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Scientist Says Ice Meteors a Sign of Climate Change
MADRID (Reuters) - A Spanish scientist says global warming may be to blame for giant blocks of ice which fall from clear skies and rip gaping holes in cars and houses.

Jesus Martinez-Frias has spent the last two-and-a-half years investigating so-called megacryometeors -- ice meteors -- which tend to weigh more than 22 lb and have been known to leave five feet holes in houses.

He fears the formation of these hailstone-like blocks on clear days could be a worrying symptom of climate change.

"I'm not worried that a block of ice might fall on your head ... but that great blocks of ice are forming where they shouldn't exist," said Martinez-Frias, director of planetary geography at Spain's Astrobiology Center in Madrid.

"Components of the atmosphere, like ozone and water, are changing in different levels of the atmosphere...We think these signs could be evidence of climate change," he said in a telephone interview with Reuters.

While Martinez-Frias said he was far from certain as to why the ice meteors formed, he said they were neither hoaxes nor blocks of ice falling from the bars or bathrooms of passing aircraft, as skeptics have suggested.

"We're not talking about hoaxes," Martinez-Frias said. "It's very easy to tell real and false ice blocks apart."

"It's not water from airplane toilets...Its isotopic composition bears the signature...of Iberian rain."

SMASHING WINDSCREENS

Ice clouds made from crystallized vapor trails of aircraft are well known to pilots, but Martinez-Frias suggests that because global warming involves one level of the atmosphere getting colder while another gets hotter, some ice clouds now remain longer.

Their centers then fall through the atmosphere, bouncing and gathering mass, to end up smashing through a car windshield or, more usually, landing softly in a field, he suggested.

The first megacryometeor found this year in Spain -- by a startled farmer riding his tractor in Soria -- weighed 35.27 lb.

Three others were found later, bringing the world total over the last decade to more than 50. But Martinez-Frias said only around a fifth of the ice meteors are ever found.

An ice meteor weighing around 440 lb has been found in Brazil, Martinez-Frias said. Other blocks have been found in Mexico and Australia.

The blocks form between two-and-a-half and six miles above ground, he said.

Some scientists doubt whether hail can form on a clear day.

"Solid ice cannot form in the absence of thick, highly visible clouds," Charles Knight, a hail expert at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado was quoted as saying in a supplement of Science journal.

But geologist Roger Buick of the University of Washington in Seattle told the same publication that a model created by Martinez-Frias and his team showing ice can form on a clear day was an "important advance in that it thoroughly documents and provides an explanation for a spectacular phenomenon."

posted by West 6:32 PM

 

Blue Planet: The end is near
UPI -- We don't feel it quite yet, but the single biggest American policy failure of the last 50 years is our inability to deal with oil.

Yet we're paying the price for this failure in many ways: Our economy is unstable, the environment from underground to the Arctic is polluted and our diplomacy and military have become focused inordinately on the volatile and treacherous Middle East.

Another offshoot from our petroleum inadequacy is the cynicism it infuses into our assessments of national priorities: Are we intervening in the Middle East on the side of the angels or on the side of Big Oil?

It's only going to get worse.

"In the worldwide numbers, we're discovering about a third as much oil as we use," Randy Udall, director of the Community Office for Resource Efficiency based in Aspen, Colo., told United Press International. "There's an enormous amount of misinformation," he said.

In Udall's view, "We're the oil tribe. We consume 140 pounds of oil per person per week. We're our own very exotic group, and buying the tank of gasoline is the ritual. More people do that every week than go to church or watch Monday Night Football."

Future historians of our period will be amazed, Udall said. "How little we understood about the energy basis of our civilization is going to be astounding to them."

Some analysts think world oil production peaked two years ago. That may be too pessimistic, but the peak will come soon -- very soon.

Colin Campbell is a geologist with more than 40 years experience in the oil industry and a founder of the Oil Depletion Analysis Center in London. Campbell's analysis of oil industry data shows peak oil production -- the point at which one-half of all the world's oil will have been produced -- will occur in 2010. Thereafter, production will begin an inexorable decline.

In a submission to the British government on energy policy, Campbell wrote, "The inevitable conclusion from a realistic assessment of the situation is that world oil production, which provides about 40 percent of global energy needs and about 90 percent of transport fuel, will to start to decline within about 10 years. It is evident that the World will have to learn to use less -- much less. It will be difficult, but not impossible given the current monumental level of waste."

Campbell reaches his conclusions by looking at four things:

-- How much oil has been produced to date,

-- How much remains to be produced from known fields (usually called reserves),

-- Estimates of how much will be produced from new fields, and

-- The sum of these elements.

"The critical issue is not so much when oil will eventually run out," he said, "but rather when production will reach a peak and begin to decline. That will surely represent a major watershed for the world's economy, with far reaching social and political consequences." At the very least, when supplies decline as demand increases, the price goes up, with the attendant impacts on economic activity.

For conventional oil, Campbell estimates about 875 billion barrels already have been produced worldwide. There are now about 900 billion barrels still to be produced from known fields and about 150 billion barrels from new fields.

About half of the known and expected reserves are in five countries in the Middle East -- Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Much of the rest is within the territory of the former Soviet Union.

Oil production declines are not unknown. In the United States, Libya and Bahrain, domestic oil production peaked in 1970 and has been shrinking ever since.

It might be instructive that America's downgrading of Libya as a terrorist regime has coincided with its falling oil output.

Dubai peaked in 1990, Mexico in 1998 and the United Kingdom in 2000, according to a European Union report by German energy consultants Jorg Schindler and Werner Zittel.

The decline for other nations will occur, the only issue is when. The U.S. peak coincided with the first energy panic of the early 1970s.

Decreasing production will be offset partially by technology and by new kinds of unconventional oil coming onboard. Remarkable advances in oil discovery and production technology have kept oil flowing.

Petroleum optimists, such as the American Petroleum Institute, argue unconventional sources will make up for losses in conventional oil production. According to an API, "If economically feasible ways to extract and refine unconventional sources of oil are found, our oil supply could be extended for hundreds of years. A large part of the world's remaining resources is found in the form of oil shales, heavy and extra heavy oils and bitumens. These unconventional resources are equal in volume to ten times the amount of recoverable conventional oil resources that remain."

Campbell is not so sanguine.

"The economists tend to claim that they can be progressively tapped as the need arises," he said, "but the sad truth is that most of them can come on only slowly for the very reason that they are expensive and difficult to extract ... They cannot accordingly have much impact on global peak although they will ameliorate the subsequent decline." These sources will slow the decline in production somewhat, but will not reverse it.

The petroleum institute quotes a U.S. Geological Survey report that states, "there is a 95-percent possibility that the world's remaining oil resources could last 63 more years and a 5-percent chance that the world's resources will last another 95 years at recent rates of consumption."

The USGS report appears to be too optimistic by a factor of two. The report made testable predictions that have failed the test. USGS forecast an average of 24 billion barrels of new oil would be discovered each year between 1995 and 2025. Actual experience between 1995 and 2002 shows the average has been only about 10 billion barrels a year. This is a period in which performance should be best, because the largest fields should be found first.

The implications of our policy failure are profound. Despite the hype occasionally raised for the "hydrogen economy," it is a long time off and has problems of its own. There is no real alternative transportation fuel on the horizon to replace our reliance on gasoline.

"The hole cards are now held by the Middle East," says CORE's Udall. "It makes perfect energy sense for us to be browbeating Iraq," because it is a prime oil exploration target.

"Half of the world's remaining oil is held in five countries. They will be providing three-quarters of the world's exported oil by 2020," Udall said. "We need to dominate that region. If we can dominate it diplomatically, we will. If we need to dominate it militarily, we've done that, too. That's going to be a fulcrum for all kinds of geopolitical struggle for the next half century."

Our oil policy failure shows, in part, the American tendency for over-reliance on market systems. The oil market responds only to short-term factors, and American policymakers have been willing to offer short-term solutions. Instead of investment in conservation or investment in alternative technologies, the are content to offer up more public land or the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge or offshore Florida to our oil appetite.

Americans are so invested in growth that we are unwilling to wrestle with even the simplest conservation tools. But if we don't, we may find that growth ethic substantially threatened in very short order -- by energy shortages, by rising prices and economic restraints, by constant international turmoil or by all of the above.

posted by West 6:28 PM

 

Soot Linked to Flooding, Drought, Global Warming
WASHINGTON, DC, September 27, 2002 (ENS) - Large amounts of black carbon or soot particles and other pollutants are causing changes in precipitation and temperatures over China, a new study suggests. The study's authors say soot pollution may be at least partially responsible for the tendency toward increased floods and droughts in Asian regions over the last several decades.

In a paper appearing in today's issue of the journal "Science," the researchers explained that black carbon can affect regional climate by absorbing sunlight, heating the air, and altering large scale atmospheric circulation and the hydrologic cycle. The study's U.S. authors include Surabi Menon of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Columbia University, and her colleague James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.

posted by West 6:20 PM

 

Fuel For the Anti-Bush Fire
(John Passacantando, AlterNet, September 5, 2002)
Even The New York Times ran an unusually fat op-ed last week by Bjorn Lomborg, the Dane who has been trying to make a living by distorting facts and statistics and pitching his book about how the planet is as healthy as ever. Yet it's pulp fiction, with more errors than an afternoon of Little League baseball (and all refuted by the most respected scientists at www.gristmagazine.com). . . . citizens the world over know we have a huge problem -- one caused by the burning of fossil fuels, with solutions being blocked by the largest corporations in the U.S. These corporations -- including ExxonMobil, General Motors, coal companies, power companies like the Southern Company and many others -- have run with the strategy of "Let them eat cake" to anyone worried about stopping global warming. . . . The anti-globalization protesters are not disappearing, just regrouping. Moderate mainstream environmentalists are furious about the state of the planet in a way that I have never seen before in my career. . . . And George W. Bush has put a face to all that we find wrong: Political corruption. Corrupt influence from big business. A deaf ear to science. Deaf to the will of the people. The only thing green that matters is the buck. . . . Trust me on this, the center cannot hold. You cannot treat nature this way without it snapping back, and you cannot treat a democratic populace this way without it snapping back. The anger I am finding out there toward Bush -- from rank-and-file environmentalists, but also from firemen, cops, those coveted soccer moms, surfers, cabbies, anarchists and Republicans -- is unlike anything we have seen in modern times. You have to go back to the dark days of Richard Nixon to find such widespread fury toward a U.S. leader. . . . Bush is out in front running the agenda of the dirtiest and most corrupt corporations in America, full speed ahead. . . . Bush is a leader without a base, without a following, with only the dirty campaign contributions of America's most retrograde companies to his name.

posted by Lorenzo 2:32 PM

 

Drink Coffee? Read This
(Michelle Chihara, AlterNet, September 19, 2002)
The farmers and workers who actually grow coffee beans in regions from South America to Vietnam are faced with the lowest prices in years, prices that do not cover their costs. Farmers are slipping into dire poverty, pulling their children out of school, unable to afford medicine and struggling to eat. Mass coffee farming practices are also destroying rainforest ecosystems. . . . The coffee campaign is part of Oxfam's larger Make Trade Fair campaign, an international effort to make trade more fair to poor and developing countries -- including calls for an end to agricultural subsidies in the first world and a more democratic World Trade Organization. . . . The Organic Consumers Association says Oxfam has got it all wrong, and that by giving Starbucks its support, Oxfam is helping Starbucks "greenwash" its image. . . . Starbucks talks the talk but does not walk the walk, Cummins says. "CEO Orin Smith admitted in the Chicago Tribune that less than one tenth of one percent of total sales of Starbucks was Fair Trade certified. So why have these brochures out everywhere talking about how great you are? If you didn't then maybe you wouldn't have pissed us off so much." . . . The OCA also wants Starbucks to stop using any and all genetically modified and non-organic products, from soy lecithin and sweeteners in its pastries to milk. "For two years now, they've admitted that 80 percent of the 32 million gallons of milk comes from dairies where cows are injected with bovine growth hormone," Cummins says. "It's price; the bottom line is that tainted milk in America is a lot cheaper than organic milk." . . . A spokeswoman for Starbucks confirmed that only 1 percent of Starbucks coffee is Fair Trade. . . . Starbucks or not, coffee farmers are suffering, and both campaigns this week are aimed at helping them. "This crash has just decimated 25 million people who are dependent on the market," says Smith. "It's transcended even where we were a year ago."

posted by Lorenzo 2:18 PM

 

The Future of Multilateralism
By Dr. Claude Martin
ecoisp.com -- The World Summit on Sustainable Development has failed to come up with a comprehensive action plan for sustainable development. Instead, the result is a compromise that merely maintains the status quo. What then is the future of multilateral attempts to address poverty eradication and environmental protection?

In response to calls to reduce humanity's impact on the planet, NGOs have often been accused of wanting people go back into caves. Ironically, my feeling at the end of the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) is that out of short-term economic interests, some governments have withdrawn into their own national caves - a position that will only increase our devastating impact.

posted by West 2:32 PM

 

Green Advisor Offers Environmental Lifestyle Tips
NEW YORK, New York, September 20, 2002 (ENS) - A new website compiles advice from a variety of environmental groups on ways for people to save money while living a more environmentally friendly lifestyle.

The new site from Environmental Defense, Green Adviser (http://www.greenadviser.org), debuted this week. Green Adviser features links to articles, interactive tools and databases that help consumers make smarter, healthier choices.

The site's tips show how simple changes in daily activities, such as shopping or driving, can save money while saving the planet. In addition, a recipe section offers suggestions on maintaining a more healthful diet.

"Simple changes in day to day activities can have a beneficial environmental effect," said Environmental Defense's director of Internet and media services Joyce Newman. "Green Adviser helps those seeking practical advice with new tips every week on positive lifestyle changes."

Created and maintained by Environmental Defense, the non-commercial site offers advice on everything from buying environmentally friendly products to learning how to enjoy nature without leaving more than footprints behind. It features links to the best advice available from web sites representing regional and national green groups, health programs, conservation associations and other environmentally conscious organizations dedicated to promoting a healthier lifestyle.

Green Adviser includes advice and tips on green products, such as the least polluting automobiles and energy efficient appliances, and suggestions on how to shop online for green items. Green diet tips include how to read the labels of organic or natural foods, health news and a selection of recipes from celebrity chefs.

The Green Places section offers advice on exploring the great outdoors or creating a green spot in your own backyard, and the recycling section includes information on how to reduce waste, eliminate junk mail and shop for products that contain post consumer recycled materials.

Green Adviser also showcases a "Green Link of the Week" and links to interactive tools for consumers, like Environmental Defense's Seafood Selector, which suggests eco-friendly fish choices, and Tailpipe Tally, which helps consumers choose less polluting cars and trucks.

posted by West 2:30 PM

 

Community forestry takes root in Bolivia: Indigenous communities take sustainable and profitable control of local timber resources
bbc.co.uk -- Indigenous communities in Latin America hold land-rights to huge territories.

Many of these territories are home to important tropical forests. Both the communities and the forests are under pressure from big logging companies and from displaced families looking for land to farm.

Raquel Guagua Subera Isategua In Bolivia some communities are resisting these threats by implementing sustainable forestry management plans.

In a wooden schoolhouse, deep in the Bolivian Amazon, some 30 members of the Yuqui indigenous group gathered recently to discuss the first two years of their timber-management plan.

"Before the plan we would have destroyed the whole forest," explained Jonathan Isategua Guaguasu, vice-president of a local indigenous organisation and former cacique, or leader, of the Yuqui council.

"This is a great advance, one we never could have dreamed of before."

Nomads to landlords

The Yuquis traditionally lived as nomadic hunter-gatherers. Then five years ago they, and five communities of Mojeno, Mobima, Trinitario and Uracare were given the 300,000-acre Yuqui indigenous territory (TCO).

Now, they are using sustainable-forestry practices to conserve the forests and ensure their own survival.

That these communities reached this position is down to organisations including the Worldwide Fund for Nature. WWF has launched a regional campaign reaching from Bolivia to Mexico to promote community forestry as an important preservation tool in Latin America, where half the world's tropical forests are located.

"In the last two decades, indigenous communities throughout Latin America have received millions of hectares of forested land that is important from a conservation standpoint," said Nils Hager of WWF's Program for Forestry Certification.

Compared with Mexico or Guatemala, Bolivia is new to community forestry. But the country has made strides to improve forestry practices. Since the 1996 enactment of a new forestry law, Bolivia has become the world leader in Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification of natural tropical forests, with nearly 2.5 million acres certified.

Another 10-million acres are being operated under management plans that meet many certification requirements, such as 20-year extraction cycles and diameter limits for exploitable trees.

Bolfor, a non-governmental group funded by the US Agency for International Development, helped draft the new law and improve standards at timber companies.

Now, with Bolivian and US Government backing, Bolfor has shifted its focus to community forestry.

Sharing the benefits

Initially, the Yuquis wondered why they should give up unrestricted forestry methods to meet the demanding requirements of Bolivia's forestry law. But having decided to try the new approach, the community is warming to the benefits.

The first timber sale, organised through a public tender, raised $40,000. In a move that was completely foreign to the communities, the money was placed in a bank account.

The idea was to break the grip that community leaders had over timber income.

"It was very important to put the money straight into a bank and to ensure it didn't pass through the pockets of the leaders," says Raul Lobo, a Bolfor official who works closely with the Yuqui TCO communities.

"There is starting to be social control over the leaders. They are beginning to act more democratically and understand that the TCO and the resources in it belong to the whole group."

Bright future

Over half the money deposited was spent in payments to each family, wages for timber workers and purchases of communal items ranging from metal roofing to outboard motors.

And there was still $3,000 left to pay for a timber census in the next area slated for exploitation.

Apart from these direct benefits, having a legally respected forestry plan has consolidated the territorial rights of the six communities and given a point for these distinct ethnic groups to unite around.

This year, earnings could top $50,000, and the communities are hoping that over a few years they will save enough to buy a sawmill so they can add value to their wood by selling lumber instead of raw timber.

The communities could also certify their concession, which might improve prices and broaden the variety of wood species they sell.

WWF is offering financial support in this area. But Hager says certification will be of no benefit unless the wood can reach US and European markets that place a value on green seals.

And for this to happen the wood will have to be transported, processed and sold by companies that are themselves certified.

Whatever happens concerning certification, indigenous residents believe the forestry plan is helping ensure their place in the TCO.

"This management plan is for the future of our children," says Raquel Guagua Subera Isategua of the Yuqui community. "So they don't have to leave the community and become beggars, like others we know who don't have land."

posted by West 8:45 AM

 

Scientist: Inject CO2 Emissions Into Earth's Crust
LEICESTER, England (Reuters) -- Carbon dioxide emissions will in future have to be injected into the earth's surface if the environment is to be saved, a scientist said on Tuesday. "CO2 sequestration is one of the most powerful tools we have of reducing CO2 emissions to the atmosphere," Andy Chadwick, principal geophysicist at the British Geological Survey told reporters. "We need to bring about some quite Draconian cuts in CO2 emissions," he added on the margins of the British Association for the Advancement of Science annual festival. Chadwick said the technique of pumping carbon dioxide back into the earth in a manner that prevented it re-entering the atmosphere had been applied and perfected at the Sleipner gas field in the North Sea over the past few years. Operator, Norwegian oil company Statoil, had already injected some five million tons of carbon dioxide into a saline aquifer about one kilometer below the sea bed. Time delayed, three dimensional seismic surveys had shown the CO2 was spreading gradually through the vast subterranean reservoir where it was being contained by an impermeable cap of shale and clay. He said that even if only one percent of the aquifer's storage volume was used to store carbon dioxide it would represent one year's output of CO2 from the equivalent of 900 coal-fired or 2,300 gas-fired 500 megawatt power stations. Chadwick said the technique did involve a cost which would obviously rise in the case of a power station and where no suitable geological structure was in the immediate vicinity. "It is expensive at the moment, but a lot of research is being done to find out how to reduce the costs," he said, suggesting that exhausted oil and gas fields might provide useful storage areas. He also acknowledged that CO2 sequestration was by its nature only an intermediate measure to help save the environment from the poisonous emission of greenhouse gases while renewable energy sources were developed. "Carbon sequestration is viewed as an interim measure for the next 50-60 years to effect the major cuts we need to achieve," Chadwick said.

posted by West 10:12 AM

 

Seasons 'becoming muddled'
BBC -- British seasons are becoming increasingly muddled, say conservationists. Spring was three weeks early this year and autumn is likely to be late. The call of the first cuckoo was five days premature while autumn leaves should fall a week or so late. The Woodland Trust says higher than average temperatures from January to April are to blame, and points the finger at climate change. It will have serious consequences for animals, insects and trees, says the charity. The study was carried out in collaboration with the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) in Monks Wood, Cambridgeshire.

posted by West 9:25 AM

 

Earth Summit Rejects 'Green' Energy Targets
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (Reuters) - Energy proved to be the most contentious issue at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg as debate over whether to raise targets for use of "green" energy raged. The United States and oil producing countries firmly rejected demands from the European Union and nations such as Brazil, Norway, New Zealand, Iceland and Hungary to enshrine targets to boost use of renewable energy sources in the text. The deal agreed Wednesday pledged to make energy more accessible to the poor but there were no time-bound targets forcing countries to switch from the fossil fuels blamed for heating up the planet to cleaner energy such as solar or wind.

Here are some key facts about energy:

ACCESS: About two billion people, a third of the world's population, lack access to modern energy sources, including electricity or even fossil fuels. They rely on firewood or biomass -- crop residues or animal dung -- for cooking, heating and lighting. About 2.5 million women and children die every year from respiratory diseases caused by primitive cooking stoves. Many people in developing nations, especially women, spend long hours searching for firewood, reducing their chances of education and development. As the population swells, rising demand for firewood leads to deforestation.

CONSUMPTION: Fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas, are a major source of pollution and are blamed for global warming. They account for about 80 percent of total global energy consumption, down from 86 percent in 1971. Nuclear energy accounts for about seven percent while hydropower, other renewables and fuels like firewood account for about 13 percent. Per capita energy use is highest in developed nations where each person consumed the equivalent of 6.4 tons of oil per year in 1999 or 10 times as much as in developing countries. The United States is the top consumer. About 4.5 percent of the world's energy comes from modern renewable sources, up from 3.2 percent in 1971. Hydropower is the biggest such source, but large-scale schemes like dams are often controversial. Modern biomass -- burning firewood and other fuels in developing nations in more efficient cookers -- and geothermal systems are seen by some as the best hope for reducing smoke-related diseases in the short term. Wind and solar power have a big potential for growth but account for just 0.02 percent of total energy supply.

POLLUTION: Carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels accounts for 75 percent of the gases blamed for global warming. These "greenhouse gases" are linked to climate change which leads to more storms, floods and rising ocean levels. Many nations have signed the Kyoto Protocol to cut such gas emissions, but the United States has pulled out of the pact. Washington argues Kyoto will be too expensive for the U.S. economy and unfairly avoids setting emissions targets for fast growing developing nations such as China and India. South African President Thabo Mbeki said if the Chinese consumed as much oil per person as U.S. citizens, China's oil consumption would surge to 80 million barrels per day, outstripping current world production of 74 million barrels.

posted by West 9:34 AM

 

Population Explosion Largely Ignored At Earth Summit
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (Reuters) - A virtual silence on rapid world population growth at the Earth Summit reflects a change in the way governments and society view the question of how to tackle poverty and protect the planet, delegates said. The rising population was at the center of talks at the last such U.N. summit in Rio de Janeiro 10 years ago but was scarcely mentioned in the Johannesburg follow-up finishing Wednesday. Some argued the absence of debate on population showed reluctance to tackle issues, like contraception and abortion, that can pit social and religious values against human rights. But others said silence on population was a recognition that more people do not always mean more poverty. "It is widely recognized that population is rather the result of poverty and not the cause," Chee Yoke Ling of campaign group Third World Network told Reuters. The richest fifth of the world's people consume four fifths of the world's resources at present. Ling said the Johannesburg Earth Summit had chosen to focus rather on alleviating poverty through stressing access to healthcare, clean water and improved trade between countries. If these goals were achieved, the resulting improvement in prosperity would tackle population growth, she said. "The people are upgraded in the quality of life and don't have as many children." The world's population currently stands at around six billion and is growing by 77 million people a year, most of them in the world's poorest countries. It is expected to reach nine billion by 2050, compared to 2.5 billion in 1950. Others stressed that poverty alleviation and population growth had to be tackled hand-in-hand. "We cannot reduce poverty and protect natural resources without addressing population issues," Kunio Waki, deputy executive director of the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), told a session during the 10-day summit. UNFPA spokesman William Ryan told Reuters Wednesday that while the organization believed more could have been said on population growth at the summit, the fact it endorsed previous agreements on human rights was encouraging. "It would have been helpful if there had been a more explicit acknowledgement of population...but I think the message was still strong," he said after a dispute on women's rights, seen by UNFPA as key for easing poverty and population growth. The dispute threatened plans for an agreement over the summit action plan late Tuesday as countries wrangled over a proposal campaigners said pitted cultural and religious practices like female circumcision against abortion rights. Women's groups argued that without a specific reference that linked human rights and healthcare, which was finally accepted, women would be prevented from making crucial choices about their rights to contraception and reproduction. Waki said overall fertility rates have dropped by one half in the developing world since 1969, when UNFPA began, because of moves toward recognizing women equality in society. "The last two generations of women have chosen to have smaller families, and the next will do the same if they have access to education, health services and family planning, and if they are confident the children they do have will survive."

posted by West 9:30 AM

 

Powell Jeered as Earth Summit Settles Pact
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (Reuters) - Protesters jeered Secretary of State Colin Powell on the Earth Summit's final day Wednesday, accusing Washington of blocking meaningful action in a blueprint to help the poor and save the planet. Many governments gave a muted welcome to the summit plan meant to attack global problems from AIDS to depleted fish stocks, which was agreed in overnight talks by almost 200 states at the 10-day World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD). Environmentalists branded it a waste of time and a sell-out to business interests favored by President Bush, who did not attend. Even U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said that people's expectations had been too high. Hecklers chanting "Shame on Bush" twice interrupted Powell as he defended U.S. policies from criticisms the world's richest country and biggest polluter does not really care. "Betrayed by governments," read a banner held up by the protesters, most of whom appeared to be Americans.

posted by West 9:22 AM

 

U.S. sees nuclear as renewable energy
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, Sept. 2 (UPI) -- The U.S. delegation has managed to indirectly include nuclear power into a text promoting renewable energy at the U.N. sustainable development conference, further drawing the ire of environmental groups. Remi Parmentier, head of Greenpeace, on Monday called the move absolutely outrageous, saying the language proposed would open the way to increasing nuclear power. A paragraph in the main conference negotiating text is supposed to boost solar and wind energy, but has been amended by the United States and a few oil-producing G77 countries. Brazilian delegate Suami Coelho said, "The problem with this paragraph is that it doesn't specifically exclude nuclear, it has an open-ended reference to energy technologies." A U.S. delegation spokesman said, "It is fair to say we advocate all forms of energy technologies." Some environmental non-governmental organizations say that nuclear energy is unsafe and produces waste that lasts for millennia. Others disagree, saying that fewer people die from the use of nuclear fuel than from mining coal or drilling for oil. Furthermore, pro-technology advocates say, nuclear energy does not contribute to global warming. In some countries, such as France, nuclear energy provides a majority of the electrical power, and around the world it provides about 7 percent.

posted by West 4:53 PM