Forum for the Future has published a new report the explores the potential of carbon labelling. It concludes that carbon labelling does have a role to play in moving people towards a low-carbon shopping basket, but that trying to put a label on everything isn’t the answer. It says that people don’t just want to be told that it’s up to them to choose the right products - they want government and retailers to act too, by taking the most environmentally damaging products off the shelves. You can download the report here: http://www.forumforthefuture.org.uk/blog/check-out-carbon

The European Green week 2008 is coming up in Brussels from June 3 to June 6 2008.

This year, Greenweek 2008 will take a closer look at the sustainable use of natural resources, focusing on waste management, sustainable consumption and production.

A long list of experts on all concerned aspects of sustainable living are coming to Brussels. Don’t miss it !

Further information can be found on http://ec.europa.eu/environment/greenweek/home.html

Flemish minister Van Brempt reacted to continuing reports on the environmental impact of biofuels. She announced that the use of biofuels on Flemish busses will be stopped immediately. Here the climate effect was not the issue, but the sustainability of the biofuel production.

This is not the first time a broader view on sustainability halts new bio-energy projects. Recently two permits for new palmoil electricity plants in Antwerp have been refused. The reasons were again that the palm plantations and the oil production were not sustainable.

This positive evolution ensures that biofuel projects in Belgium do not cause disasters somewhere else.

However, it seems like small disasters can happen closer to home with biofuel. Reports from the UK mention bacteria which love tanks in fuel stations. The large tanks contain deposits, dirt, water and now quantities of biofuel. This is more than enough for large cultures of bacteria to start forming. The solid parts of these cultures can clog car filters, tanks and can even cause breakdown and expensive repairs.

The UK authorities say the problem is mostly found in rural fuel outlets with only few customers. Regular cleaning of the tanks can solve this problem quite easily.

We did not hear any news on this kind of problem in Belgium, … yet.

Further information : http://www.mobielvlaanderen.be/persberichten/artikel.php?id=320

Climate change is difficult to grasp, and different ways to present the effects clearly are always good news.
Google earth collaborates now with the Met Office Hadley Centre and the British Antarctic Survey to add layers which to make Climate change more visible.

” The Met Office Hadley Centre has produced a layer which illustrates their future temperature modeling, showing an animation of temperature change over the next hundred years and its impact to particular parts of the world.

The scientists of the British Antarctic Survey have developed a layer which details how they monitor and measure the effects of climate change in Antarctica, featuring stunning images that show the retreat of the ice from this environmentally-sensitive continent.

Featured on our Google Earth Outreach Showcase, which provides more than 100 examples of KML content telling stories about our planet, are these two layersThese two KML files offer a unique distillation of informed, scientific and geographically-organized information demonstrating the commitment by the British Government to continue to carry out this important climate research and to communicate the results of the research by making this information readily accessible.”

So, have a try ! Climate Change in Our World and Climate Change in Our World, Antarctica.

A new study on the value of biodiversity is estimating the practical value of biodiversity and the cost of its destruction.

The first progress report on the economics of ecosystems and biodiversity was presented during the 9th UN Conference on Biological Diversity (COP9) in Bonn, Germany on 29 May 2008. This study was commissioned by the EU commission and the German Environmental Ministry (BMU). The study leader is Dr. Pavan Sukhdev, Head of the London”Global Market Centre” of the Deutsche Bank. The scientific contributions for the first progress report were coordinated by the German Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research (UFZ).

The cost of reduced biodiversity has been evaluated at 3.1 trillion dollars a year or 6% of overall gross national product. Dr. Heidi Wittmer, a senior researcher at UFZ who helped compile the report, spoke of her hopes for the project:

“The Stern Review changed the way we look at the economic consequences of climate change. It is our hope that the TEEB Report will do the same for biodiversity. It is becoming clear that stopping the extinction of species is not merely a romantic notion, but is actually crucial for human survival.”

To be followed for sure.

More info can be found here, here or here.

Overcoming barriers and unlocking actions to tackle climate change is a real challenge. Making carbon visible is one way amongst others.

The Vulcan Project is a NASA/DOE funded effort under the North American Carbon Program (NACP)to quantify North American fossil fuel carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions at space and time scales much finer than has been achieved in the past. The detail and scope of the Vulcan CO₂ inventory has made it a valuable tool for policymakers, demographers and social scientists.

Like a heart pulsation, this animation shows the intensity of carbon emissions over a year. Worth seeing!

In the last decade, climate change has gradually turned into a major topic in the media as well as one of the most cited concerns of the European citizens. Fuelled in the public perception by a number of disastrous weather events such as the 2003 heat wave, the Katrina hurricane or the exceptional 2007 fire season in Greece, global warming is to become the after scene for human activities throughout the XXIst century.

Furthermore, the last two years have yielded a new level of awareness, thanks to the near simultaneous dissemination of the “Stern report”, the 4th Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report and Al Gore’s movie. As symbolised by the latest Peace Nobel Prize and the active preparation of the post-Koto process, this sense of urgency has also invaded the agendas of political and business decision makers alike.

Strongly connected to climate evolution through the various reactions of vineyards themselves, the wine industry has been in the forefront of this movement looking at climate change as a major issue to be tackled. Symposia on this topic are now flourishing, and occurred in 2007 from Dijon to Auckland, from Zaragoza to Chicago. The “2008 season” will be launched in January by Al Gore himself in Madrid at the “II World Meeting on Climate Change & Wine”.

How climate change affects and will affect vineyards

Wine is the canary in the climate-change coal mine, according to climatologists. Even slight changes can wreak havoc on high-quality wine, making it particularly vulnerable to global warming. This reactivity of grapevine to climate variability was studied before anthropogenic climate change appeared at the agenda. Historical data from 1350 to now were analyzed by Leroy Ladurie & his collegues, illustrating the sensitivity of vineyard production and quality related to climate, providing an exceptional background to the most recent studies.

As stated in the latest IPCC report, the world mean temperature has risen by 0.6°C since 1860. The XXth century was most probably the hottest century of the millennium, while 1990-2000 was its warmest decade. This continuous increase of temperature is still on its way and developed a whole range of effects on vineyards across the world, readily noticed and studied by the vintners.

The most impacted vineyards so far are the ones already initially in the warmest places like around the Mediterranean Sea in Europe, and California, South Africa and Australia for the rest of the world. High temperatures linked to soil erosion and an increasing lack of precipitation induce sugar and alcohol excess, if not “grilled” grapes leading to a decrease of the production. This has recently led French wine regulators to approve the use of vineyard irrigation, reversing centuries of tradition to rescue regions suddenly too hot for dry farming. In South Africa, winter temperatures can be so mild that the vegetative cycle has to be stopped by chemical treatments to obtain the needed dormancy.

Throughout the world, the excess CO2 concentration has led to very/too prolific grapevines, to a modification if not an extended distribution of some microbial pest and their vector insects, while the rise in temperature induced a 15 to 30 days advancing of the harvest dates (hence a difficulty to hire harvesters in some cases !).

If some places are slowly becoming unsuitable for vineyards, others are opening up. Pr Gregory Jones from Southern Oregon University, one of the leading experts of climate change and vineyard, demonstrated a displacement of 80 to 250 km pole wards of the favourable regions since 1950. Vineyards are coming back to Belgium, Holland, England, Denmark and Sweden and are also heading North in the US and Canada.

On the other hand, weather also influences the chemical composition of the fruits, hence the wine quality. This quality has been shown to rise with temperature until a specific threshold is reached, after which the quality goes down again. If the last decade witnessed a number of places, like the Bordeaux region, to increase the number of very good years, the continuous rise in temperature expected from now to 2050 should bring most of the world actual vineyards across this threshold.

Of course adaptations are possible, and experienced via a number of viticultural practices mixed with switches to varieties more adapted to the new climate. But some scientists warn that if the IPCC worst case scenario of an additional 4°C rise from now to 2100 was to happen, it would severely compress the time and investment needed to adapt and develop new varieties.

The wine industry’s reaction

All these existing and expected consequences of climate change on vineyards have led the whole sector to question on its own responsibility in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. Amongst the main sources is the use of biocide, fertilizers and mechanised equipments for growing the grapes, but also the wine fermentation process, and most of all, wine transportation and packaging. A first batch of studies allowed putting global figures, and as an example, the wine industry was shown to account for the quarter of the 1.5% of the 670 million tonnes of the UK’s annual greenhouse gas emissions produced by the alcohol industry.

Another study has calculated an average of 2 kg of CO2 per litre of wine, hence global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from wine production and distribution are 5,336,600 tons in 2001, representing as much as 0.08 percent of global GHG produced by human activities. Although it looks like a small percentage, it is equivalent to the fossil fuel combustion emissions of roughly 1,000,000 passenger vehicles over a year.

Measures to reduce these emissions are as numerous as the sources, and are already intensively explored by some regions like the Champagne, which has the objective to reduce them by 20 to 30% in the next 10 years. In Spain, Torres is replacing cars for his 115-member sales force with hybrid vehicles and installing photovoltaic panels to generate heat and 670 kilowatts of electricity. The panels fill 11 percent of the power needs at the main site in Pacs. A group of seven wine trade companies from Ireland and UK have commissioned the building of two sailing ships to carry sustainably their Bordeaux wine with a minimum carbon footprint.

The spectrum of potential measures is wide and includes for example avoiding the conversion of forests or productive farmland to vineyards, minimizing agrichemical use, maximizing water efficiency, improving the efficiency of winery operation, using renewable energy and biofuels, procuring recycled-content bottles, manufactured regionally, reducing shipping distance and select the most efficient mode possible, which means not shipping by air. Finally, once all economically feasible carbon emissions mitigation measures have been put in place, it is also possible now to purchase certified carbon offsets for all remaining activities.

Two recent papers highlight the old debate between lawmakers favoring a Cap & Trade system and economists preferring a Carbon Tax. This divide is now exacerbated by the fact that the international community need to clarify its position on the post-Kyoto commitments (after 2012).

• N. Gregory Mankiw, One Answer to Global Warming: A New Tax, NY Times, 9/16, 2007
• Solomon, Deborah, Climate Change’s Great Divide, Wall Street Journal, September 12, 2007

The Northwest Passage is the sea route through the Arctic Ocean along the northern coast of North America, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. It is now open for increasing periods of time, making it attractive as a major shipping route.

Sea ice plays a key role in the global climate system of our planet. It reflects the sun’s energy very effectively so, as it melts, more energy is absorbed at the earth’s surface. Global warming is happening and quicker than scientists previously thought. Moreover, the decline of seasonal sea ice is putting the survival of Arctic species such as ringed seals and polar bears at high risk of extinction.

More info:

1. Satellites witness lowest Arctic ice coverage in history (ESA)
2. Northwest Passage Nearly Open (NASA - August 22)
3. Northwest Passage Nearly Open (NASA - August 29)
4. North-West Passage (Wikipedia)

99% of threatened species are at risk from human activities said a new report from the World Conservation Union (IUCN). Life on Earth is disappearing fast and will continue to do so unless urgent action is taken, according to the 2007 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

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There are now 41,415 species on the IUCN Red List and 16,306 of them are threatened with extinction, up from 16,118 last year. The total number of extinct species has reached 785 and a further 65 are only found in captivity or in cultivation.One in four mammals, one in eight birds, one third of all amphibians and 70% of the world’s assessed plants on the 2007 IUCN Red List are in jeopardy.

Julia Marton-Lefèvre, Director General of the World Conservation Union (IUCN), said: “This year’s IUCN Red List shows that the invaluable efforts made so far to protect species are not enough. The rate of biodiversity loss is increasing and we need to act now to significantly reduce it and stave off this global extinction crisis. This can be done, but only with a concerted effort by all levels of society.”

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is widely recognized as the most reliable evaluation of the world’s species. It classifies them according to their extinction risk and brings into sharp focus the ongoing decline of the world’s biodiversity and the impact that mankind is having upon life on Earth.

Jane Smart, Head of IUCN’s Species Programme, said: “We need to know the precise status of species in order to take the appropriate action. The IUCN Red List does this by measuring the overall status of biodiversity, the rate at which it is being lost and the causes of decline.

“Our lives are inextricably linked with biodiversity and ultimately its protection is essential for our very survival. As the world begins to respond to the current crisis of biodiversity loss, the information from the IUCN Red List is needed to design and implement effective conservation strategies – for the benefit of people and nature.”

More info :

1. Full press release “Extinction crisis escalates: Red List shows apes, corals, vultures, dolphins all in danger“, IUCN, September 12, 2007.
2. Biodiversity benefits (Wikipedia)