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A Carbon-Neutral World Focus of World Environment Day 2008
WELLINGTON, New Zealand - New Zealand, one of the first countries to pledge a carbon-neutral future, is the main host of today's celebration of World Environment Day 2008. The theme this year, "Kick the CO2 Habit," is meant to inspire and encourage actions to eliminate the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, CO2, a main contributor to global warming.The challenge of climate change and threats to polar regions and beyond were spotlighted in Norway as part of World Environment Day 2007.
The focus of the global 2008 celebrations hosted in New Zealand is on the solutions and the opportunities for countries, companies and communities to "kick the habit" and de-carbonize their economies and their lifestyles.
"As part of New Zealand's drive for greater environmental sustainability, we've made a commitment to reduce our emissions," said Prime Minister Helen Clark. "But to overcome the challenge of climate change, kicking the carbon habit must be a truly global goal."
At least one New Zealand company is having some success in reducing its emissions.
Air New Zealand announced Wednesday that its fuel savings initiative program is on track to see the airline reduce its carbon emissions by more than 100,000 tons annually and save $43 million a year as well.
General Manager Airline Operations Captain David Morgan says the airline has been a world leader in examining every aspect of its flight operations to reduce carbon emissions by saving fuel.
"Air New Zealand has been at the forefront of finding ways to minimize our environmental impact and so far our flight operations program has delivered 91,000 tons in reduced carbon emissions in just over three years. We had a goal of topping 100,000 tons annually within five years and we look like beating that by almost two years," Captain Morgan says. "Our initiatives range from reducing weight on aircraft to more accurate fuel loadings so we are not flying with excess fuel weight, optimizing flight speeds, better use of ground power when aircraft are at the airport gate and improved descent profiles," he said.
Air New Zealand announced today that it expects to use at least one million barrels of environmentally sustainable fuel annually by 2013.
Chief Executive Officer Rob Fyfe says the airline is growing increasingly confident that commercial quantities of environmentally sustainable fuels that meet all the airline's stringent criteria will become available over the next few years.
Air New Zealand plans the world's first flight test on a large passenger aircraft using fuel sourced from the plant jatropha.
The Air New Zealand Boeing 747-400 Rolls Royce powered test flight is expected to take place in Auckland in the last quarter of this year subject to final regulatory approvals and fuel testing by the engine manufacturer.
Jatropha is a plant that grows three meters (10 feet) high and produces seeds that contain inedible oil used to produce fuel. Each seed produces between 30 and 40 percent of its mass in oil and jatropha can be grown in a range of difficult conditions, including arid and non-arable areas.
Achim Steiner, UN under-secretary general and UNEP executive director, said, "New Zealand is among a pioneer group of countries committed to accelerating a transition to a low carbon and carbon-neutral economy. We are therefore delighted to be holding the main World Environment Day 2008 celebrations in Wellington and in communities across this South Pacific nation."
"What we need is action to slow, stop and then to reverse the growth of global greenhouse gas emissions. A transition to a low carbon economy is essential to achieving this," said Steiner.
New Zealand Environment Minister Trevor Mallard said, "While New Zealand's capital city Wellington will play host to the main UN World Environment Day events, local communities are undertaking their own environmental activities throughout the country through more than 120 community and school-based events.
"There are huge numbers of New Zealanders involved in celebrations, and this is a fantastic indication of this country's drive towards sustainability and reducing the impacts of climate change," Mallard said. The Clark government is moving the country towards becoming carbon neutral, and achieving that goal is going to take work, said Mallard.
"As we work towards carbon neutrality, our program involves a goal of generating 90 percent of our electricity from renewable sources by 2025, and halving our per capita transport emissions by 2040," the environment minister said.
"To incentivize climate-friendly behavior we are introducing an emissions trading scheme, which includes all sectors and all gases, an energy strategy, and also tackling climate change at the household, business and science and research levels."
Mallard said methane from livestock accounts for about half of New Zealand's greenhouse emissions. "We are now turning our expertise towards research to reduce agricultural greenhouse gas emissions," he said.
World Environment Day was established by the UN General Assembly in 1972 to mark the opening of the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment. Another resolution, adopted by the General Assembly the same day, led to the creation of the UN Environment Programme.
World Environment Day is commemorated each year on June 5 in a different city as one of the vehicles the United Nations employs to stimulate worldwide awareness of the environment and enhance political attention and action.
© Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2008
18 Comments so far
Show Allgoing "nuetral" these days implies you are using carbon offsets, which are a dishonest boondoggle that won't save the climate and even providing money for business as usual unsustainable development.
Check out www.sinkswatch.org or www.carbontradewatch.org or www.ejmatters.org, or this pretty solid BBC documentary, released just the other day: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/080605_oneplanet_carbon1.shtml
And now for your up to date methane forecast.
The ice above eastern Siberia is slowly turning into a floating soup of chunks, and has just opened a small ice-free hole in the last daily satellite picture. All of the ice on the western side of Greenland is also becoming soup.
Otherwise, the thinnish ice continues to file out of the Arctic on either side of Spitsbergen, sort of like the audience in the original "Producers" movie.
"Carbon neutral" really implies that you put some carbon back into the ground, permanently, to compensate for taking carbon out elsewhere.
We need to see real, permanent carbon sinks, either peat bogs (and not peat bog mines) or growing coral reefs.
going carbon neutral is a lot like zero waste-a great goal, but really tough to achieve, not that we (govts and businesses included) shouldn't be trying.
Neither carbon neutrality nor carbon offsets is as black-and-white as risingtidena implies.
With today's technologies, the only practical way to achieve carbon neutrality is with some offsets in the mix. But the article doesn't say that New Zealand has proclaimed itself carbon neutral, only that it's working towards that goal. Indeed, emerging technologies, which have the potential to be carbon neutral without use of offsets, are specifically mentioned.
Additionally, not all offsets are created equal. Some so-called offsets do, in fact, create little or no CO2 reduction, and so have no environmental value. Other offsets, however, demonstrably reduce GHG emissions not only in the year they're created, but for the foreseeable future. A classic example is investing in weatherizing (e.g. insulating)low-income housing, wherever you're located. To the extent that the homeowners/occupants don't have the funds to do the weatherizing themselves, such an effort demonstrably reduces heating fuel consumption each and every year.
The climate system is complex. Restoring it to some degree of health will be equally complex. There are a lot of crooks in this, as any other, marketplace. A skeptical eye is definitely called for. But cynicism is also a trap. Any sustainability-related slogan (pro or con) which fits on a bumper sticker is at best simplistic and, in all likelihood, misleading.
"Senate Republicans today effectively killed a global warming bill that would have required the United States to make major cuts in greenhouse gas emissions..."
...effectly killed a global population also.
Life's short - why have children?
I've mentioned before that there's another theory which states that we are not the main cause of global warming and I didn't provide links to articles I had read about this in, but, and while the following is one I hadn't read, it's evidently more thorough than even the combined whole of those I had read. Got the link to this one from the article at GR for next Monday's GR News Hour and for which there's a link in the homepage today. Andrew Marshall will be one of the two guests, while evidently speaking on this theory (and the one about us supposedly being the main cause of global warming or climate change). I think he'll be the guest for the whole first hour; I believe it's the first one anyway. The article specifies that info.
"Global Warming: A Convenient Lie
by Andrew G. Marshall
Global Research, March 15, 2007"
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=5086
He provides plenty of resource links in the first two paragraphs alone, and the references are for words of scientists worldwide, including govt scientists, like at NASA and of Russia's govt, f.e.; evidently many scientists anyway.
It's as far as I've read so far, having opened the article only minutes ago and from the June 9th News Hour program article.
Whether we believe what these scientists say, or not, we can't responsibly ignore what they say; else, we choose in biased, prejudgemental terms, which is NOT scientific reasoning or behaviour. We should all be well enough aware of both theories and not forget the several other planets of our solar system, alone, that are also going through global order sort of climate changes and some extreme cases we don't want happening here.
And don't forget Scientific Creationism while you're at it. "Whether we believe what these scientists say, or not, we can't responsibly ignore what they say; else, we choose in biased, prejudgemental terms, which is NOT scientific reasoning or behaviour." Who wants to believe in Darwinian evolution anyways, when we can believe the Kansas state school board?
Hate to bore anyone with actual facts, but:
Confirming what many of us have already noted from the anecdotal evidence coming in of a much cooler than normal May, such as late spring snows as far south as Arizona, extended skiing in Colorado, and delays in snow cover melting, (here and here), the University of Alabama, Huntsville (UAH) published their satellite derived Advanced Microwave Sounder Unit data set of the Lower Troposphere for May 2008.
It is significantly colder globally, colder even than the significant drop to -0.046°C seen in January 2008.
The global ∆T from April to May 2008 was -.195°C
UAH
2008 1 -0.046
2008 2 0.020
2008 3 0.094
2008 4 0.015
2008 5 -0.180
Compared to the May 2007 value of 0.199°C we find a 12 month ∆T is -.379°C.
But even more impressive is the change since the last big peak in global temperature in January 2007 at 0.594°C, giving a 16 month ∆T of -0.774°C which is equal in magnitude to the generally agreed upon "global warming signal" of the last 100 years.
"....that it expects to use at least one million barrels of environmentally sustainable fuel annually by 2013."
Thats a lot of food.
"Senate Republicans today effectively killed a global warming bill that would have required the United States to make major cuts in greenhouse gas emissions…"
God bless them, thats the first thing they have done right in almost 8 years. Protecting us from the Global Warming Bunny Terrorists.
There is global warming. About 0.8 deg C in the last century. About 30% of that is due to greenhouse gases, the other 70% is due to solar radiation forces that IPCC understates. Of the greenhouse gases, the most significant is H2O, and not CO2. Crop yields have increased 15% since 1950 as a result of increased CO2 alone. More CO2 means more food for the plants and crops. More H20 means more water to drink, both humans and plants.(doesnt mean you wont have localized droughts)
The certainty in what happens moving forward is not well established or agreed upon. But assuming oil is running out, and they have been predicting this for 50 years, where is the initiative to develop an alternative. Why the focus on reducing consumption, and not increasing energy consumption with energy that does not release CO2. Why not international conferences on pooling resources to develop alternative fuels, and only conferences on reducing consumption of oil thats supposed to run out soon anyways by taxing it. Makes no sense.
Mimi: Hop hop hop.
I'm not the least bit a terrorist. If you want to label me as a bunny I can't stop you, that's your thing, labeling people as animals.
Shameful & Disasterous Effects of our regection of Kyoto & Bali:
The US rejections of Kyoto, and later the Bali Conference, underscore the dangerous control that special interests exercise over this administration's policies. Their distortions of scientific data typifies their unconscionable war on science. Evidence linking carbon pollution to warming has long been as close to certain as science can be. Its causes, consequences, and mitigation requirements have been documented by many dedicated environmental organizations including The Union of Concerned Scientists.
Special interests argue that the current warming trends follow historic warming cycles, and hence reflect natural weather patterns--but they omit obvious differences: The earlier warming trends developed at slower rates which permitted the ecosystems to adapt. Morever they resulted from temporary natural events, which allowed transitions back to normal temperature patterns--by contrast, the current warming patterns result from artificial causes that will only intensify unless mitigated.
By all indicators, global warming will self perpetuate as the melting ice sheets absorb rather than reflect heat, as the melting permafrost releases more CO2 & methane, and the list goes on. Inundation of low lying areas, spread of tropical diseases to temperate latitudes, sea life destruction from changing ocean chemistry, & currents, are only some potential consequences.
Often overlooked is the fact that, the same measures needed to mitigate global warming would be necessary even if it were no issue. Conservation, alternative energy development, anti- pollution refinements, etc are essential for other vital environmental reforms such as air and water quality, reductions in toxic waste generation, land preservation, etc.
Contrary to right wing assertions, measures to reduce greenhouse gases could only improve our economy by lessening our trade deficits, and improving our security by reducing our dependance on foreign oil. We could also regain some of our lost world respect that has resulted from our rejection of Kyoto while arrogantly contributing disproportionally to carbon pollution. With our participation in international efforts, China & India could no longer use our non-compliance as an excuse for their non-participation.
The environmental and social damage from our indifference to carbon pollution can only worsen if we allow this administration, guided special interests, to continue their war against our planet.
"NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander successfully scooped up a sample of Martian soil with its robotic arm..."
Or, from a Martian microbe's point of view:
'God came down from heaven, scooped up his chosen few and then, taking them unto Himself, burnt them to a crisp.'
Mike Corbeil, if earth's warming were due to the sun, the solar irradiation measurements would reflect that. Look at the 30 year solar variations plot. It does not rise.
Mimi: Sorry. I'm so used to seeing common dreams get dumped on by long-winded industry slammers such as Corbeil and Kmart above, that I mistook your sarcasm for their talking points.
Mass extinctions are a periodic event in the Earth's history. See the Great Dying:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Dying
The one above might have been the result of global warming as well. Global warming is a fact and it has been going on for some time. Humans have been the primary cause of its acceleration, and those humans most responsible would most likely be the US, with our disposable/throw away culture insistent on convenience not sustainability or environmental friendliness. Furthermore we have exported this mindset to other countries: China is importing and using more and more oil, seeing the use of more cars... One thing Mao did right was to encourage bicycles, even if the Flying Pigeon wasn't the best bike. Imagine: a billion cars with its necessary million or so kilometers of roads to maintain. India, also with a huge population, has seen an increase of convenience consumerism. These are only two examples and can be "traced" to the idea of the "American Dream" of got-to-have-it-now, and once I have it, just throw it away anywhere.
geo522:
If we really are in a global cooling trend, James Hansen will be the first one to admit it. Time will be the proof. 390 ppm CO2, increased methane, El Nino, and the solar maximum due in a couple years. Its gonna be a scorcher. Make 1998 look like a cool spring day.
I don't know who is cooking your data, but 2007 was tie with 1998 for the second hottest year ever sfter 2005. It would have been number one, but the waning solar cycle and La Nina finally took the edge off. Maybe all that arctic ice falling in the drink moderated temps a bit, too.
Take a look at some NASA temp compilations. I see a trend, and it ain't downwards. Its frightening.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2007/
MiMiCcs:
I can't fathom your position on GW. What is a GW Bunny Terrorist? You seem to be prognosticating that GW will be benificial. How does that jibe with rising sea levels, shrinking glaciers, entire regions of the globe possibly becoming uninhabitable?
As far as alternate fuels goes, the biggest conference and related activity is the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP). The GNEP is already on the s__tlist with US environmentalists because of some missteps involving existing US fuel facilities and mere association with Dubya, but world-wide it is a force for nuclear power R&D.
When GW gets to when we have to simply turn off all non-essential CO2 emissions under martial law, the northern tier of the US will probably be able to purchase and ration nuclear generated electric from Canada, in addition to that generated in IL, PA, NJ, NY... The south and southwest are gonna fry.