She's Alive... Beautiful... Finite... Hurting... Worth Dying for.

This is a non-commercial attempt from http://www.sanctuaryasia.com/ to highlight the fact that world leaders, irresponsible corporates and mindless 'consumers' are combining to destroy life on earth. It is dedicated to all who died fighting for the planet and those whose lives are on the line today. The cut was put together by Vivek Chauhan, a young film maker, together with naturalists working with the Sanctuary Asia network 

Environmental Message Song: Drip Drop (Parody of Ke$ha's Tik Tok)

Uploaded by DaneeJord2292

The Government Role in the Shale Gas Revolution

A recent blog post by the American Enterprise Institute’s (AEI) Mark Perry insists on solely crediting “market forces” for the shale gas revolution. Perry continues to push a false narrative that the market alone developed and deployed the technologies used today to extract shale natural gas, which has resulted in dirt-cheap prices and natural gas industry growth – natural gas is now tied with coal as America’s top source of electricity. It follows a similar piece earlier this year by AEI’s Steven Hayward that characterized the shale gas revolution as occurring “away from the greedy grasp of Washington,” thus completely overlooking any government role whatsoever. “If the political class had known this was going on,” he declares, “surely Washington would have done something to slow it up, tax it more, or stop it altogether.” In reality, the government deserves ample credit for not only developing the next generation natural gas technologies used today but also for partnering with industry to accelerate deployment of those technologies to market.

Oakland-based think-tank the Breakthrough Institute conducted an investigation that sheds light on the extent to which the government helped foster technology innovation in the natural gas sector (and an ITIF blog post summarizes here):

From the 1970’s through the 1990’s, the federal government partnered with the gas industry to develop horizontal drilling installations, hydraulic fracturing, and the mapping technologies that make shale gas even possible. These technologies got their start in at the Morgantown Energy Research Center, which provided investments for RD&D into new natural gas drilling technologies.  From that center and subsequent government funded demonstration projects came directional drilling.  Ultimately, a private company – Mitchell Energy – commercialized the technology.  But government energy innovation policy didn’t stop there. Mitchell Energy and the Department of Energy (DOE) continued partnering, as DOE (through the Federal Labs and the Gas Research Institute) provided vital mapping R&D to understand and exploit shale gas formations. Targeted ‘non-conventional’ gas tax credits sustained development of these technologies when no market existed and a gas rate-payer surcharge was used to fund early research.

In other words, the shale natural gas revolution is an inconvenient reality for those that want to push the Solyndra-narrative that government can do no right in addressing U.S. energy challenges. In fact, as the last century of breakthrough technology development has shown (including the shale natural gas revolution) government can and has done right. So instead of pushing a false narrative, the energy policy debate would be much better served by teasing out the research, development, deployment, and public-private partnership models that worked (like the Breakthrough Institute did in their study) and didn’t work to make better government investments in breakthrough technologies and energy policies.

By Clifton Yin@theenergycollective.com

The Caspian Sea Is Dying

                                                                                  Caspian Sea from space (NASA, 2003)

The Caspian Sea is the largest enclosed water body in the world and it is located on the border of Asia and Europe. Its shoreline extends for 5360 km.

Caspian Sea is divided between the independent countries of Iran, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Russia, Turkmenistan, and home to myriad ecosystem.

The coastal wetlands of the Caspian basin include many shallow, saline pools, which attract a variety of bird life and biodiversity. Over 400 species are unique to the Caspian. The sturgeon is famous the world around for the roe is produces. Approximately 90% of the world’s Caviar comes from Caspian Sea. The region is booming more important from strategic point of view.

In the mid-1990s oil and Gas brought an influx of foreign investment in energy development in the region.

Petrochemical and refining complexes ion the Absheron peninsula in Azerbaijan are major sources of land –based pollution and discharges and spills from oil and gas drilling in the Sea and onshore have serious impacts on the environment.

The former Soviet Republics are trying to attract more investors in the oil and gas sectors.

This leads to the beginning of extraction works to the ecology of the Caspian basin.

Oil and gas extraction, along with transportation and industrial production has been the source of soil, air and water pollution in the Caspian region. The contamination from phenols, oil products particularly oil extraction and pipeline construction has contributed to the pollution of about 30,000 hectares of land.

Due to the use of outdated technology, malfunctioning equipment and pollution from oil fields and refineries continues at a high rate in the former Soviet Republic.

In Kazakhstan the cases of blood disease, tuberculosis and other diseases are four times more common in the Caspian area than the rest of the country’s average. Water, which has been contaminated by oil products in Kazakhstan, is still used for drinking water. This contamination is cited as a reason for intestinal infections in Kazakhstan’s coastal areas.

There is no doubt that development of the oil and gas industry does have the significant impacts to the environment.

The untreated waste from the Volga River –into which half the population of Russia and most of its heavy industry drains its sewage-empties into the Caspian Sea.

The chemicals and pesticides are threats to the flora and fauna. Since 2000 due to the pollution thousands of seals died in the Caspian Sea. The pollution has weakened their immune systems.

The Caspian sturgeon and Caspian seal, one of two freshwater spices in the world, have been dying in large number as a result of polluters and poachers since the collapse of the former Soviet Union. As recently in 1980’s and beginning 1990’s Iran and former Soviet countries fishermen took more than 30,000 tons of sturgeon. The Caspian is a self-contained body of water into which the Volga River drains after passing through Russia’s industrial heartland. 130 large and small rivers flow into the Caspian Sea, nearly all of which flow into the north or west coast. Volga River the largest splits into a thousand smaller streams as it flows through a largely uninhabited delta feeding into the Caspian Sea.

The Ural, Kura and Emba Rivers also empty contaminations into the Caspian from industrial pollution, municipal wastes and agricultural runoff.

The Caspian is an ecosystem under stress. Existing pollution has damaged marine terrestrial communities.

The entry of international oil firms into the Caspian region to exploit oil and gas reserves holds the prospect for improved environmental protection.

A World Bank report says that the great sturgeon has lost 99 percent of its spawning grounds and the Russian sturgeon, 80 percent, because of dam construction on the river that feed into the Caspian. Contamination by DDT used in agriculture could be another factor contributing to the disappearance of the Caspian sturgeon because it could be a cause of infertility in the fish.
 
The over fishing of Sturgeon has caused a dramatic decline in fish stocks. The number of commercial fish has considerably been reduced. Some fish species have been included into the red book. The Zander and the Caspian thorn fish have disappeared.
 
The Caspian seal is the smallest seal is native to the Caspian is classed as vulnerable by the international Union for the Conversation of Nature.

They are 17 spices in the red book of Azerbaijan. There are 120 species of fish in the Caspian with greatest commercial value (sturgeon, salmon, sprat, shad, carp).
 
The fishery industry is very important to Azerbaijan economy.

A lack of regional cooperation, highlighted by the still unresolved legal status of the Caspian Sea. Weak environmental laws and regulation and the ability to enforce them is affecting efforts to protect the Caspian’s environment.

Polluted beaches and coastlines mean that swimming in most areas of the Sea is hazardous. The higher rate of cancer is recorded in the area .In order to improve the environment in and around Caspian Sea the countries like Iran, Russia, and other need to work together and implementation of modern technology is required.

The Caspian Sea still has miles of undeveloped Coastline. Along the shore in Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. The south end of the sea is deep, dark and polluted from sewer pipes and factories drain from five littoral states. The air pollution from Tehran due to the old cars that lack catalytic converters falls out in the Caspian when the wind blows the smog north from Iran, contributing to pollution in the Caspian problem.

It is estimated those one million cubic meters of untreated industrial wastewater is discharged into the Caspian annually.

In the Azeri coastal City of Sumgayit during the Soviet era the environment was subjugated to industrial goals. Hundreds of thousands of tons toxic wastes each year released into the atmosphere or dumped into a creek that fed into the Caspian Sea. Now the pollution overwhelmed the sea around Sumgayit and Baku, creating a virtual dead zone. The area witnessed a dramatic rise in stillbirths and miscarriages. The untreated sewage is still dumped into the Caspian Sea.

Because of inadequately stored wastes the ground water is contaminated and the leakage into the Caspian Sea is likely. An important of Caspian Sea is its great diversity in different parts of the lake.

In some parts practically those adjoining river deltas, the lake water is fresh.
Biodiversity of the Caspian Sea increased after building the Volga-Don Canal opened in 1954. Fish and Crustacean in the Caspian Sea have the largest numbers of species, with 63% off all modern species.

Since 1978 the sea level has risen almost 7.4 feet. Unexpected flooding has caused lot of damages to residential areas. Due to the rise of water in Turkmenistan, the town of Darwish, which is detached from the western part of the mainland, is turning into an island and Cheleken and Karakul are sinking into the water as well. A six miles sewage pipeline in the Azeri coastal district of Azizbayov has been partially submerged by the rising water; causing the pump station they’re to malfunction and allowing sewage from the area to be discharged directly into the Sea. Up to 100,000 people in Coastal the spread of toxic wastes, contamination of water supplies, and loss of infrastructure due to the rising sea level have affected cities and towns in Azerbaijan alone.

In August 2001,Tengizchevron, the Chevron Texaco-led consortium developing the giant Tengiz oil field in western Kazakhstan, was fined $75 million for ecological damage.

Now in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan new development projects are required to carry environmental insurance. In the past the Kazakh government fined polluters but now it is prepared to make sue that criminal charges are brought against the management of the enterprises, which break the country’s environmental protection legislation.

The countries of the region have begun to take measures to prevent pollution.

The lack of regional cooperation among the Caspian Sea countries continued to undermine individual state efforts to protect the sea and surrounding region.

The challenge of protecting the Caspian’s environment will become more difficult.

Without increasing cooperation by the littoral countries, the country of the environment in the Caspian Sea and surrounding areas will remain threatened.

By Morteza Aminmansour@Pars Times

International Energy Agency Calls for Action to Avert Climate Change

Despite controversy, climate change becoming a serious issue

Climate change continues to grab attention as a number of conferences that will bring together world leaders grow closer. The more attention that is drawn to the subject, the more controversy it creates. Those opposing the concept of climate change are quick to denounce its supporters as “alarmists” because of their focus on the potential disastrous implications of the phenomenon. Though the concept is widely disputed, more governments and organizations are beginning to take it seriously, with many believing that work must be done quickly to avert catastrophe.

 

Agency calls for the rapid adoption of alternative energy systems

The International Energy Agency (IEA), a France-based intergovernmental organization that acts as a policy adviser for its associated states, suggests that the adoption of alternative energy systems is too slow. The IEA has issued a call for countries to hasten their efforts to make use of alternative energy in the hopes of mitigating the effects of climate change. The agency suggests that country’s need to increase the money there are pouring into renewable fuels and their associated infrastructures significantly if they want to avoid the more calamitous aspects of the climate change phenomenon.

Economics may stand in the way of alternative energy

Alternative energy is often the subject of criticism from some countries who argue clean technology is not yet at a point where it can be considered a viable replacement for fossil-fuels. The IEA argues that viable clean energy systems already exist and that world leaders need only to learn how to use them effectively in order to sidestep the supposed financial problems that could be associated with these systems.

 

Controversy could be pushing climate change down the political agenda

Maria van der Hoeven, executive director of the IEA, has expressed concern with the priorities of some countries. She notes that the issue of climate change has become an unpopular topic. As such, the subject has diminished in importance for some governments.

By Alicia Moore@HydrogenFuelNews.com 

International Energy Agency: Double Current Pace of Clean Energy Development

Climate-change skeptics like to call environmentalists “alarmists” because of their call for urgent action to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. The skeptics say the science is too uncertain, that there’s no rush to act, and those who argue otherwise are sanctimonious lefties out of touch with reality.

For them it’s drill baby, drill.

It’s a convenient way of dismissing bad news, which is why it’s important when traditionally conservative organizations like the International Energy Agency weigh in on the issue with their own call for accelerated action.

This week, the Paris-based agency with an oil-soaked history said the world, if it has any hope of keeping the average rise in global temperatures to below 2 degrees C, needs to double its rate of spending on clean-energy infrastructure between now and 2020.

It goes on to say that if controlling carbon emissions is truly a priority, the world needs to spend $36 trillion (U.S.) between now and 2050 on low-carbon technologies, on top of the $100 trillion or so needed under a business-as-usual scenario.

“This is the equivalent of $130 per person every year,” said the agency, pointing out that the spending should be considered an investment rather than an expense. “Every additional dollar invested can generate three dollars in future fuel savings by 2050.”

The clean energy technologies we require already exist, the agency’s executive director, Maria van der Hoeven, pointed out. Offshore wind power, concentrated solar power and carbon capture and storage were cited by the agency as the technologies with the most potential but the least traction.

“It’s there and we’re not using it,” she lamented, at the same time urging governments to wake up to the “dangers” of complacency. “The evidence of climate change, if anything, has gotten stronger. At the same time, it has fallen further down the political agenda.”

The fact investment is nowhere near what’s needed is reason for concern, she added. On our current investment path, global carbon dioxide emissions are likely to nearly double by 2050.

“Are we on track to reach out 2-degree goal? No, we aren’t,” she said bluntly. “Our ongoing failure to realize the full potential of clean energy technology and tapping energy efficiency is alarming.”

It bears emphasizing: these are not the words of Greenpeace or Al Gore or David Suzuki; these are the words of a 38-year-old international organization whose original mandate, and the reason for its creation, was to monitor and manage global oil markets in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis.

The International Energy Agency has until the past few years placed energy security and economic development well ahead of environmental protection, and it has been repeatedly accused of having a fossil-fuel bias while underestimating the potential of renewable energy.

But these days it’s singing a different tune. Fatih Birol, the agency’s chief economist, has been quite frank over the past three years about what lies ahead. Commenting on global CO2 emissions data last month, Birol said the trend is “perfectly in line” with a temperature increase of 6 degrees C by 2050. That, he added, “would have devastating consequences for the planet.”

Alarmist, granola-munching tree hugger!

Perhaps this puts into perspective why so many environmental groups and members of the general public are concerned about projects such as the Keystone XL and Northern Gateway oil pipeline projects.

The companies behind them aren’t investing billions of dollars for infrastructure that will only be needed temporarily. They expect a payback, and that means keeping the infrastructure flowing with oil at high capacity for at least the next half century. The same thinking applies to coal-fired power plants built today.

“Fossil fuels remain dominant and demand continues to grow, locking in high-carbon infrastructure,” according to the energy agency. “The investments made today will determine the energy system that is in place in 2050.”

That’s what many people are worried about, and not just environmentalists. They know that the decisions we make today will have a profound impact on the quality of life of our children and their children tomorrow.

Some, including certain federal cabinet ministers, may deem that radical. Most common sense folk would call it risk management.

By Tyler Hamilton@theenergycollective.com

'The Girl Who Silenced the World' Returns to Rio

Twenty years ago, a 12-year-old girl took the podium at the U.N. Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro and told a room full of world leaders that they were failing her.

"Coming here today, I have no hidden agenda. I am fighting for my future. Losing my future is not like losing an election or a few points on the stock market. I am here to speak for all generations to come," she said.

Severn Cullis-Suzuki was only nine when she and her friends created the Environmental Children's Organization, or ECO, a group dedicated to learning about and educating others on environmental issues. The speech she delivered just a few years later at the 1992 Earth Summit captured the world's attention and would in many ways shape her life.

Severn Cullis-Suzuki. Photo courtesy of Miles Clark.

"Do not forget why you're attending these conferences, who you're doing this for. We are your own children. You are deciding what kind of world we will grow up in. Parents should be able to comfort their children by saying, 'Everything's going to be all right,' 'We're doing the best we can,' and 'It's not the end of the world,'" said Cullis-Suzuki.

"But I don't think you can say that to us anymore," she said. "Are we even on your list of priorities?"

The year after she gave this talk, Cullis-Suzuki received the U.N. Environment Programme's Global 500 Award in Beijing. Over the last two decades, a video of her speech has made its rounds on the Internet, earning the now 32-year-old Canadian activist the title "The Girl Who Silenced the World for 6 Minutes."

"To take a step back, and not even look at this as myself but as a phenomenon, seeing a child speaking truth to power is a very, very powerful image and story. And it's something that I've never received any criticism for, and that blows my mind," said Cullis-Suzuki in an interview with ClimateWire.

The speech "really cut through a lot of the rationale we have as adults ... for destroying the natural world and destroying options for the future," she said. "Now, as a parent myself, I understand why people reacted to me, because I remind them of their own kids, and people love their own kids."

This week, Cullis-Suzuki has returned to Rio for the U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development, known as Rio+20, which opens today. She is teaming up with the Canadian youth-centered group We Canada to help the next generation of world leaders speak up in the global dialogue.

 

Falling off her government's agenda

Cullis-Suzuki is the daughter of writer Tara Elizabeth Cullis and prominent Canadian environmental activist David Suzuki. Having also received a bachelor of science degree in ecology and evolutionary biology from Yale University and a master of science in ethnoecology from the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Cullis-Suzuki is no stranger to the sustainability issues facing the planet.

She hosts "Samaq'an: Water Stories," a Canadian television show about First Nations communities and water issues. But before that, she served on the U.N. Earth Charter Commission and on then-U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's Special Advisory Panel for the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Cullis-Suzuki said she has grown skeptical of the top-down approach to negotiations, but when she was asked to be one of We Canada's 12 "Champions" on sustainable development at the Earth Summit, the girl who always spoke up couldn't say no.

We Canada was launched two years ago as part of the Canadian Earth Summit Coalition, an independent nonprofit created to engage the public in the Rio de Janeiro conference. Cullis-Suzuki consulted with the group on its three policy recommendations: to establish a measure of national progress that includes the natural environment, to implement a carbon tax and eliminate fossil fuel subsidies and to push the government of Canada to add fair trade to the sustainability agenda.

The three policy recommendations were presented in consultations with more than 8,000 youth across the country and supported in more than 1,200 signed letters to the federal government. The Canadian government, however, did not include We Canada's recommendations in its national strategy for Rio+20 or meet with civil society groups to have them shape the national report, according to Aleksandra Nasteska, We Canada's communications director.

In response to a petition, the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade said that it held consultations within the federal government, which is led by a Conservative Party majority, and opened the strategy document to a 120-day public review.

The letter does not respond to We Canada's three policy recommendations directly. Instead, it referred to the "increasingly inclusive" nature of U.N. conferences for how the coalition's policies could be brought into the zero draft.

Nasteska said it felt as though the government was writing them off. "As in, 'You're youth, so there's no reason why we should listen to you,'" she said. "There's no commitment to action or no invitation to meet with us."

After We Canada presented the policy recommendations at regional consultations with the U.N. Environment Programme and submitted them directly to the Earth Summit, however, its three ideas were woven into the primary U.N. negotiating document, she said.

Overall, the expectations for Rio+20 are not high. The European Union and United States still face serious economic troubles, and tensions over the responsibilities of developed versus developing nations that plague the U.N.-led climate talks are also clouding Rio.

Cullis-Suzuki said she is not holding her breath for world leaders, from Canada or elsewhere, to instigate meaningful change at Rio+20. For We Canada, the main goal is to represent Canadian civil society and serve as witnesses to the government's actions. "We need to challenge them, not just at the summit but beyond," she said.

The best outcome of the talks would be a new sense of momentum behind sustainability efforts, she said. Support for action on environmental issues tanked during the 2008 financial crisis and has yet to climb back up. Failing to use this transition period to steer the world economy in a new direction would be a missed opportunity, she said.

 

Fighting the Northern Gateway pipeline

Cullis-Suzuki is also looking to shape Canada's environmental legacy by engaging in a campaign against the proposed Enbridge Inc. Northern Gateway pipeline from the Alberta oil sands to the coast of British Columbia.

Where she lives with her husband and two sons on the Pacific Coast archipelago of Haida Gwaii, the Haida people, including Cullis-Suzuki and her family, live off the land and hunt and fish for food. To get Canadian bitumen to ports and ships bound for Asia, the pipeline would cross 5,000 salmon bearing streams and create a huge threat to these fish populations, she said.

The national government has pushed hard for the $5.5 billion project, which it says would expand Canada's foreign markets and spur economic growth. But federal politicians have also limited public input to only those directly affected by the pipeline and have passed new legislation to streamline environmental reviews that could apply retroactively to the Northern Gateway pipeline (ClimateWire, June 5).

While she hasn't given up on the fight against the Northern Gateway, Cullis-Suzuki said that if the international community doesn't rally around a new approach to economic growth, battles over individual pipelines will keep cropping up while the planet decays.

"When I get really overwhelmed, I take a step back as a biologist and as an ecologist and say, 'Well, if we really trash the planet and we really limit the ecosystems that support us, life will continue on; evolution will continue on,'" she said. "Whether or not the charismatic megafauna will survive -- the lions, the tigers, the elephants and things that occupy a similar space on the top of the food web like we do -- that's another question."

For solutions, Cullis-Suzuki looks back to her start on the global stage in the fight for a sustainable future.

"We really need to hear from the youth, because young people, people under 30, now comprise over 50 percent of the world's population, and yet they have so little decisionmaking power," said Cullis-Suzuki. "We need them to rise up and remind us what it's all about."

By Julia Pyper@Environment & Energy Daily