Corporate Social Responsible News: Philanthropy New York's Diversity Report; ANA's Carbon Policy
The European Environment Agency (EEA) has said that water efficiency is as critical as energy efficiency and energy performance of buildings in the current climate change debate.
There is increasing concern that the impact of a growing population, increasing agricultural demand, combined with climate change, could result in permanent drought in many regions.
At a conference on water issues, the EEA’s executive director expressed her surprised that existing technologies that could help manage and improve the water environment had not made it through into urban planning circles.
While historically, the focus on water has been on improving it’s quality, rather than concern about its scarcity, climate change has the potential to change this drastically. Questions of mitigation and adaptation cannot be addressed without addressing issues surrounding water and land.
While the EEA plans to launch water accounts by the end of 2009, requiring Member States to draft river basin management plans, there has been little done to address issues of water wastage.
Water is critical to humanity, both for drinking and growing food. If the temperature rises around 3 degrees celsius, we could see the glaciers of the Himalayas, Andes, Rockies and Alps begin to melt, affecting the flow of clean water to land all over the world.
In Australia, the Murray River basin is under massive stress as overuse and drought strain its capacity, and residents of Adelaide could be reliant on bottled water by next week. Australia's worst drought in a century has lasted over 10 years in places, and many cities have had to restrict water use.
The Chinese water minister, Chen Lei, recently told a water conference that two-thirds of Chinese cities now face serious shortages due to rapid industrialisation and climate change. By 2015, he warned, water efficiency would have to be increased by 30%.
According to a recent UN environment programme report, perennial drought conditions are developing in south-eastern Australia and south-western North America and that water scarcity could increase in southern and northern Africa, the Mediterranean, much of the Middle East, a broad band in central Asia and the Indian subcontinent.
The implications of water scarcity are immense. Access to water supplies is believed to have provided a spark for the outbreak of civil war in 2003, as droughts affected grazing lands and people moved from their traditional homes and came into conflict with those whose lands they entered. The tragedy, which has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands has also resulted in the destruction of foodstocks, seeds, livestock, wells and irrigation systems, making the region basically uninhabitable, and with refugees and displaced persons running into the millions.
One of the key issues in the current approach to the mitigation of climate change is how best to alter our energy environment in order to avoid the use of fossil fuels. Yet the enormous water footprint relating to energy production is being ignored and is becoming an increasingly critical consideration. When weighing nuclear against coal, the carbon benefit is clear, yet nuclear power requires vast amounts of water for cooling. New energy technologies – from advanced methods of extracting fossil fuels to low-carbon renewable energy – can exacerbate water worries, creating ugly trade-offs between carbon and water. As water stresses, multiply energy technologies’ water intensity will often play as great a role as their carbon footprint in determining the future makeup of the global energy mix.
There are incredibly complicated problems to resolve: what do we do about transboundary water; how do we quantify the growing risk of water-related international tensions; how do we best understand, measure and engage with water resources through corporate water footprinting; how do we embed water efficiency at a cultural level? While quite what we do about this is not yet clear, as the economic/environmental equation has not really been fully clarified for water, it is clear that it’s time that we embedd water management in any action on climate change
Today I attended the opening session of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) in NYC. It's my second year attending. In many ways, it's similar to other conferences, with plenary sessions, breakouts, networking, etc. In other ways, it's unique. To begin with, as former President Clinton said in his speech to us, "This is the only conference you'll ever attend where the gift bags are empty." Because CGI provides its members with the chance to give to others.
There is a great deal of power at CGI. More than 60 current and former heads of state, 500 business leaders, and 400 leaders from NGOs and philanthropic organizations from 84 countries attend.
As at most conferences, the real deal making happens outside of the sessions. What makes this conference different is that the pitching and buying is among NGOs and philanthropists/funders. And the matchmaker between the NGOs and funders is President Clinton and CGI. In fact, one of the great success stories we heard today was Global Give Back Circle.
For continuation, go to http://3bl.me/ema6v8
Here's Mashable's latest attempt at encouraging its readers to shop more responsibly:
10 New Sites for Socially Responsible Shopping
By purchasing from companies that are more socially and environmentally responsible, you can arguably help make the world a better place for everyone.
This is a great idea, and some of the sites listed do seem to be genuinely trying to address the problem and provide solutions: sites like Zumer and Goodness 500 for example are lists of companies ranked in order of ethical, environmental and social responsibility. Similarly, Badbuster is a plugin (IE-only at the moment - WTF?!?) which highlights companies and flags them as good (green), bad (red) or intermediate (amber). Unlike some of the others in the list, Badbuster isn't crowdsourced - it only uses "independent and reliable" sources, though I can't find what these are.
However, some of the other sites are based on donations to environmental charities (Green Any Site and 1% For the Planet for example). While this may be a noble cause, it's hardly as effective as individuals taking responsibility for and changing their own behaviour when it comes to the responding to the environmental challenges we're facing.
Furthermore, sites such as BrighterPlanet are based around offsetting carbon emissions or contributing to sustainable power development projects. It's been widely reported that large scale carbon offsetting schemes don't work, and in any case, these kinds of schemes always appear to me to be a way for rich Westerners to defer responsibility and buy themselves a clear conscience on the environment. Surely not the kind of socially responsible behaviours we need to be encouraging as we transition towards the post-carbon age.
Towns are using energy and are manufacturing carbon. They are red and yellow on my acrylic satellite photos frames. They are beautiful. Can there is here light without fire? Yes. Tax fire.
By Austin Ramzy / Beijing Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2009 for Time Magazine
If you want to visit the front line of China's environmental struggle, there are lots of places to choose from. You could drop in on Changqing, in northwestern Shaanxi province, where on Aug. 17 hundreds of people stormed a smelting plant blamed for toxic emissions that left more than 850 children with lead poisoning. Or there's Wenping, in central Hunan province, where days later 1,300 children were found to have been sickened by pollution from a manganese factory.
When former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and philanthropic Chinese martial-arts star Jet Li made their own tour of inspection on Aug. 22, they chose a place that wasn't shrouded in toxic vapors or ravaged by illness. It was the bucolic village of Baigong, in southwestern Guizhou province—a community of blue skies, grape trellises, freshly painted houses and colorful sprays of drying peppers hanging from doorways. Where China's industrial wastelands symbolize its present and past, Baigong may be a tiny herald of the future: its streetlights are solar-powered under a program by Li's One Foundation and the nonprofit Climate Group, which Blair helped launch. "If all Chinese cities had these, we could save a lot of power," said Li. "And also provide a lot of employment," chimed in Blair.(See "10 Next Generation Green Techologies.")
In its breakneck quest for economic growth, the world's most populous nation has created no shortage of environmental disasters—just as other countries did when they, too, industrialized. But the Chinese people are growing impatient with the costs of unchecked development. Around the country, citizens are volunteering for cleanup projects. A small, courageous network of NGOs is naming and shaming the worst polluters. The huge number of pollution-related protests—an estimated 50,000 took place in 2005—unambiguously demonstrates grass-roots resentment of the ecological burden of industrialization. So did a survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project about a year ago, which found that some 80% of Chinese felt protecting the environment should be a priority—a stark contrast to the global perception of the Chinese as a people in feckless pursuit of wealth.
The drive toward development cannot be denied—after the demise of Maoist ideology, growth is the key base of legitimacy for the ruling Communist Party. But it can be harnessed and made compatible with environmental protection. In the words of Shanghai-based environmental lawyer Charles R. McElwee, "the old-fashioned green" of money has become equated with "the new green" of such industries as alternative fuels and energy-efficient materials. That's not as far-fetched as it sounds. In fact, as the Climate Group outlined in an August report, China is already a global leader in environmental technology. It is the world's largest manufacturer of electric bicycles, and may dominate production of electric cars. Chinese factories churn out 30% of the world's solar panels—including those used in Baigong village—and the country is doubling its wind-power capacity annually. "This is not an issue of China's good faith," Blair told TIME. "China is doing an immense amount."(Read "Less Carbon, More Lead.")
He's right. For one thing, the authorities are getting tougher on polluters. On Aug. 14, two factory officials, convicted of chemically tainting a water source for 200,000 residents of China's coastal Jiangsu province, were sentenced to six and 11 years in jail when previously they would have received little more than a fine. (The state-run Xinhua news service noted it was the first time defendants "were jailed on charges of spreading poison.") During his visit, too, Blair met with Premier Wen Jiabao and the chief engineer of the nation's efforts to develop environmentally friendly technology, Vice Premier Li Keqiang. He came away struck by the leadership's willingness to acknowledge the country's pollution woes. The central government has made the environment a key part of its next five-year economic plan, says Blair. "The environment is not a separate chapter," he insists. "It's the core narrative."
It needs to be. China's powerful National Development and Reform Commission and the Development Research Center of the State Council sponsored a recent report suggesting that if it took a number of aggressive measures, China, now the world's largest greenhouse-gas polluter, could hit an emissions peak in 2030 and then begin winding down. But if global warming is to be reversed, more than emissions control will be needed. Just as essential will be the further, rapid development of clean energy. And if the Chinese decide that there's good money to be made in that, you can be absolutely sure that it will happen.
Fever
How long does it take when the Earth gets too hot for life to return to "normal" meaning conditions conducive for life as we know it? About 55 million years ago a geological situation released more than a TERRATON of gaseous carbon and there was a warming where temperatures in the arctic and temperate regions were elevated 8 degrees C. In the tropical regions the rise was only around 5 degrees C. To return to suitable; that is conducive temperatures took over a hundred thousand years. Another-words, it doesn't take much to push the Earth into a temperature zone where (most) life can no longer sustain itself.
That same crisis state is again predictable with much certainty due to global warming. Over half as much carbon as that which caused those conditions 55 million years ago has been put into the atmosphere.
Earth has also been changed and unable to HEAL as it once could due to the extensive land taken for agriculture to feed and shelter the billions of people which are now inhabiting the planet and the sun has become hotter so conditions are even less fit for life. As the planet warms MOST life will die.
My contention is we have too many people; we have used up too much of the land altering the natural cycle of oxygen and carbon dioxide production and all the other chemicals it takes to keep the planet in balance. We have unbalanced the Earth. The Earth has a fever.
The Earth must be balanced for life in order to regulate itself and maintain conditions necessary for life. We have already depleted 40% the Earth - reducing the Earth's capability to self-heal (to regulate itself).
What I say now will confound some of you. It is contrary to what you have read and heard and probably believe. By reducing pollution; that is, smoke and aerosols and other particulates we are making the fever worse and causing fast global warming. My point is these particulates are actually helpful in reducing global warming - but not so good for respiration, alergies, etc.
How is that possible? Because dust, smoke and some other pollution actually reduces global warming by reflecting sunlight back into space. This is called `global dimming' but it is transient and if there is a less particulate pollution there is faster global warming. Volcanic eruptions actually produce the kind of pollution which increases global dimming and reduces global warming.
Our overuse of fossil fuels is leading to a quicker heating and the many mechanisms for this has already been discussed and written about. Many who doubted it are coming around to the world community's position and there is a recognition that something must be done quickly.
I don't think that will help. Even if we now reduce fossil fuels, it won't do anything about the population problem. It won't do anything about changing our life styles. That doesn't mean we must not try, but until we address the carrying capacity of the Earth and do something about reducing the strain on the Earth's ability to self-regulate by reducing the population of the Earth, we cannot fix the problem of extinction AND life more complex than bacteria will not survive.
Beginning Again
The theory of Panspermia was first proposed by Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe in 1974 that life was seeded from space. The suggestion was not well received but that is not unusual and has happened often with a hypothesis that begins on the fringe of ideas which eventually does become mainstream. The theory of Panspermia is becoming more acceptable since evidence that some life on earth could stand the extreme rigors of outer space and may very well have arrived on earth on meteorites, comets or asteroids.
The Martian discovery of microbes was exciting enough for scientists to look at this proposal by professor Wickramsinghe again that primitive life can travel through space and still be fertile.
Analogy: After-all, plant seeds are often carried in the wind or by birds or in the feces of other animals. They are dropped in the soil and they become volunteers. We have plants or vegetables where we didn't have them before and nobody had to plant them.
There is also another not so desirable analogy: - Seeds carried from place to place and just like the birds on Earth can even cause genetically modified plants to invade an established farm of organic vegetables where these GM seeds overrun other fields and organic vegetables become GM vegetables - no longer what they were intended to be - and the effects are undesirable.
It is possible; I think very probable, that proeukaryote life; bacteria and archaia originated somewhere in the cosmos and they were carried here to seed planet Earth which eventually, due to the melding of archaia and bacteria resulted in mitochrondria, the fuel cell of complex life, which gave rise to eukaryotic multicellular organisms with a nucleus and the capability of becoming us.
And for whatever the reason or no reason at all except our greed and selfishness to spoil the planet - it is all going to come to an end. It is just a matter of time. The Earth is changing back to a previous state where most living things will die - except the extremophiles, like the seeds which became us. Maybe that is a message to us that Gaia and Homo sapiens, those of us who are the stewards for the planet have not had a suitable marriage and it is time for the seeds to re-fertilize the planet and begin again.
It is impossible to tell how many times this has happened before. If it (life-reproduction-death) keeps on going and life really is a repetition of what came before, perhaps purposeless evolution with random mutations and reproduction will be something more than an end in itself and life will eventually get it right - whatever that is?
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Hank Roth
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