...and an e-mail address into the genome

This is a follow-up/update on a story I posted earlier in the year. I will reserve judgment until all this sinks in. However, advances in genetic engineering and our grand chemical experiment in the atmosphere -- otherwise known as climate change -- appear to have placed humanity on a collision course with Nature.

Who would you bet on to emerge from that train wreck? (GW)

How to Remake Life

Venter Institute researchers have made the first viable cell with a synthetic genome.

By Katherine Bourzac
Technology Review
September/October 2010

With a precise motion, Li Ma, a technician at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, MD, pipettes a cherry-red solution of bacterial cells into a vial that contains a clear solution of fragile DNA loops. These loops, the largest pieces of DNA ever assembled in the lab, are each capable of controlling all the ordinary functions of a cell. But the DNA didn't originate in any bacteria: instead, scientists pieced it together from bottled chemicals. The process they recently developed for doing this is the first to yield synthetic cells that are capable of surviving. Some of the bacterial cells that Ma is working with will fuse together in the solution, engulfing the synthetic genome and then replicating and living under its control.

Conventional genetic engineering is a lengthy process in which genes are altered one by one, often over successive generations of organisms. That makes radically changing a genome a daunting proposition. But the newly developed techniques allow researchers to edit genomes on a computer, subtracting or adding genes by literally cutting and pasting them in a file. It's more like word processing than the traditional lab work involved in culturing and screening generations of organisms. The researchers can then perform the genetic equivalent of printing out the file, at which point they're able to transplant the result--a new genome--into existing cells. These steps dramatically speed up the engineering process; it might take just weeks to complete experiments that previously would have taken months or years.

Ultimately, researchers want to use synthetic biology to design microbes that very efficiently produce vaccines, clean fuels, and other products. But they can't engineer new genomes from scratch, because they don't yet know enough about what genes and networks of genes are needed to sustain life and produce a desired product. "You might remove one gene and the cell lives; remove a second and it dies; then remove a third and it lives again," says ­Daniel ­Gibson, an associate professor at the institute. Thus, the Venter researchers are experimenting with the sequence of a naturally occurring genome. They hope to learn more about how genomes and cells work by rapidly deleting and adding genes in different combinations, incorporating the new genomes into cells, and then observing how those genomes function or fail to function.

Genetic Revision

The process starts on the computer, where Gibson pulls up the genome of the bacterium Mycoplasma mycoides. It's a relatively simple one, comprising just 1,078,809 DNA base pairs that make up about 900 genes. (In comparison, E. coli bacteria have about 4,400 genes.) Gibson and his colleagues have made a few changes: they've deleted 14 genes from the sequence and added others. To create a watermark distinguishing their creation, they developed a code that converts English into the four-letter alphabet of DNA and used it to modify the genome, incorporating their names, a URL, a few sentences, and an e-mail address into the genome.

Gibson's group then uses software to divide the modified genome into 1,100 sections, each about 1,080 base pairs long--a size that can be made economically with a DNA synthesizer, a machine that pieces together stretches of DNA from individual base pairs supplied in bottled solutions. Finally, the researchers enlist yeast cells to stitch these long sections together, a job that machines can't do.

Gibson kneels in front of a refrigerator in the lab and pulls out 12 plastic boxes, each of which contains 96 wells full of DNA fragments based on the computer-modified designs. He stacks them on a bench and says, "This is the entire genome in 1,100 pieces." ­Gibson uses a pipette to gather 10 fragments in order and adds them to a tiny plastic tube, along with an additional fragment of DNA that will help pull the sequence together into a loop. Next he adds yeast cells that have been treated to allow them to take up the DNA pieces. "Each yeast cell thinks these pieces of DNA are part of its own chromosome, and it's broken," he says. "It wants to put them back together." The researchers designed the DNA fragments so that the ones to be linked together have ends with matching sequences. The yeast pieces the 10 fragments together by matching these sequences to produce DNA loops that are each 10,000 base pairs long. Repeating the process links the 10,000-base-pair sequences to form 100,000-base-pair segments of the genome. After a third pooling step, the yeast have stitched together the entire synthetic genome. Using established methods, the synthetic genomes are extracted from the yeast.

Handling the extracted DNA takes considerable care: even a small genome is a gigantic, fragile molecule. "It's going to break into 100 pieces if you just look at it wrong," Gibson says. If it were suspended in a liquid solution, the DNA could be destroyed merely by the movement of the liquid. So Gibson immobilizes the genomes in agarose, an algae-derived gel commonly used as a medium for microbes. Enclosed in this protective pellet, they can safely be stored until the researchers are ready to transplant them into recipient cells.

Tiny Transplant

In a lab down the hall, Ma has prepared the cells that will receive the new sequence: a species of bacteria called Mycoplasma capricolum that's closely related to the species from which the synthetic genome is derived. While an enzyme that degrades agarose liquefies DNA-containing pellets in one test tube, Ma gets another test tube and mixes the bacteria with calcium chloride and polyethylene glycol, a cocktail that the researchers believe makes the cells' surfaces malleable and sticky. Now it's a matter of chance and a steady hand. Ma pipettes some of the cell mixture into the vial containing the synthetic genome loops. The sticky cells begin fusing with one another. To maintain their spherical shape after fusion, they must take in volume from the solution around them. As this happens, some cells--about one in 100,000--also take in the synthetic genome. The result is a sort of supercell with three genomes--the synthetic genome and one from each of the two cells. The supercell then divides into three smaller cells, one of which contains the synthetic genome.

Ma smears the cell solution on culture plates containing an antibiotic to which only cells with the synthetic genome are resistant (during the genome editing process, the researchers added a gene that makes them impervious to it). Those cells will live, growing and dividing under the control of the new genome. The rest die off, leaving behind a pure colony of synthetic cells.

The next step for the Venter Institute researchers is to use their genomic editing, synthesizing, and transplanting techniques to design and test genomes with fewer and fewer genes. The goal is to create a "minimal" cell--one with only the genes it needs to survive. Such a cell could be easier than a natural one to alter through genetic engineering.

The researchers' methods are currently very expensive: it costs $300,000 to $500,000 to make and transplant a synthetic genome if the researchers synthesize the DNA in house, or about three times that much if they purchase it from an outside supplier. Yet the price of DNA synthesis is falling and may continue to decline even further as demand increases and technology improves. If that happens and the genome-building techniques prove as useful as the Venter researchers hope they will, more people will begin to adopt their methods, says James ­Collins, a professor of biomedical engineering at Boston University.

"This is a significant advance for synthetic biology," Collins says. "Now we've got to see, what are the changes that can be introduced to the genome?"

Copyright Technology Review 2010.

What price sanity?

The costs of investing in the preservation of our futures while we still have a chance to do so will be viewed as minuscule twenty-to-thirty years from now if we fail to take advantage of every possible opportunity to mitigate global climate change. (GW)

DPU should vet it closely, but Cape Wind still makes sense

Boston Globe
Editorial
August 30, 2010

MUCH AS GM’s $41,000 price tag on its electric Volt delivered a high-voltage sticker shock to car buyers, Cape Wind blew away National Grid’s 1.2 million Massachusetts customers when they learned that their power from Cape Wind will cost at least 25 percent more than National Grid’s conventional electricity. Even though the wind power will be just 3.5 percent of the utility’s total load and the impact on an average monthly bill will be about $1.24, consumers are justified in asking if the state is right to require utilities to bring on costly renewable power like Cape Wind’s. The answer is no if the goal is simply to keep utility costs as low as possible in 2010 — but yes if Massachusetts wants to be a future leader in renewable technology.

Still, the state Department of Public Utilities should look closely at all the data behind the proposed contract between National Grid and Cape Wind when it begins hearings next month. One indication that Cape Wind’s owners are not taking advantage of the utility or its customers is a comparison with offshore wind power costs in the United Kingdom. The average 2009 price of such electricity is 20.9 cents a kilowatt hour, well above the 18.7 cents Cape Wind will be getting if it goes on line as planned in 2013.

Critics, though, also point to the annual 3.5 percent inflation adjustment escalator Cape Wind will receive over the contract’s 15 years. Cape Wind says that reflects expected increases in operating costs and that, without it, the start-up kilowatt-hour costs would be higher. Under no circumstances will Cape Wind pocket Goldman Sachs-level profits: If, when all the construction costs are known, its rate of return reaches 10.75 percent, the price of its electricity will be lowered.

Some of the resistance to the gap between the cost of conventional power and Cape Wind’s undoubtedly has to do with expectations. In the first eight years of the project’s extended march through state and federal regulatory hurdles, the price of conventional power generation rose 400 percent in lockstep with escalating prices for natural gas. That climb, brought to a screeching halt by the recession, made the project’s 130 turbines look like an answer both to homeowners’ high utility bills and to the need to reduce the greenhouse gases of fossil fuel power plants.

Now that gas prices are down, the high capital costs of anchoring huge turbine towers in Nantucket Sound make Cape Wind less of a bargain — in the short term. In the longer term, consumers will get a power source with zero fuel costs, a welcome hedge against the unpredictable fluctuations of natural gas prices. And as high as fossil-fuel prices can go, they still don’t reflect the health and environmental costs of their production or their emissions, a lesson the country just re-learned with a vengeance in the Gulf of Mexico.

Critics of the contract between National Grid and Cape Wind frequently blast it as a no-bid deal. In fact, National Grid did consider alternative ways to meet its state-mandated requirement to derive more of its power from renewable sources. But it chose Cape Wind over competing smaller projects, including land-based wind, solar, and biomass.

The Legislature has mandated greater use of renewables both to reduce the Commonwealth’s carbon footprint and to give a boost to state and regional clean-energy companies. Last week’s announcement that a wind-turbine blade maker will open a plant in Fall River illustrates the potential. With energy policy in the country as a whole paralyzed by congressional stalemate, Massachusetts at least has a chance to make itself a leader in clean-energy industries. That includes high-tech batteries, hydrogen fuel cells, cellulosic ethanol, and — since the Northeast is the Saudi Arabia of wind — wind energy.

Calculating that dividend from the National Grid/Cape Wind deal might not be within the purview of the DPU, but it is a major reason why the project continues to deserve the Commonwealth’s support.

“It’s shocking how little activity has been going on”

Pictures (unedited) are still worth thousands of words. Much is being written about the recovery of New Orleans on this fifth anniversary of the Hurricane Katrina disaster (including here). Having said that, to really get a sense of the progress - or lack thereof - that's been made over the past half-decade, take a look at the USC video project described below and the New York Times' piece "The Changing Landscape of The Lower Ninth Ward" by clicking here. (GW)

Years Later, Katrina's Mark is Still Visible

By Maya Melnert
USC News
March 17, 2010

The scenes aren’t always encouraging, but Andrew Curtis keeps going back for more.

Curtis, who teaches geography at USC College, has been spearheading a project to gather video evidence of the devastation and rebuilding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Now nearly five years after the storm hit, Curtis’ research, which is focused on the city’s Lower 9th Ward, shows that there has been little improvement.

Homes left uninhabitable sit on plots of land that have been overgrown with vegetation, and some streets are still nearly impassable because they are so damaged.

“It’s shocking how little activity has been going on,” Curtis said. “We’re told Katrina is old news, and that’s the problem for people in New Orleans.”

Curtis started this project while at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. There he put together a spatial video system using multiple cameras connected to a central global positioning system. He hooked the whole thing up to a car and recorded images of what the neighborhoods, specifically the hard-hit Lower 9th Ward, looked like. Using a GPS signal encoded on the video, he then layered it over a digital map so that clicking on any spot on the map will bring up a video of what that area looked like at that point in time. He brought this project with him to USC when he joined the faculty in 2007.

This research includes not only filming but also work with pastors and other community leaders to discuss the most pressing neighborhood matters, which include a lack of services, vegetation overgrowth and a rising crime rate.

“Initially it was five years to get back to pre-Katrina conditions. Now people are saying it’s 15,” Curtis said. “There are areas that will probably never go back.”

Any reconstruction of the Lower 9th Ward that Curtis has seen has been spotty. “There has been recovery in silos - isolated buildings at different times,” he said. But a coordinated effort to fix entire neighborhoods, save for actor Brad Pitt’s Make It Right home-rebuilding organization, has not been apparent.

Curtis goes back to New Orleans to gather new video every three or four months. He has even gotten USC students involved and plans to take another group this summer. Three of these students will be spending part of their spring break by going on their own via an undergraduate research grant.

These enterprising students mostly come from Curtis’ natural hazards general education class. So far five students, including one graduate student, have traveled to New Orleans to participate in gathering data.

One such student is Andrew Matson, a junior majoring in international relations and political science at the College. He started working on the project as a freshman after taking Curtis’ natural hazards class. Not having done any on-site work like this before, seeing firsthand the destruction and recovery efforts in New Orleans was eye-opening for Matson.

“I thought I was going to see more progress, especially in the Lower 9th, which got so much media attention,” Matson said. “It was really strange and disheartening to see a place in the United States that was still in tatters like that, years after the hurricane hit.

“Driving through parts of the Lower 9th can make you think you're driving through the wetlands because houses and plots of land have been allowed to be overtaken by vegetation. But despite its troubles, New Orleans is still a fantastic city, and we have been welcomed warmly by community organizations when we go down there.”

Even though Matson doesn’t plan on continuing this kind of work after graduation - he wants to go to law school - he said he has gained some invaluable skills.

“My research experience has really opened me up to a completely new academic field and given me an opportunity to learn about a subject in a non-traditional way,” Matson said. “Also, the experience of going into the field to do research is one that I am sure will pay dividends in all aspects of life even beyond school. Being able to conduct research outside of your comfort zone is a skill that not many people have but that is extremely important.”

Said Curtis, “I’m very happy with the quality of the students at USC who have gotten involved. They’re all dedicated and responsible and quite socially aware. This isn’t just a trip for them; they want to do a good job with the research. I treat them as researchers and get them involved in every aspect.”

On his most recent trip to New Orleans in February, Curtis actually did notice a difference in the hurricane-ravaged landscape. Many of the condemned buildings had been knocked down. Whether they’ll ever be rebuilt is yet to be seen, but Curtis will be there to document it.

To view a clip of the video data that Curtis has gathered, visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdLPNAritDI.

A tale of two recoveries

New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu recently announced that he wants to start demolishing the 55,000 homes abandoned in the wake of Hurricane Katrina five years ago. That would certainly set the course for New Orleans' post-Katrina redevelopment.

The jury is very much divided on the progress that has been made since August 2005 and the plans for the city's future. (GW)

Uneven Katrina recovery efforts often offered the most help to the most affluent

Washington Post
By Michael A. Fletcher
August 27, 2010

IN NEW ORLEANS The massive government effort to repair the damage from Hurricane Katrina is fostering a stark divide as the state governments in Louisiana and Mississippi structured the rebuilding programs in ways that often offered the most help to the most affluent residents.

The result, advocates say, has been an uneven recovery, with whites and middle-class people more likely than blacks and low-income people to have rebuilt their lives in the five years since the horrific storm.

"The recovery is really the tale of two recoveries," said James Perry, executive director of the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center. "For people who were well off before the storm, they are more likely to be back in their homes, back in their jobs and to have access to good health care. For those who were poor or struggling to get by before the storm, the opposite is true."

Louisiana's program to distribute grants to property owners whose homes were damaged or destroyed by Katrina was found by a federal judge this month to discriminate against black homeowners.

Meanwhile, in Mississippi, state officials refused to offer rebuilding grants to property owners who suffered wind damage, explaining that the property owners should have carried private insurance. That rule hit low-income and black homeowners particularly hard, advocates say, because many of them were uninsured, often because they owned property that was passed down through the generations.

The $143 billion federally funded reconstruction effort, one of the largest such projects in the country's history, fortified vulnerable levees, rebuilt hundreds of public buildings, reconstructed miles of roads and bridges, and provided tens of thousands of residents with money to help piece together their shattered lives.

But there is a sharp disparity in how residents view the pace of recovery. A recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that while seven in 10 New Orleans residents say the rebuilding process is "going in the right direction," a third say their lives are still disrupted by the storm.

African Americans are more than twice as likely as whites to say they have not yet recovered after Katrina, the survey found. And blacks in the city are 2 1/2 times as likely to be low-income than whites.

"I just knew we had a rotten deal," said Edward Randolph, a disabled Vietnam veteran who with his wife, Angela, has been struggling to rebuild their duplex in New Orleans East. "We know we have a lot to do, but we just do not have the money to do it."

The storm propelled them on a years-long odyssey through Port Arthur, Tex., Houston and Arkansas. They did not return to their still-damaged home until 2008.

The federally funded rebuilding program established by Louisiana officials - called Road Home - offered homeowners grants of up to $150,000. But homeowners could not collect more than the pre-storm value of their homes, regardless of the cost of repairs.

The Randolph home was valued at just $135,000, although repair costs were estimated by the state to be $308,000. The Randolphs were awarded a grant of $16,649, to supplement just over $100,000 they received in insurance payments.

This month, a federal judge ruled that the program's formula for calculating grants discriminates against black homeowners, who tend to live in neighborhoods with lower home values.

"We obviously disagree with the judge's action, which has stopped us from paying out some grants, and already have appealed it," said Christina Stephens, a spokeswoman for the Road Home program. "I think it is worth noting that the state did not create this program in a vacuum - the federal government signed off on the design of the program and any major changes we made along the way."

She added that the state has modified the program to pay out an additional $2 billion to more than 45,000 low-income homeowners. Overall, Road Home paid $8.6 billion to more than 127,000 homeowners.

Many of these simmering issues will not be visible when President Obama arrives here Sunday to mark the fifth anniversary of the storm that killed more than 1,800, uprooted more than 1 million Gulf Coast residents, and left 80 percent of this city submerged.

The visit is expected to underscore the president's support for a region still reeling not just from Katrina but from the largest oil spill in the nation's history, which is threatening the region's immediate economic future. A regional group of business and political leaders formed a coalition this week aimed at holding Obama to his promise to restore the Gulf Coast.

Obama's visit will also underscore the strides made since the breached floodwalls and overtopped levees left people here camping on highway overpasses, cowering in attics and retreating to the squalor of the Superdome and the Convention Center to escape the deadly waters.

The surreal landscape of grounded boats, washed-up appliances and mud-choked streets is long gone, and many of the most obvious scars from the catastrophe are healing. The Army Corps of Engineers has rebuilt 220 miles of levees and floodwalls.

The school system, widely viewed as one of the nation's worst before the storm, has been reborn with many charter schools. Though activists have filed a lawsuit alleging that special-needs students are being underserved by the new education structure, 59 percent of city students are in schools that meet state academic standards - more than double the number who attended such schools before Katrina.

The storm ravaged the city's hospital system, leaving many residents in the largely black eastern part of the city a long ambulance ride from emergency health care. At the same time, more than 90 neighborhood health clinics opened and are showing promise at delivering preventive care and helping people manage chronic diseases such as diabetes and hypertension.

But there is concern that many of the health centers, funded with federal grant money that is winding down, are struggling to draw enough insured patients to become self-sufficient.

"Everyone now has to transition to a more sustainable model of health care," said Sarat Raman, associate medical director of Daughters of Charity Services of New Orleans, which operates three clinics that serve 15,000 patients in the area. "You have to have a balance of patients."

Along Mississippi's Gulf Coast, where the violent winds and an unprecedented storm surge overwhelmed homeowners, sheared off roofs and splintered houses, the scene has also improved.

The waterfront casinos that provide a large chunk of this state's revenue are humming. The vast majority of residents are back in their rebuilt homes, although thousands are still struggling to find affordable housing because their recovery checks did not cover the cost of the damage.

Despite the improvements, many gaps remain.

The New Orleans area has regained more than 90 percent of its pre-Katrina population, according to the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center.

But in the city itself, just 78 percent of the population has returned, and a growing share of the region's poor now reside in the suburbs. The city's population drop has been most severe in black neighborhoods, many of which absorbed Katrina's most brutal blows.

Despite well-publicized recovery efforts, including a plan led by actor Brad Pitt to build 150 solar-powered homes, just 24 percent of the Lower Ninth Ward's pre-storm population has returned. There, newly rebuilt homes stand next to vacant lots or crumbling houses. Entire blocks remain desolate five years after the storm.

In middle-class Pontchartrain Park, not far from historically black Dillard University, just 55 percent of households have rebuilt, according to the data center.

Beyond the problems with Road Home, New Orleans has experienced a dramatic spike in rental costs since the storm.

"Many low-cost apartments are gone with the wind and the water," said Laura Tuggle, the outgoing managing attorney of Southeast Louisiana Legal Services. "Now, we're left with New York rents on New Orleans wages."

In Mississippi, where Katrina severely damaged more than 101,000 housing units, many residents face what advocates call a similar inequity. Praised in the aftermath of Katrina for his can-do attitude, Gov. Haley Barbour (R) received a series of waivers from the Bush administration that largely freed Mississippi from the requirement to spend at least half of his state's $5.5 billion in federal block grant money on low- and moderate-income residents. Barbour successfully argued that the waivers were necessary to give the state flexibility to deal effectively with the widespread devastation.

That allowed the state to divert close to $1 billion to help devastated utilities rebuild, to subsidize residents' insurance premiums and to help fund the port and other economic development projects. Meanwhile, advocates say that more than 5,000 low-income Mississippi families have yet to settle in permanent housing since the storm.

State officials say they are expanding the number of public housing units beyond pre-Katrina levels and establishing programs to encourage development of affordable rental housing.

Still, advocates say the more than $3 billion distributed by the state's housing recovery program went disproportionately to more-affluent residents. The plan paid up to $150,000 to homeowners whose properties were damaged by the unprecedented storm surge spawned by Katrina, but nothing to those whose homes suffered wind damage.

To be eligible for the initial grants, families had to have homeowners insurance, although the state later devised a program that paid grants of up to $100,000 to low-income, uninsured homeowners whose properties were damaged by the storm surge.

The rationale, state officials said, was that responsible homeowners had no way to know that they should have flood insurance in areas that federal experts deemed to be outside the flood plain.

"The storm surge was the priority," said Lee Youngblood, communications director of the Mississippi Development Authority. "Mississippi had no intention of compensating people who chose, for whatever reason, not to have wind insurance."

That formula struck some advocates as discriminatory. "The criteria discriminated against black storm victims, who more likely than not were renters, or, if homeowners, more likely than not lacked insurance," said Reilly Morse, co-director of housing policy for the Mississippi Center for Justice.

The state's formula had the effect of freezing out people whose homes were destroyed by the wind, which along much of the Mississippi coast meant black residents who often lived in paid-off homes that had been handed down through the generations. The expensive waterfront property was mostly owned by whites, while inland property, which suffered more wind damage, was owned largely by blacks.

In Gulfport, a railroad embankment that has long served as an informal racial demarcation line became a levee when Katrina hit.

As the surging waters crashed through their patio door and rose five feet in their home, a white couple, Ernest and Doreen Chamberlain, gathered their family and sought refuge on the black side of the tracks.

Coming upon an old, wood-frame house he thought was abandoned, Ernest Chamberlain began trying to break the door down, only to be surprised when it was opened by Irene Walker, an elderly black woman.

"She was like, 'Mister, what are you doing?' " he recalled. "Then she invited us in."

That's where the Chamberlains rode out the storm, even as raw sewage backed up into the Walker home.

Five years later, the Chamberlains are back in their sunny home. Although they had to fight with insurers and contractors, they secured a $150,000 grant from the state to help repair the flood damage, which totaled nearly $200,000.

Meanwhile, the Walker home sits abandoned. A church group installed a new roof, but the interior remains untouched. The 82-year-old Walker, meanwhile, is living with family members a few miles away.

"She hasn't gotten any help from the government for the house," said Occelletta Norwood, Walker's niece. "She got a little money from FEMA at the start, but that was it."

"They considered the mountain their god"

It's becoming way too easy to point to the things in the world that are going haywire. Sometimes justice - cosmic and otherwise - does prevail. It's important to keep highlighting those moments. (GW)

The Indian tribe that took on a mining giant - and won

By Andrew Buncombe
The Independent
August 25, 2010

Unexpected victory in battle to protect sacred mountain

They said they considered the mountain their god, a living deity that provided them with everything they required to sustain their lives. They said they would fight to the death before seeing the pristine mountain destroyed. Remarkably, they won their battle.

Last night, the tribal people of the Niyamgiri Hills in eastern India were celebrating after the authorities in Delhi ruled that a British-based company would not be permitted to mine there for bauxite. Drawing a line under a "David-versus-Goliath" saga, India's environment minister acknowledged the potential human and social costs of the aluminium project that could have earned billions of pounds for Vedanta Resources Plc. "There has been a very serious violation of laws," Jairam Ramesh said. "Therefore, the project cannot go ahead."

In the state of Orissa, where the Niyamgiri Hills are located, Sitaram Kulesika, a senior member of the Dongria Kondh tribe, told activists by phone: "This is a great day for Kondhs. Mining would be the end of their existence and their god. We thank the Indian government."

Yet the impact of the ruling reverberated far beyond the quiet hills of eastern India, where the 10,000 members of the Dongria Kondh survive as subsistence hunters and farmers. While Vedanta saw 5 per cent tumble from its share price, activists celebrated what they said was a rare triumph for environmental and social justice against the interests of big business.

"This is a victory nobody would have believed possible," said Survival International's Jo Woodman. "The Dongria's campaign became a litmus test of whether a small, marginalised tribe could stand up to a massive multinational with an army of lobbyists and PR firms and the ear of government."

The mining industry in India is powerful and campaigners have long argued that it needs tighter regulation. While the government of Orissa, which supported the project, claimed activists were holding back much-needed development in the state, campaigners said they had faced widespread intimidation. "We strongly welcome this announcement as a vindication of the struggle that has been led by the indigenous people. The laws to protect their rights have been vindicated," said Bratindi Jena, who leads ActionAid India's work for indigenous people.

The controversy over the proposed mine dates back to 2004 and has involved India's highest court as well as a series of special committees. Many believed that fierce lobbying by Vedanta, owned by London-based industrialist Anil Agarwal, and the state government, would ensure permission would be granted to the company to proceed with its plans to mine bauxite for a refinery which it already operates close to the Niyamgiri hills using ore trucked in from a neighbouring state.

But last week a government-appointed panel recommended that permission be denied on the grounds that mining in the area would breach environmental laws. The panel also expressed concern that granting permission could boost the cause of Maoist rebels, active across India's heartland, who have seized on the resentment of tribal people against large industrial projects. "The committee is of the firm view that allowing mining... by depriving two primitive tribal groups of their rights... in order to benefit a private company would shake the faith of the tribals in the law of the land," the panel said.

Another factor may have been the involvement of Rahul Gandhi, who is widely tipped as a future prime minister. The son of ruling Congress party leader Sonia Gandhi, he visited Niyamgiri in March 2008 and said: "I feel mining the hill will destroy the environment, destroy the water supply source and destroy the culture as well as the livelihood of tribals." He is due to visit the site again later this week.

As the issue became a cause célèbre, campaigners attacked Vedanta from every angle. While activists attended shareholder meetings in London and flew in members of the Dongria Kondh to ensure maximum publicity, they also persuaded shareholders from the Church of England to the Norwegian government to get rid of their stakes.

The decision not to allow mining in Niyamgiri is not the only bad news for Vedanta. Mr Ramesh said their refinery, already operational using bauxite from other states, may be breaching environmental laws. It has also emerged that the Indian government may oppose Vedanta's purchase of a majority stake in Cairn India, a major oil producer.

Last night Vedanta, which says the claims by the pressure groups are "lies and hoax", rejected any accusation that it has broken the law. It also gave an assurance that it would not mine in the area "until all approvals are in place".

Pressure groups suggested that the statement hinted that the battle on the Niyamgiri mine might not be over. Meredith Alexander of ActionAid, said that while yesterday's ruling was a "massive victory", the row may not yet be over. "Vedanta could appeal this decision," she warned. "But the Kondh are asking the company to respect the Government's decision and their clearly expressed opposition to the mine."

Mr Agarwal, Vedanta's billionaire chairman and majority owner, has said the economic benefits of the project far outweigh any displacement of the Dongria Kondh, or damage to the environment. It also says that less than 3 per cent of the tribe would be forced to move because of the mine.

China's mega traffic jam

It sounds like a scene from an apocalyptic movie taking place in 2047, but the massive traffic jam in China is for real and it's happening right now -- and may be fore another two or three weeks. The above photo shows vendors who have set up alongside the road to sell drivers food, water and other necessities.

What will the situation look like in 2030 when China is expected to add upwards of 350 million people to its cities? (GW)

China's massive traffic jam could last for weeks

By Anita Chang
The Associated Press
August 24, 2010

BEIJING -- China has just been declared the world's second biggest economy, and now it has a monster traffic jam to match.

Triggered by road construction, the snarl-up began 10 days ago and was 100 kilometers (60 miles) long at one point. Reaching almost to the outskirts of Beijing, traffic still creeps along in fits and starts, and the crisis could last for another three weeks, authorities say.

It's a metaphor for a nation that sometimes chokes on its own breakneck growth.

In the worst-hit stretches of the road in northern China, drivers pass the time sitting in the shade of their immobilized trucks, playing cards, sleeping on the asphalt or bargaining with price-gouging food vendors. Many of the trucks that carry fruit and vegetables are unrefrigerated, and the cargoes are assumed to be rotting.

On Sunday, the eighth day of the near-standstill, trucks moved just over a kilometer (less than a mile) on the worst section, said Zhang Minghai, a traffic director in Zhangjiakou, a city about 150 kilometers (90 miles) northwest of Beijing. China Central Television reported Tuesday that some vehicles had been stuck for five days.

No portable toilets were set up along the highway, leaving only two apparent options - hike to a service area or into the fields.

But there were no reports of violent road rage, and the main complaint heard from drivers was about villagers on bicycles making a killing selling boxed lunches, bottled water to drink and heated water for noodles.

A bottle of water was selling for 10 yuan ($1.50), 10 times the normal price, Chinese media reports said.

The traffic jam built up on the Beijing-Tibet highway, on a section that links the capital to the Chinese region of Inner Mongolia. The main reason traffic has increased on this partially four-lane highway is the opening of coal mines in the northwest, vital for the booming economy that this month surpassed Japan's in size and is now second only to America's.

Although wages remain generally low, auto ownership and gridlock have grown so commonplace that Inner Mongolia authorities restrict cars' movement to alternate days, based on odd or even numbers in their license plates.

The car invasion is widely felt; Guo Jifu, head of the Beijing Transportation Research Center, told a symposium Monday that vehicles on Beijing's roads multiplied by 1,900 per day on average in the first half of this year, Xinhua, the official news agency, reported.

The immediate cause of the traffic jam that began Aug. 14 is construction on one of three southbound highways feeding into Beijing.

Authorities are trying to ease the snarl-up by letting more trucks into the capital, especially at night, said Zhang, the traffic director. They also asked trucking companies to suspend operations and advised drivers to take the few alternate routes available.

"Things are getting better and better," he said, but he added that the construction would go on until Sept. 17.

Alan Pisarski, author of "Commuting in America," said the worst traffic jams in U.S. history tend to be associated with natural disasters, such as people fleeing Hurricane Katrina or the collapse of the upper deck of a freeway in Oakland, Calif., in the 1989 earthquake.

"It took some people days to get home after that one," Pisarski said.

Traffic arrangements built up over generations in the U.S. are lacking in much of China, said Bob Honea, director of the University of Kansas Transportation Research Institute, who has visited China.

"We'll see this problem more and more often. It's true of every developing country," he said.

Honea said the U.S. has never experienced a traffic jam as big as the one now bedeviling northern China, but he noted that traffic in Los Angeles "is pretty bad. It's not a highway, it's a parking lot."

Prospects of nations drowning

Here in the U.S. we know first-hand what happens when a city drowns. Things tend to break down - physically, socially and emotionally (see yesterday's post).

As I write this Massachusetts is in the midst of a rare (up-until-now?) summer Nor'easter that's blown in on the heels of an unusually hot and humid summer.

Can you say eearth? (GW)

If a country sinks beneath the sea, is it still a country?

By Lisa Friedman
ClimateWire
August 23, 2010

Rising ocean levels brought about by climate change have created a flood of unprecedented legal questions for small island nations and their neighbors.

Among them: If a country disappears, is it still a country? Does it keep its seat at the United Nations? Who controls its offshore mineral rights? Its shipping lanes? Its fish?

And if entire populations are forced to relocate -- as could be the case with citizens of the Maldives, Tuvalu, Kiribati and other small island states facing extinction -- what citizenship, if any, can those displaced people claim?

Until recently, such questions of sovereignty and human rights have been the domain of a scattered group of lawyers and academics. But now the Republic of the Marshall Islands -- a Micronesian nation of 29 low-lying coral atolls in the North Pacific -- is campaigning to stockpile a body of knowledge it hopes will turn international attention to vulnerable countries' plights.

"At the current negotiating sessions and climate change meetings, nobody is truly addressing the legal and human rights effects of climate change," said Phillip Muller, the Marshall Islands' ambassador to the United Nations.

"If the Marshall Islands ceases to exist, are we still going to own the sea resources? Are we still going to be asked for permission to fish? What are the rights that we will have? And we are also mindful that we may need to relocate. We're hoping it will never happen, but we have to be ready. There are a lot of issues we need to know the answer to and be able to tell our citizens what is happening," he said.

Frustrated by the dearth of answers to the questions he was posing, Muller said, Marshall Islands leaders contacted Columbia Law School. Michael Gerrard, who leads the law school's Center for Climate Change Law, picked up the challenge and issued a call for papers.

Theoretical questions become real

Gerrard, who is arranging a conference sponsored by Columbia University's Earth Institute next year, said that when he began reaching out to scholars, he realized most were working in isolation from one another. And, he said, some of the most ticklish legal questions facing small island nations have been understudied -- because until recently, the notion of a country's extinction has been largely theoretical.

"The prospect of a nation drowning is so horrific that it's hard to imagine," Gerrard said. Moreover, he added, until just a few years ago, it was difficult to have a conversation in the international community about how countries might adapt to climate change.

"There was a concern that it would divert focus from mitigation. But now people recognize that even with the most aggressive imaginable mitigation measures, the climate situation will get worse before it gets better, and we have to begin making serious preparation," he said.

The plight of refugees is the most emotional of the looming questions. Deciding where to relocate citizens is just the beginning for a disappearing nation. Still unanswered: What will the political status of those displaced people be? Will they assimilate into the culture and economy of their new host country, or will they retain a separate identity?

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates that rising sea levels, saltwater intrusion and accelerated coastal erosion could lead to as many as 200 million environmentally induced migrants worldwide by 2050.

The Carteret Islanders of Papua New Guinea could be some of the world's first climate "refugees." The land is expected to be under water by 2015, and Papua New Guinea's mission to the United Nations has already announced it would evacuate the approximately 2,000 islanders to Bougainville Island -- about a four-hour boat ride away.

Maldives wants a fund of last resort

Meanwhile, in the Maldives, President Mohamed Nasheed declared upon entering office that he would create a sovereign fund -- something of a last-resort insurance policy -- in the event that the country's 305,000 citizens would require relocation. The fund fell victim to budget shortfalls, but Maldivian officials have said it had the desired effect of raising awareness in the international community.

And while environmental migration is not a new phenomenon, the projected scale of human movement over a short period of time is unprecedented. But, noted University of New South Wales professor Jane McAdam, "there is at present no internationally agreed definition of what it means to be an environmental 'migrant,' 'refugee,' or 'displaced person,' and consequently, no agreed label for those affected."

Edward Cameron, former senior adviser to the government of the Maldives, added: "We see at the moment how many people are on the move in Pakistan." While the floods devastating that country have been displacing millions internally, Cameron asked, "What if they were on the move across an international border? They certainly wouldn't have refugee status."

But while questions abound over the status and rights of displaced persons, experts say that field of study is burgeoning compared to the study of sovereign rights of vulnerable countries.

McAdam, who has looked at the question of whether a disappeared nation could retain its U.N. seat, noted that there is no automatic triggering mechanism that "undoes" a state.

"Certainly states have ceased to exist in the past, but it's through occupation, war, state secession," McAdam said. The closest thing to an extinct nation would be a government in exile. Yet even that assumes the government will eventually return to its territory -- something climate change may make impossible.

"There's precedent for other things that we can draw on, but ... there's no self-executing formula for deciding when a country doesn't exist anymore," she said.

Cleo Paskal, associate fellow at Chatham House and author of "Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map," said one of her top worries is the fate of countries' maritime exclusive economic zones.

Those areas where countries have exclusive rights to the resources are measured from coastlines or offshore islands. But, Paskal noted, the laws assume the coastlines won't change or disappear. That's already happening.

Laws assume coastlines are a constant

"Any country with a coastline or offshore islands that are being used to anchor claims need to start thinking about if that coastline or offshore island is affected, and what will that do to the exclusive economic zone claims?" she said. "The core issue is that we have written our laws, regulations, subsidies on the assumption that the environment is a constant, and it isn't."

Moreover, as Paskal noted in a recent blog post, countries that take in climate "refugees" might make a case for governing the former nation's maritime zone -- something she described as a "very lucrative and geopolitically touchy proposition."

Meanwhile, Paskal and others warn that well before a country disappears under rising waters, it will face less provocative but deeply vexing problems.

"On your way down, before your country disappears, you've got desalination problems, agriculture problems, import problems. You might lose your fresh water; your land might start to degrade because of saltwater intrusion," Paskal said.

Cameron said threatened nations need answers to the vexing legal questions of land, water and migration for their own sakes as well as to send a signal to developed countries stalling on climate change action that "if you don't come up with a response, we're going to start looking at legal options." But more broadly, he said, the international community needs to start viewing climate change through the lens of human rights.

"What we're trying to do in this debate is take an old issue, which is climate change, and make people look at it in a completely different way ... as a human and social issue instead of an ecological issue," he said. "Climate change is not about polar bears; it's about people, and human rights helps us to understand it as a human issue."

I haven't seen this second installment of Spike Lee's documentary on New Orleans and Katrina. I did watch "When the Levees Broke" and found it to be very powerful.

Here's my tip for anyone who really wants to gain insights into what happened (or didn't) with regard to the rebuilding of New Orleans in the wake of Hurrican Katrina: read Kristina Ford's "The Trouble With City Planning: What New Orleans Can Teach Us". Ms. Ford argues that very few people (including elected officials and city residents) really don't understand what the concept of city planning is all about, how it works and especially how planners determine what citizens want. Her critique of the post-Katrina New Orleans planning processes (there were many) provides valuable insights and suggestions that are applicable to citizens, professional planners and city officials anywhere in America. (GW)

Spike Lee’s New Orleans, Take 2

By Mike Hale
New York Times
August 23, 2010

Released just a year after Hurricane Katrina swamped New Orleans, “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts” was a thrilling achievement: both intimate and magisterial, angry and eloquent, an indictment and a testament, it represented a high point in the career of its director, Spike Lee.

Now Mr. Lee is back on HBO with another four-hour documentary about the aftermath of Katrina, “If God Is Willing and da Creek Don’t Rise,” playing in two parts on Monday and Tuesday nights. It was created under different circumstances and it is, perhaps inevitably, a less powerful work than “When the Levees Broke,” more diffuse in its storytelling and more uncertain in its point of view.

As the fifth anniversary of the hurricane approaches, the issues surrounding the rebuilding and repopulating of New Orleans have grown thornier, and Mr. Lee and his documentary crew tiptoe around some of them in “Creek.” Arguments regarding the future of the school system and the demolition of public housing projects are presented neutrally, at least by Mr. Lee’s usually polemical standard.

The shifting sands of the city’s politics are captured in a scene in which a city councilwoman, Cynthia Hedge-Morrell, who appeared in “Levees” as a voice of populist anger at the federal government, hunches over a microphone at a public hearing and takes an unpopular, pro-development stand in favor of tearing down the historic St. Bernard Projects.

The structure and the wavering tone of “Creek” have also been affected by the random but momentous events that have buffeted New Orleans more recently, and that Mr. Lee incorporates into his film at some length. “Creek” opens with the celebrations surrounding the New Orleans Saints’ Super Bowl victory this year, scenes of joy that are eventually undercut when the activist M. Endesha Juakali, invoking the team’s minstrel-show slogan, says: “I was going to have to get up and figure out how I was going to eat the next day, how I was going to pay my bills, how I was going to be able to survive. I’m not a Who Dat. I’m a Who Is Dat.”

(Mr. Lee’s mischievous side comes out in a brief clip of Condoleezza Rice, who was pilloried in “Levees” for vacationing in New York while New Orleans coped with the hurricane; in “Creek” she’s seen on the sideline at a Saints game uncomfortably delivering a “Who dat?”)

Near the end of “Creek” Mr. Lee turns his attention to the oil spill in the gulf for nearly an hour, a segment that feels lightweight and under-reported compared with the rest of his work here and in “Levees.” In another, shorter section he goes further afield to compare the response to Katrina with the response to the January earthquake in Haiti.

“Creek” can feel disjointed as it jumps among these many strands of the New Orleans story, which also include the damage to the health care system and the prosecutions of police officers in post-hurricane shootings. (It can also feel a bit secondhand, as the number of excerpts from “Levees” mounts.)

But there is a somber theme that runs through most of them: the question, if there’s any doubt, of whether developers and their friends in government are taking advantage of the destruction wrought by the hurricane to build a wealthier, whiter city — one without the affordable housing or public services needed by the 100,000 or so former residents who still have not returned.

For those who have seen “When the Levees Broke,” much of the pleasure and the pain of “If God Is Willing and da Creek Don’t Rise” will come from catching up with the earlier film’s characters; it’s like the post-traumatic stress version of a Michael Apted “Up” movie. Some have died, at least one of them violently. Several have noticeably aged or weakened over the four years. Darnell Herrington, shot by a white vigilante after the hurricane, has been shot again, this time by a black carjacker.

Sean Penn reappears, but has been replaced as actor-hero by Brad Pitt, who is spearheading the building of houses in the Lower Ninth Ward reserved for returning residents. The trumpeter Terence Blanchard’s mother, Wilhelmina, seen sobbing in the ruins of her house in “Levees,” moves into a new house on the same spot — and complains that the washing machine isn’t where it used to be.

Best of all are the alpha and omega of “Levees”: Russel L. Honoré, the lieutenant general, now retired, who finally restored order in downtown New Orleans, and Michael D. Brown, the much ridiculed Brownie of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Both agreed to be interviewed for “Creek” and have interesting things to say about the public roles they played in 2005. Mr. Lee helpfully replays a famous Katrina moment so that we can decide whether we believe Mr. Brown’s claim that he winced when President George W. Bush said, “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”

IF GOD IS WILLING AND DA CREEK DON’T RISE

HBO, Monday and Tuesday nights at 9, Eastern and Pacific times; 8, Central time.

Produced by HBO Documentary Films and 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks. Directed by Spike Lee; Sam Pollard and Mr. Lee, producers; Butch Robinson, line producer; Mr. Pollard, supervising editor; Cliff Charles, director of photography; Terence Blanchard, music; Geeta Gandbhir, editor. For HBO: Jacqueline Glover, supervising producer; Sheila Nevins, executive producer.

“A bitter irony"

I did not know that the modern seed bank was invented in Russia. In fact, I didn't know that Russia even hosts a seed bank. Well, it does and it is in danger of being destroyed to make way for the development of luxury housing.

Short-sighted? (GW)

Celebrated Russian seed bank struggles for its land, survival

By Irina Titova
Associated Press
August 22, 2010

PAVLOVSK, Russia — The world’s first seed bank survived World War II thanks to 12 Russian scientists who chose to starve to death rather than eat the grain they were saving for future generations.

Now the Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry’s seed bank is in danger again, this time because of court-approved plans to rip up its vast fields of genetically diverse plants and build fancy homes on the prime real estate they occupy near St. Petersburg.

International organizations dedicated to agricultural diversity have appealed to President Dmitry Medvedev to save the Pavlovsk Agricultural Station, which they say could be crucial for sustaining fruit crops worldwide as climate change and other threats weaken existing varieties.

Medvedev has ordered an investigation, but with the first plot of station land to go on the auction block on Sept. 23, scientists worry that a decision may come too late. “If we lose those lands . . . many kinds of plants will become extinct forever,’’ said Fyodor Mikhovich, head of Pavlovsk Agricultural Station.

The agricultural station is facing the loss of 225 acres on which it grows one of the world’s largest field collections of fruits and berries, including almost 1,000 types of strawberries from 40 countries, 300 varieties of cherries, and almost 900 kinds of black currants. It also has a rich variety of grasses and grains, though the institute’s larger grain fields are located elsewhere.

As many as 90 percent of the plants are no longer found anywhere else in the world. Most of them are old varieties no longer in use, but the Vavilov Institute maintains them in case they will be useful in the future for developing new varieties.

Moving the plants to other fields is not feasible, said Sergei Gandrabur, an agronomist at the station, as he looked out over sprawling strawberry fields last week. He said the plants might not survive being transplanted.

While the strawberries have already been harvested, the fruit is now ripening on long rows of plum, apple, and pear trees.

The federal fund that oversees residential housing construction won court approval this summer to take over the land, which it insists contains nothing of value. Fund spokesman Andrei Tikhonov said specialists visited the site several times and found nothing but weeds on one land plot and mowed grass on the other. “They probably do have this unique collection, but not on our land plots,’’ the spokesman said.

He said the agricultural station had petitioned three years ago to use the same land plots for housing development, but was denied. Tikhonov accused the station’s management of being motivated by its own commercial interests.

Medvedev sent a message on his Twitter page recently saying he “gave the instruction for this issue to be scrutinized.’’ The government Audit Chamber said it will meet Friday to decide how to proceed.

An international appeal to save the Pavlovsk fields was organized by the Rome-based Global Crop Diversity Trust, which launched a “Tweet Medvedev’’ campaign and put together a petition, which it said was signed by thousands of people all over the world.

Bioversity International, also based in Rome, said its general director wrote to Medvedev asking him to intervene.

“The fruit and berry varieties that have been stored and studied at Pavlovsk since it was founded have a vital role to play in the future of Russian and global agriculture,’’ Bioversity general director Emile Frison said on the organization’s website.

“Russia is currently being ravaged by the hottest summer on record,’’ he said. “That is just a taste of changes to come, and crop diversity will be a vital weapon in the fight to produce enough food in future.’’

Cary Fowler, executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, said it was “a bitter irony that the single most deliberately destructive act against crop diversity could be about to happen in Russia of all places — the country that invented the modern seed bank.’’

The "Atlantic garbage patch"

Now Atlantic is found to have huge 'garbage patch'

By Steve Connor
The Independent
August 20, 2010

A huge expanse of floating plastic debris has been documented for the first time in the North Atlantic Ocean. The size of the affected area rivals the "great Pacific garbage patch" in the world's other great ocean basin, which generated an outcry over the effects of plastic waste on marine wildlife.

The new plastic waste, which was discovered in an area of the Atlantic to the east of Bermuda, consists mostly of fragments no bigger than a few millimetres wide. But their concentrations and the area of the sea that is covered have caused consternation among marine biologists studying the phenomenon.

Using fine-mesh nets towed from a research ship, the scientists collected more than 64,000 individual plastic pieces at 6,100 locations out at sea over the 22-year period of the survey. The highest concentrations were centred at approximately the same latitude as Atlanta, Georgia (32 degrees North) but extended about 500 miles north and south of this line.

Kara Lavender Law from the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, said the size of the Atlantic "garbage patch" was roughly equal to the one in the Pacific, where circulating currents of the North Pacific Gyre have trapped it over a wide area to the north of the equator.

"The Pacific has received more attention in terms of plastic accumulation but we know less about the Pacific so it's very difficult to compare the Atlantic patch in terms of size. We had a cruise this summer to try to find the eastern extent and in fact we failed to find it," Dr Lavender Law said.

"East of Bermuda we had no evidence of a decrease in concentration so we still haven't answered the question. All we can say is the highest concentrations between the two oceans are comparable. My guess is they are similar-sized problems," she said.

"For the first time we've been able to put north-south bounds on the region of plastic accumulation. We've presented the most extensive dataset on plastic marine debris on any ocean basin," she added. The nets have a mesh size of 0.3mm, so the survey has only collected fragments bigger than this size. "Most pieces are smaller than the eraser on the top of your pencil. These are fragments from larger objects but we cannot say which objects they are from or where they originated," Dr Lavender Law said.

Most of the plastic appears to be polyethylene or polypropylene, which are less dense than seawater and float near to the surface. However, other kinds of denser plastic debris may have sunk to the bottom of the ocean where it has disappeared from view.

The study, published in the journal Science, found that the concentration of plastic particles caught in the nets since the survey began in 1986 has remained remarkably constant - but Dr Lavender Law emphasised that this did not mean the problem was manageable. "It does seem constant but we have to be careful about the interpretation that it is not getting worse, because what we are measuring is plastic larger than a third of a millimetre in size floating at the surface," she said.

"One explanation is that the pieces are becoming small enough to pass straight through the net. The plastic may still be floating at the ocean surface - it's just that we are not collecting it once it's smaller than a particular size.

"Another explanation is that we've found evidence that biological growth on pieces of plastic actually makes them denser and it's possible that, over time, if there is enough biological growth they may become dense enough to sink from the surface, where we wouldn't collect it," she explained.

Small fragments of plastic could pose an even greater menace to marine life than the larger fragments that become entangled with animals such as albatrosses and turtles, she said. "We know that smaller pieces of plastic are eaten and it's unclear what happens to that plastic then. But clearly biological organisms were not designed to eat plastic," she said.

The emerging new geopolitics of food

The raging fires in Russia have resulted in a government-enforced ban on Russian wheat exports. Droughts and floods are wreaking agricultural chaos in other parts of the world. Globalization makes all of these events more interconnected than they may have otherwise been. However, global climate change is the ultimate interconnecting force at work here. (GW)

Looming food crisis to hit Afghanistan and Africa first

EurActiv
20 August 2010

Sub-Saharan Africa and Afghanistan have the most insecure food supplies in the world, while Nordic countries are least at risk, shows an index published yesterday (19 August).

Background

In 2007-2008 food prices soared following a peak in oil prices, creating political unrest throughout the world.

Rising global populations and demand for food, climate change-related crop failures, higher fuel and fertiliser prices, speculation on commodity markets, dysfunctional global agricultural markets and greater biofuels production are widely seen as the causes of the 2008 crisis.

The world now fears a renewed food crisis as a record heat wave plaguing Europe and Russia this summer has reduced wheat supplies and caused prices to rise. A Russian ban on wheat exports is further increasing concerns of a renewed spike in global wheat prices.

African nations make up 36 of the 50 nations whose food supplies are most at risk, according to the Food Security Risk Index of 163 countries, compiled by risk analysis firm Maplecroft.

Extreme droughts and high poverty rates, as well as poor infrastructure for transporting agricultural products, render Sub-Saharan Africa particularly vulnerable, it said.

Afghanistan's rating as the most vulnerable to food supply shocks was further fuelled by ongoing violence in the country.

Pakistan, where massive floods have produced a severe humanitarian crisis, is currently ranked "high risk" at number 30. But Maplecroft predicted that the floods will have a long-term effect and make its situation even more vulnerable.

"Russian brakes on exports, plus a reduction in Canada's harvest by almost a quarter due to flooding in June, are provoking fluctuations in the commodity markets. This will further affect the food security of the most vulnerable countries," said Fiona Place, an environmental analyst at Maplecroft.

By contrast, Finland was judged to have the most secure food supplies, followed by fellow Nordic states Sweden, Denmark and Norway. The US, Germany, the UK and France also fared well.


Food crisis in the making?

The hot, dry summer has reduced food supplies, triggering concerns over a pending new food crisis.

The US Department of Agriculture predicted in its latest 'World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates' report on 12 August that global grain carry-over stocks will fall to 444 million tons. The amount of grain that will sit in world's silos at the time of the next harvest will only cover 72 days of consumption, the Earth Policy Institute warned.

"This drop in world carry-over stocks of grain to 72 days of consumption is moving us uncomfortably close to the 64 days of carry-over stocks in 2007 that fueled the 2007–08 spike in world food prices," said Lester R. Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute.

Wheat supplies are severely reduced, mostly due to a heat wave and droughts in EU countries and former Soviet Union states (EurActiv 26/07/10). In Russia, wildfires have wreaked further havoc and encouraged Russia to ban heat exports earlier this month, which sent prices soaring.

The economic crisis and rising prices have allayed fears of an imminent food crisis by reducing demand. However, some analysts are predicting the onset of severe food shortages once the economy has picked up again.

When demand starts to go up in the West again, this will inevitably lead to rising oil prices, economist Jeremy Rifkin predicted earlier this summer (EurActiv 16/06/10). During the 2007-2008 crisis, oil spiked at $147 a barrel, dragging food prices up with it.

Agricultural production is intricately linked with oil, as petroleum is used to manufacture fertilisers and pesticides. Moreover, higher oil prices increase the demand for biofuels, which will shift the use of farm land from food towards energy crops.

The heat wave in Russia and the floods in Pakistan will have long-term impacts on their food security, Maplecroft warned, adding that climate change is having a profound impact on world food supplies.

"Food security is a critical geopolitical issue and an important factor for investors concerned with sovereign risk, food and agricultural business with respect to supply chain integrity and foreign direct investments," said Professor Alyson Warhurst, CEO of Maplecroft.

"The world will now look to China as one of the biggest storage countries; however, food consumption there is on the increase and surpluses are not quantified."

Wind is where the jobs are

Building a robust U.S. wind energy industry is right for so many reasons - not the least of which are it will put people to work in good, well-paying jobs while dramatically reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

We simply have to get on with the responsible development of both onshore and offshore projects without further frivolous delays. (GW)


The Birth of a U.S. Wind Power Manufacturing Industry

By Herman K. Trabish
Greentech Media
August 13, 2010

The wind industry’s parts could be great for the U.S. economy as a whole—and especially the U.S. job market.

As the U.S. wind industry's installed capacity went from 6.7 megawatts to 35,000 megawatts between 2004 and 2009, its manufacturing sector expanded from a few dozen facilities to more than 240. By 2009, over 60% of wind's U.S. capacity was sourced domestically. This is a growing ecosystem supporting U.S. middle-class labor as well as capacity to generate emissions-free electricity.

"For wind turbines, which have large components like towers, nacelles and blades," according an American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) spokesperson, "transportation is a big part of the cost."

In fact, according to the recent report Harnessing the Potential of Open Trade...in the Wind Energy Industry from the World Resources Institute, off-shoring wind industry manufacturing to places where labor is cheap has no significant cost benefit over domestic manufacturing because of transport costs. The U.S. wind manufacturing base can, therefore, be expected to grow as long as the industry does.

California-based Clipper Windpower, for instance, opened a manufacturing facility in 2006, captured one percent of the turbine market in 2007, moved up to six percent in 2008 and, in 2009, exported its first turbines, to Mexico.

According to the just-released 2009 Wind Market Report from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a contemporary wind turbine averages about two megawatts in capacity, or enough power for almost 500 U.S. homes. According to Winds of Change; A Manufacturing Blueprint for the Wind Industry from AWEA, the Blue-Green Alliance and the United Steelworkers, the average turbine weighs 200 to 400 short tons, 90 percent of that in steel and most of the rest in fiberglass, copper, concrete, aluminum and adhesives. It has about 8,000 components, many already manufactured domestically in smaller versions for aerospace, defense, energy and mining.

The five U.S. turbine manufacturers in operation in 2005 grew to fifteen in 2009. Nine of 2009's top ten original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) -- Acciona, Clipper, GE, Gamesa, Mitsubishi, Nordex, Siemens, Suzlon, Vestas -- have current or announced U.S. facilities for towers, blade manufacturing, or nacelle assembly.

At least three factors, according to the manufacturing report, are driving the growth of domestic manufacturing. First, eliminating the expense of transporting very large turbine parts offsets the higher cost of domestic labor. Second, imports that require dealing with currency fluctuations can often disadvantage the U.S. dollar. Third, the high cost of inventory and rapidly developing technology makes just-in-time manufacturing necessary -- and proximity preferences domestic manufacturers.

Due to transport costs, the biggest, heaviest components were the first to be made domestically. Twenty U.S. facilities presently manufacture utility-scale turbine towers. Fourteen have come online since 2005 and eight more have recently been announced. Thirteen U.S. facilities presently make turbine blades, nine of which came online since 2005. Three are announced.

The second wave of expansion was in the assembly of the nacelle, the heart and brain of a wind turbine. The majority of U.S. nacelles are assembled at eight domestic facilities. There are eight more such facilities in planning stages.

Most recently, an expansion in the manufacture of the highly engineered mechanical and electrical nacelle internals has begun.

Each wave of expansion swept in a supply chain of nuts, bolts, grease and adhesives makers. By 2009, component manufacturing had become the biggest growth sub-sector.

The three major nacelle internals are gearboxes, generators, and drives. The first U.S. facility dedicated to such manufacturing, Winergy Drive Systems in Elgin, IL, came online in 2009. Among the many facilities in planning stages, Germany's internationally recognized mechanical system maker ZF announced a contract with Vestas, the world's biggest turbine manufacturer, to provide gearboxes from a Gainesville, GA, facility now under construction.

The U.S.'s wind manufacturing ecosystem extends from coast to coast and border to border. There are online or planned facilities in rust belt states like Michigan and Ohio, Midwest states like Kansas and Iowa, where youthful rural populations now have an alternative to moving to urban centers for opportunity, and in Southern states like Texas and Arkansas, where manual labor now has an alternative to unemployment.

An example of the potential to revitalize U.S. manufacturing is the urgent need to develop new domestic foundry capacity for casting utility-scale turbine parts. Few existing foundries are up to the demands of casting mainframes, hubs, rotor shafts and other parts that can weigh 30 tons or more. This is expected to be a huge investment opportunity.

But no such foundry capacity expansion has so far been undertaken, according to AWEA, because federal policy has failed to provide a long-term signal warranting the needed substantial investment. AWEA has, for many years and particularly since President Obama came to office, pushed hard for such a long-term policy signal in the form of a national Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) that would require regulated U.S. utilities to obtain a significant portion of their power from renewable sources by 2020 or 2025.

The $2.3 billion in Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credits (48C credits) in the 2009 Recovery Act benefited 183 projects and leveraged $5.4 billion in private investment but was expended. The Obama administration requested that Congress budget $5 billion to extend the program but there has been no action on the measure.

"It's a strong incentive," an AWEA spokesperson pointed out, but "to be effective manufacturing incentives need to be coupled with a stable, long-term market and even strong programs like 48C can't revitalize the sector if we don't create a market. That is where the RES comes in, as it drives the market and creates certainty."

"Climate change is becoming a much more firm reality on the ground"

So just what is the climate change "call-to-action" tipping point? Can we count on governments to take necessary mitigation actions before the point of return from the worst-case scenario is reached? (GW)

Extreme weather unlikely to help climate talks

By Alister Doyle
Reuters
August 17, 2010 10:02 AM

OSLO — Extreme weather in 2010 will spur more strident calls for action to combat global warming but is unlikely to break a deadlock at UN climate talks about sharing the burden between rich and poor.

Pakistan, for instance, has blamed mankind's emissions of greenhouse gases for devastating floods that have killed up to 1,600 people. And Russian President Dmitry Medvedev similarly directly linked the summer heat wave on global warming.

But there is no sign so far that major emitters — Russia is the number three greenhouse gas emitter behind China and the United States — are offering to do more to combat climate change to overcome gridlock at UN talks.

One delegate at the last UN talks, in Bonn in early August, said there was a "huge sense of inertia" despite worries about extreme weather and UN projections that 2010 would be the warmest year since records began in the 1850s.

And there are risks that extreme weather will add to rather than resolve tensions between rich nations, historically most to blame for global warming, and poor countries most vulnerable to floods, droughts and cyclones.

Climate change might even supplant decades-old debate about the legacy of colonial rule as a cause of friction between rich and poor nations.

"Global warming could turn into the post-colonial argument, which could destroy much of the negotiating possibilities," said Johan Rockstrom, head of the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University.

MORE REAL

"Climate change is becoming a much more firm reality on the ground for many countries," said Saleemul Huq, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Environment and Development in London.

He said that would bring a greater sense of urgency at the next annual UN climate talks of environment ministers in Mexico, from Nov. 29-Dec. 10, after the Copenhagen summit last December agreed only a non-binding deal to slow climate change.

Rich and poor nations are already split about how to share out needed curbs on greenhouse gas emissions. Developing nations say the rich must make far deeper cuts while the rich want poor nations to do more to limit their growing emissions.

Experts doubt major breakthroughs at the Cancun talks, partly because the United States has not joined other developed nations in capping emissions.

Russia and Pakistan have squarely linked extreme weather to global warming — going beyond the views of most climate scientists that climate change merely loads the dice in favour of extreme weather but cannot be linked to individual events.

Pakistan's Environment Minister Hameed Ullah Jan Afridi said global warming was the "main cause" of floods and noted that Pakistan emits just 0.4 per cent of world greenhouse gases. Up to 1,600 people have been killed and two million made homeless in Pakistan's worst floods in decades.

Medvedev said of wildfires and Russia's drought on Aug. 4: "Unfortunately, what is happening now in our central regions is evidence of this global climate change, because we have never in our history faced such weather conditions in the past."

"That's a very good sign for the Russian public, which still has a lot of doubts about climate change," said Alexei Kokorin of the WWF conservation group in Russia. He said many Russians doubted that global warming was caused by mankind.

Arild Moe, an expert on Russian climate policy at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute in Oslo, said Medvedev had sometimes failed to carry out hints of tougher policies in the past.

"Medvedev has said many correct things on many issues, from corruption to the role of NGOs, but they have not got embedded in a legal process," Moe said.

And Moscow's goal for greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 foresees a rise from current levels. Russia's emissions tumbled after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union and were still 33 per cent below 1990 levels in 2008.

China, the top greenhouse gas emitter ahead of the United States, has not directly blamed climate change for floods and landslides that have killed more than 2,000 people.

But a commentary in the Beijing Daily last week said that an increased frequency of disasters meant that "climate change presents a real threat to China's natural ecological systems and economic and social development."

China's Xie Zhenhua, head of the powerful National Development and Reform Commission, called in January for an "open attitude" to climate science, saying some believed change was caused by "a cyclical element of the nature itself."

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