UK have both embraced their targets, they are likely to fall far short of the goals set unless they move rapidly to put climate mitigation at the center of energy policy reform. Two major OECD countries like US and Australia are not bound by Kyoto Protocol. The report suggested two ways to mitigate climate change, one is to directly tax carbon dioxide emission and the other is cap-and-trade. Under cap-and-trade system, the government sets an overall emissions cap and issues tradable allowances that grant business the right to emit a set amount. Those who can reduce emissions more cheaply are able to sell allowances. One potential disadvantage of cap-and-trade is energy price instability while the potential advantage is environmental certainty, it noted. While the transition to climate protecting energy and life styles will have short-term costs, there may be economic benefits beyond what what is to be achieved by stabilizing temperatures. These benefits are likely to be realized through Keynesian and Schumpeterian mechanisms with new incentives for massive investment stimulating overall demand and creative destruction leading to innovation and productivity jumps in a wide array of sectors, the foreward to the report said. While government leadership is going to be essential in correcting the huge externality that is climate change, Markets and prices will have to be put to work so that private sector decisions can lead more naturally to optimal investment and production decisions.

The UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon urged the national governments to do more to arrest the climate change. The report also offered blueprints to avert the worst catastrophes, he said and added that climate change imperils the most precious treasures of our planet. Ki-moon said that the report would be placed before the forthcoming UN framework on climate change meeting in Bali in Indonesia to review the progress made under the Kyoto Protocol. The report noted that observational evidence from all continents and most oceans showed that many natural systems were being affected by regional climate changes, particularly rise in temperatures. Global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have increased markedly as a result of the human activities since 1750 and now far exceed pre-industrial value determined from ice cores spanning many thousands of years.

Biotechnology in agriculture, bio-fuel, climate change and energy security are top on the agenda of the European Union’s new offer for science and technology cooperation with India. I am confident that we are embarking upon a new eara in science and technology cooperation between the European Union and India. Our S&T cooperation agreement is about to be renewed for a further 5 years and we are about to announce new exciting opportunities for collaborative research, which may include biotechnology in agriculture, bio-fuel, climate change, energy security and computational material science. We will establish a road map of our strategic S&T cooperation for 2008 and beyond.

Humanity is rapidly turning the seas acid through the same pollution that causes global warming, the world’s governments and top scientists agreed yesterday. The process — thought to be the most profound change in the chemistry of the oceans for 20 million years — is expected both to disrupt the entire web of life of the oceans and to make climate change worse. The warning is just one of a whole series of alarming conclusions in a new report published by the official Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Scientists add that, as the seas become more acidic, they will be less able to absorb carbon dioxide, causing more of it to stay in the atmosphere to speed up global warming. Research is already uncovering some signs that the oceans’ ability to mop up the gas is diminishing. Environmentalists point out that the increasing acidification of the oceans would in itself provide ample reason to curb emissions of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels and felling forests even if the dwindling band of skeptics were right and the gas was not warming up the planet.
Getting agreement on a new treaty to tackle climate change hangs on resolving an “after you, Claude” impasse between the United States and China, the two biggest emitters of carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming. China insists - with other key developing countries like India and South Africa — that the United States must move first to clean up. It points out that, because of the disparity in populations, every American is responsible for emitting much more of the gas than each Chinese. But the US refuses to join any new treaty unless China also accepts restrictions.

Welcome to the Age of Insuffiency: As oil prices hit new highs and supplies sink, our way of life will drastically change.
We are nearing the end of the Petroleum Age and have entered the Age of Insufficiency. Major investors are not likely to cough up the trillions of dollars needed to substantially boost production in the years ahead, suggesting that the global output of conventional petroleum will not reach the elevated levels predicted by the Energy Department but will soon begin an irreversible decline. This conclusion leads to two obvious strategic impulses: first, the government will seek to ease the qualms of major energy investors by promising to protect their overseas investments through the deployment of American military forces; and second, the industry will seek to hedge its bets by shifting an ever-increasing share of its investment funds into the development of nonpetroleum liquids. In considering these past events, it is important to recognize that the use of military force to protect the flow of imported petroleum has generally enjoyed broad bipartisan support in Washington. One might imagine that the current debacle in Iraq would shake this consensus, but there is no evidence that this is so. In fact, the opposite appears to be the case: possibly fearful that the chaos in Iraq will spread to other countries in the Gulf region, senior figures in both parties are calling for a reinvigorated US military role in the protection of foreign energy deliveries. There is mounting perils to the safe flow of foreign oil. Concluding that the United States alone has the capacity to protect the global oil trade against the threat of violent obstruction, it argues the need for a strong US military presence in key producing areas and in the sea lanes that carry foreign oil to American shores. An awareness of this new "Washington consensus" on the need to protect overseas oil supplies with American troops helps explain many recent developments in Washington. Most significant, it illuminates the strategic stance adopted by President Bush in justifying his determination to retain a potent US force in Iraq -- and why the Democrats have found it so difficult to contest that stance. We should expect an increase in the use of military force to protect the overseas flow of oil, as the threat level rises along with the need for new investment to avert even further reductions in global supplies.

Surviving the Century: Facing Climate Chaos and Other Global Challenges. climate change is not a technical or scientific problem. The main impediment to tackling global warming is that many of the powerful institutions of the world, whether it be the World Trade Organization, BP or the investment banks that control the world's allocation of capital are resistant to radically changing the way we operate the world economy. The poor, whose share of world income is certainly not growing, are unable to successfully demand that policies be developed to protect them from climate change or from other environmental or economic disasters.
The most productive and efficient economies, judged in the conventional sense, are often the most wasteful and destructive.

We are faced with thoughtless development that paves flood plains and destroys wetlands; dams that displace native people and scar watersheds; unchecked industrial growth that pollutes water sources; and rising rates of consumption that nature can't match. Increasingly, we are also threatened by the wave of privatization that is sweeping across the world, turning water from a precious public resource into a commodity for economic gain. The problems extend from the global north to the south and are as pervasive as water itself. Equally encompassing are the politics of water. Discussions about our water crisis include issues like poverty, trade, community and privatization. In talking about water, we must also talk about indigenous rights, environmental justice, education, corporate accountability, and democracy. In this mix of terms are not only the causes of our crisis but also the solutions. It ultimately comes down to an issue of democracy. "We came to see that the conflicts over water are really about fundamental questions of democracy itself: Who will make the decisions that affect our future, and who will be excluded?

The hot breath of global warming has now touched some of the coldest northern regions of world, turning the frozen landscape into mush as temperatures soar 15 degrees C. above normal. Entire hillsides, sometimes more than a kilometre long, simply let go and slid like a vast green carpet into valleys and rivers on Melville Island in Canada’s northwest Arctic region of Nunavut this summer, says Scott Lamoureux of Queens University in Canada and leader of one the of International Polar Year projects. The entire landscape is on the move, it was very difficult to find any slopes that were unaltered, said Lamoureux, who led a scientific expedition to the remote and uninhabited island. The topography and ecology of Melville Island is rapidly being rearranged by climate change.

It is being widely suggested that humanity can "geo-engineer" a global solution to climate change; that is, modify the Earth's biosphere at a planetary scale. Many methods are suggested. Most include either reflecting additional solar radiation away from the Earth, or using the ocean to store more carbon. Geo-engineering represents the shameless extreme nature of societal refusal to cut energy use and emissions. We have not even really tried in earnest as a human family to do so through conservation, efficiency and alternatives. Yet, before we have even begun, we are going to bet the human family's future on technological fixes that we hope will allow us to continue consuming, and pumping out babies and emissions, without end? I am furious; absolutely certain with every thread of my ecological knowledge, intuition and being that no good and a large amount of harm will come from geo-engineering. Proposed global scale experimental environmental fixes will be disastrous. Under no circumstances may untested planetary manipulations commence until all other options have failed. The seeds of an operable biosphere remain, they must be given time and space to reestablish themselves; and humanity challenged and aided by all means to embrace necessary radical change. The biosphere belongs to all people and tribes, and should it come to wild once off experiments with the Earth, the decision must be made by United Nations' consensus. Until then, government prohibitions on unsanctioned activities must be implemented with all haste. Given the lack of regulation against such planetary scale climate experiments, direct action to stop arbitrary and capricious geo-engineering implementation is warranted and necessary.