In her resignation letter to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Silva omitted specific reasons for her departure. She described her decision as "personal and irrevocable," according to media reports.

Days before Silva resigned, Brazil announced its new sustainable development plan for the Amazon. The plan emphasized the country's right to develop its Amazon resources and for the most part failed to address key issues that Silva has advocated, such as incentives for sustainable forestry or sustainable farming. Brazilian media reports suggest Silva was frustrated that the ministry of strategic planning was selected to oversee the development plan, instead of the environment ministry.

The international environmental community has expressed sadness over the news of Silva's resignation. She is widely considered to be the most influential environment minister in Brazilian history. Her departure is said to be a victory for the agricultural and livestock industries, which opposed her efforts to create national anti-deforestation measures in the Amazon and elsewhere.

"She was key in the doubling of the Amazon protected area network, and she will go down in history as one of the most courageous leaders in the fight against corruption and illegal activities in rainforest regions," said Daniel Nepstad, a Brazil-based ecologist with the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts. "I am deeply saddened by her resignation."

Similar sentiments are being expressed from Brazilians. "Marina was the best minister that we had," said Paulo Moutinho, scientific coordinator of the Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia (IPAM). "Her conviction about the necessity to establish sustainable development in Brazil is unswerving."

Silva retains a position as senator in Brazil's legislature, where she may have greater freedom to criticize the Lula government.

Silva is often considered emblematic of her native home, the Amazon. In the early 1980s, she and fellow rubber-tapper Chico Mendes founded empates, a non-violent grassroots movement against deforestation. Undaunted by Mendes' assassination in 1988 or her many illnesses, including heavy metal contamination, Silva was the first rubber tapper elected to Brazil's federal senate in 1994. When Lula became president in 2002, Silva was one of his first political appointees.

Despite her popularity, Silva has been largely unsuccessful in her political battles with Lula. The president ignored her opposition to two large hydroelectric projects on the Amazon River's largest tributary, the Madeira River. Her efforts to oppose the expansion of BR-163, the so-called "soy highway" that cuts through the Amazon, were to no avail. And after Silva called for a ban against the planting and exportation of genetically modified crops, the ban was later lifted. By allowing the government to relax laws concerning infrastructure licenses, Silva "sets a dangerous precedent," said Roberto Smeraldi, director of Friends of the Earth, Amazonia.

Yet Silva's stances have resulted in several important concessions, such as more-stringent hydroelectricity policies and sustainable development zones that buffer the BR-163 corridor. "Her influence has been to keep those issues in the forefront by arguing the case very cogently and with a lot of authority," said Tim Hirsch, a Brazil-based freelance journalist who authored a recent story on Amazon protection in World Watch magazine. "The profile of environmental policies within the Lula administration is higher than it would have otherwise been."

Brazilian society has become cautious of allowing international interests determine how the country should manage its Amazon resources. Yet Silva has often sided in favor of the wider environmental community to advocate forest conservation and greater action to address climate change. 

Her replacement, Carlos Minc, is an environmental advocate from Rio de Janeiro who helped found Brazil's Green Party. He is generally respected within the environmental community, and some are welcoming a minister who is not solely focused on Amazonian issues. "The huge challenge for him is to convince people both inside and outside Brazil that he can have the same influence on policy that Marina Silva did," Hirsch said.

Staff writer Ben Block covers everything environmental with the Worldwatch Institute. He can be reached at bblock@worldwatch.org.

Highlighting the connections between lagging employment and the need to address climate change has become a favorite talking point in the U.S. environmental and labor rights communities. It's the common denominator that can uplift the working poor, provide incentive to the corporate rich, and still address the growing threat of catastrophic climate change, they say. Especially as economic markets stumble in the United States and across the world, many activists say that promoting green jobs is the only way to reach an effective international climate agreement.

According to some estimates, including those of former World Bank-economist Sir Nicholas Stern, a "business-as-usual" approach to climate change would damage the global economy more than the adoption of hard-hitting policies to reduce emissions. Plus, such policies would stimulate green jobs, "well-paid, career track jobs that contribute directly to preserving or enhancing environmental quality," according to the Apollo Alliance, a U.S. coalition of business, labor, environmental, and community leaders. More specifically, green jobs are positions in the emerging renewable energy, energy efficiency, and other "green economy" industries.

Although activists have long discussed the potential of green jobs, political leaders have begun to take notice only in the past year or so. U.S. presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and European Commission president José Manuel Barroso, have all promised policies that would create "millions" of green jobs. In December, the United States passed the world's first law that provides funding for green jobs, specifically targeted to citizens who are traditionally economically depressed, such as the unemployed, formerly incarcerated, and at-risk youth.

The trade union advisory committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a body representing industrialized nations, responded to the G8 address by calling for greater international collaboration. "Employment transition and ‘green job' promotion should become an integral part of intergovernmental agencies' action," the committee said in a prepared statement. Already, the United Nations Environment Programme, International Trade Union Confederation, and the International Labor Organization are collaborating on an unprecedented green jobs initiative.

In the past few months, several U.S. non-governmental organizations have also joined forces in the interest of green jobs. Van Jones' organization, Green For All, launched in September. In January, two-dozen environmental and minority groups formed a unified voice to lobby the federal government for a "Clean Energy Corps." And in April, the Blue-Green Alliance - a hybrid of the United Steelworkers and the Sierra Club - created a new campaign working in conjunction with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

"There's no shortage of advocacy, even from government itself. It's not just citizen groups," said Andrea Peart, a national representative of the Canadian Labour Congress, which launched its own green jobs report this week.

Without green jobs advocacy, hope for a climate change agreement will be lost, says Blue-Green Alliance executive director David Foster. "It's critical that the American people see economic opportunity coming out of global warming solutions," he said. "If they don't, it will be extremely difficult to pass effective global warming legislation."

Exactly how many jobs a green economic overhaul would create, or whether many of these jobs are any more lucrative than traditional income sources, remains widely disputed. But many proponents agree that the drive for green jobs has generated a collective enthusiasm that has long been lacking in the climate change movement.

Ben Block is a staff writer with the Worldwatch Institute's online news service, Eye on Earth. He can be reached at bblock@worldwatch.org.

Stay tuned! Worldwatch senior researcher Michael Renner, in collaboration with Cornell University researchers, will release the upcoming report, Green Jobs: Toward Sustainable Work in a Low-Carbon World, later this fall. The report is a joint effort of the United Nations Environment Programme, International Trade Union Confederation, and International Labour Organization.

But a new regulation from the nation's water authority may hold the key to achieving water sustainability in this thirsty country. The Interim Measure for Water Quantity Allocation, which came into effect on February 1, provides a framework for allocating water rights across provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities that are under the direct jurisdiction of the central government. The ruling's 17 stipulations lay out the principles, mechanisms, and practices for water allocation, potentially opening Chinese markets for water trading and enabling the use of market tools to promote conservation.

The need for better delineation of water rights in China has become increasingly urgent. Water demands within shared river basins are frequently at conflict due to industrial expansion and urbanization. During a drought in 2006, Chongqing municipality in western China saw a dramatic decline in flows from the Jialing River, the city's main water source, despite the fact that the river's upper reaches had received plenty of rain. The shortage was triggered by the more than 50 dams upstream from the city, which had retained the water for power generation. Such competing claims are prevalent in nearly all of China's major river basins.

As water demands keep rising, water waste remains pervasive due to the current "open-access" nature of China's water resources. According to statistics, in 2003 China's utilization coefficient for agricultural irrigation water was only 0.4-0.5, compared to 0.7-0.8 in industrial countries. Water use per unit of gross domestic product was as high as 413 cubic meters, four times the world average, while water use per value added of industry was 218 cubic meters, 5 to 10 times the level in industrial countries. China's industrial water-recycling rate was only 50 percent，compared to 85 percent in industrial countries.

The traditional practices of promoting conservation through education, moral suasion, and technological innovation are no longer able to keep up with China's rising water demand. By allocating water rights and introducing market-based tools, the new regulation may accelerate progress toward water saving, protection, and pollution control.

The regulation is a response to several successful trial efforts over the past eight years. In 2000, China saw its first case of water trading between Dongyang City and Yiwu City in Zhejiang province, with the latter buying some 50 million cubic meters of water annually from the former at a price of 4 RMB (US$0.57) per cubic meter. The pact resulted in a win-win situation in early 2005, following a serious drought in Yiwu City. Yiwu avoided the significant cost of having to build its own reservoirs, while Dongyang received funds for maintaining its existing reservoirs and water infrastructure.  

Since then, China has launched trial projects in several regions, including Ningxia, Inner Mongolia, and Ganxu in the northwest; Jiangxi and Chongqing in the west; Shanxi in the middle region; and watersheds covering Beijing and Hebei. The projects are either local initiatives spurred by acute water crises, or efforts by the central government to promote water savings.

The success of these projects has given policymakers confidence to explore bolder national schemes, resulting in the recent water-rights regulation. If effectively enforced, the ruling could be as significant as China's widespread land reforms in the 1950s, which freed up rural labor and made it possible to feed the nation's 1.3 billion people. Although much implementation work remains to be done, the regulation is a bold first step toward sound water management in China.

Yingling Liu is manager of the China Program at the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington-D.C. based environmental research organization.

It's time to reduce the incentives for food-based biofuels and accelerate the transition to more sustainable alternatives - the so-called "next-generation" cellulosic technologies, which are expected to become viable in the coming years.

In some ways, U.S. biofuels policy has been a stunning success. Production of fuel ethanol soared to nearly 7 billion gallons in 2007 - double the level in 2003. This has pushed the United States ahead of Brazil, which pioneered the fuel ethanol industry in the 1980s. The price of corn has meanwhile nearly tripled to over $6 per bushel, fostering an economic renaissance in the U.S. grain belt and creating thousands of new jobs.

But this is just the beginning. The Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS), signed into law in December 2007, requires that biofuels production be raised to 36 billion gallons in 2022. And while it is laudable that 21 billion gallons of that requirement are set aside for advanced biofuels not based on food crops, this would still imply a doubling in current production of corn-based ethanol, which would require fully half of today's annual corn crop.

Increasing biofuels production so dramatically presents an array of environmental risks, including increased nitrogen runoff and the loss of biodiversity as lands are cleared for biofuel crops. And recent studies indicate that corn-based ethanol could actually produce more carbon dioxide emissions than gasoline-due to the oil and coal needed to produce corn and convert it to ethanol and to the fact that as U.S. cropland is planted in biofuel crops, pressures will grow to convert forests and grasslands elsewhere, releasing large amounts of carbon dioxide.

It is time to reform the large federal subsidies to biofuels. With the price of oil now over $120 a barrel, the generous tax subsidy is no longer needed - it is mainly benefiting the oil companies that receive the subsidy in return for blending ethanol with gasoline. Congress should phase out the tax subsidy for corn-based ethanol and retain it only for advanced biofuels that reduce emissions of carbon dioxide to less than half the emissions from gasoline. 

It is also time to relax the renewable fuel standard, slowing the pace of growth of the industry while technologies are developed that will allow biofuels to be produced from agricultural and forestry wastes-eliminating the competition with food and reducing the greenhouse impact of those fuels. And the share that must come from cellulosic biofuels should be increased.

Achieving these changes will not be easy. Biofuels have become the "golden child" of U.S. energy politics, highly popular with conservative and progressive politicians alike. But if biofuel policies are not reformed soon, the growing impact on food prices and the environment will spur a reaction that may prove the industry's undoing.

That would be a shame. The United States desperately needs to diversify its fuel supplies and reduce its dependence on oil. Advanced biofuels technologies could one day be an important part of a low-carbon energy economy, but only if they are developed in a deliberate and responsible way.

Christopher Flavin is president of the Worldwatch Institute, an environmental research organization based in Washington, D.C.

This entry was originally posted to the Island Press blog, Island Interactive, at www.islandpress.org/blog. Robert will post periodic updates on population as he promotes his new book, More: Population, Nature, and What Women Want.

Last Saturday evening my wife and I took our terminally ill cat to an animal hospital, where a veterinarian put him peacefully to sleep as he sat on my lap. I wasn't really a cat lover when we adopted him seven years ago, but this unusually affectionate and communicative kitty cat converted me. I'm surprised how much I'm grieving for the loss of him.

Years before Toby came into my life I wrote a story for newspapers about domestic felines as deadly hunters of migratory songbirds. Several bird species, such as the Cerulean Warbler, are becoming vulnerable to extinction as their tropical-forest habitat disappears. A comparable threat on the other end of their migration is the predatory nature of pet cats, which by scientists' estimates kill hundreds of millions of small animals every year.

So how do I square my concern about animal-killing cats with the affection I feel for one late individual of the species? Shouldn't I be blaming cats for killing songbirds and threatening the survival of species not only of birds but of small mammals, amphibians, and reptiles?

Of course not. Cats do what evolution has programmed them to do. What has gone awry is not cats' wants, which are natural, but their numbers, which are not. Nature is usually balanced in ways that make extinction a rare event - unless mortality levels reach levels that tilt the balance dangerously. That's what has happened with pet cats. The United States alone is home to some 90 million. Most of them spend some time outdoors, and many of them kill. There never could be anywhere near this many domestic cats, obviously, if there weren't even more human beings to care for them, just as my family did ours.

It's a pint-sized example of a point I make in More: Population, Nature, and What Women Want. Environmental unsustainability tends to have much more to do with scale than with any essential aspect of our behavior. Cats aren't bad because they kill birds; they're just cats. But there are so many of them, and with cats, just as with humans, numbers matter. (In an endnote to Chapter 10, I note geographer Vaclav Smil's estimate that livestock weigh 20 times as much as all the planet's wild animals. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a similar comparison between companion and wild animals.)  

Since no one would seek a sudden reduction in the population of people - or of their pets - we often focus on modifying individual behavior to reduce environmental risks. In this case, the most important step the world's hundreds of millions of cat owners can take to protect small animals is to keep their cats indoors. Fortunately for me, Toby had no interest in wandering outside, so he never killed anything bigger than the occasional bug that crawled past him on the floor. Our house was his whole world, which is why it feels so empty and sad as I write this post at home.

Surin Pitsuwan, secretary-general of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), mentioned in an address in Singapore that expanding coastal populations and widespread mangrove degradation played key roles in worsening the cyclone's impact. Much of the damage from the cyclone was caused by storm surge, powerful waves whipped up by the high winds.

"The mangrove forests, which used to serve as buffer between the rising tide, between big waves and storms and the residential area... all those lands have been destroyed," Agence France-Presse reported him saying. "Human beings are now direct victims of such natural forces."

Mangrove forests, salt-tolerant trees and shrubs found mainly in intertidal areas of the tropics, provide critical breeding grounds and habitat for many plants and animals, including several high-value fish species. Ever since the 2005 Indian Ocean tsunami that devastated parts of Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Thailand, mangroves have received greater attention for their potential role in protecting coastlines against storm surges. But their role as coastal guardians - including in places like the Irrawaddy Delta - is still disputed within the scientific community.

Of the 100,000 people who Myanmar officials say have perished or face imminent death if they do not receive humanitarian aid in the wake of the May 2 cyclone, many had lived in areas once covered with mangrove forests. Myanmar is home to some of the largest remaining forested areas in Southeast Asia. However, the government junta often encourages citizens to convert mangrove forests into shrimp aquaculture facilities or rice fields. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that Myanmar lost about 9 percent of its mangrove forests - 48,500 hectares - between 1980 and 2005.

Mangrove roots hold together the shifting silt and other debris that flows down a delta and shapes coastal landscapes. By deterring erosion, mangroves prevent the debris from washing inland and damaging agricultural land. "It's pretty...clear, looking around the world, that it is generally accepted that mangroves help stop erosion and protect coastland," said Mark Spalding, a senior marine scientist with The Nature Conservancy.

Mangrove branches and roots may also reduce the surging energy of a massive storm wave as it approaches inland. "There are lots of structures that add friction to the movement of water through this fringing mangrove forest," said Ivan Valiela, a marine biologist with the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

But to effectively study the role of mangroves in slowing wave action, researchers need to compare a severely damaged mangrove coast with a similar mangrove coast that was not heavily affected. This has proven to be a major limitation and has prevented scientific consensus, said Valiela, editor of the journal Estuarine, Coastal, and Shelf Science.

Finn Danielsen, a senior ecologist with the Nordic Agency for Development and Ecology who researched the protective power of mangroves during the Asian tsunami, said computer simulations have accurately measured the effect of mangroves. "There is no doubt that mangroves could have absorbed some of the energy of Hurricane Nargis," he said. "It is true that other factors also play a role, but this does not mean that the role of coastal tree vegetation is smaller."

Tom Smith, a research ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, considers himself one of the world's few researchers who challenges whether mangroves affect a wave's forces. Data on the subject is "scant and meager," Smith said. He considers studies that have relied upon computer simulations, satellite imagery, and field studies to be flawed.

Smith concedes that many researchers are uncomfortable with his conclusions, due to concerns that this may slow the momentum of ongoing mangrove conservation efforts. But, he said, more emphasis should instead be placed on relocating people farther inland, which would protect them from dangerous oceanic storms and also help preserve mangrove forests.

According to the United Nations, nearly half of the world's population lives within 150 kilometers of a coast, and more are projected to move there in coming years due to population growth and tourism. Myanmar is no exception to this trend. The recent cyclone flooded the city of Yangôn, home to more than 4 million people, as well as several other cities of between 100,000 and 500,000 people. "Poorly constructed homes in low-lying, incredibly exposed areas... It's just set-up for this sort of disaster," Smith said.

Ben Block is a staff writer with the Worldwatch Institute who covers everything environmental for Eye on Earth. He can be reached at bblock@worldwatch.org.

Channel 4 is to broadcast The 11th Hour, the polemical documentary about the environment fronted by Leonardo DiCaprio.

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A study sponsored by the US Department of Energy, and overseen by a board of outside advisers from the wind power industry, projects that it is possible to expand the average national output of wind generated electricity from the present 1.0+%- to the 20%-level over the next 22 years: an order of magnitude more wind power in the USA, in two decades.

The study presumes that demand for electricity will continue to grow throughout the period of projection. Imagine what the percentage would be under a scenario of reduced demand growth!

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espiritualidad activa

There is a great website and here is the direct link to the CO2 calculator http://www.americanforests.org/campaigns/shaklee/

You can calculate how much CO2 you have put out and help take it in by planting trees. I am planning on when I get my first job and first paycheck to donate enough money to plant enough trees to offset my footprint caused by the vehicle my mother and I have had for awhile. It doesn't cost a lot either which is good. Every small action adds up!

Also, www.gaiam.com has a tree donating program to help offset the CO2 of shipping when you buy from them or you can just simply donate without ordering anything.

• By David Adam
  The Guardian - UK, May 12, 2008
  Straight to the Source
  
  

from Common Dreams
The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has reached a record high, according to new figures that renew fears that climate change could begin to slide out of control. Scientists at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii say that CO2 levels in the atmosphere now stand at 387 parts per million (ppm), up almost 40% since the industrial revolution and the highest for at least the last 650,000 years.

The figures, published by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on its website, also confirm that carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas, is accumulating in the atmosphere faster than expected. The annual mean growth rate for 2007 was 2.14ppm - the fourth year in the past six to see an annual rise greater than 2ppm. From 1970 to 2000, the concentration rose by about 1.5ppm each year, but since 2000 the annual rise has leapt to an average 2.1ppm.

Scientists say the shift could indicate that the Earth is losing its natural ability to soak up billions of tons of carbon each year. Climate models assume that about half our future emissions will be re-absorbed by forests and oceans, but the new figures confirm this may be too optimistic. If more of our carbon pollution stays in the atmosphere, it means emissions will have to be cut by more than currently projected to prevent dangerous levels of global warming.

Martin Parry, co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's working group on impacts, said: "Despite all the talk, the situation is getting worse. Levels of greenhouse gases continue to rise in the atmosphere and the rate of that rise is accelerating. We are already seeing the impacts of climate change and the scale of those impacts will also accelerate, until we decide to do something about it."

© 2008 The Guardian

            William Kamkwamba

Can films change the world? No, films can’t change the world. But the people who watch them can. 


What is Pangea Day?
Pangea Day was the world’s largest global film event that took place on May 10, 2008. The cities of Cairo, Kigali, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai, and Rio de Janeiro were all linked to produce a live 4-hour program of powerful films, visionary speakers, and uplifting music.

Pangea Day was created as a worldwide cinema event with programming that highlighted the themes of unity, the common ties that bind us into a global culture. In a world where people are often divided, it's easy to lose sight of what we all have in common. Pangea Day seeks to overcome that - to help people see themselves in others - through the power of film. Pangea Day taps the power of film to strengthen tolerance and compassion, uniting millions of people to build a better future. The goal is to invite the viewers of these films to join a global conversation about the issues that affect us all.

Pangea refers to the supercontinent from which all current continents eventually separated. It serves as a reminder of the "connectedness" or unitary nature of all people on Planet Earth.


I only got to watch a little over an hour of Pangea Day live on May 10th, and I have been watching the rest of the films and speakers a little each day. If you want to treat yourself to something special then take the time to watch this inspiring event on the internet.

If you only have time to watch one film, then watch the award winning and very inspiring film Moving Windmills. This is a very short film about a 14 year old boy, William Kamkwamba who lives in a remote rural village in Malawi where they have no electricity. William saw a picture of a windmill in a textbook and decided to build one to power his family's home. Using found materials and scrap yard parts such as a broken bicycle, tractor fan, melted plastic pipes, bamboo and used copper wires, he built a series of windmills which would change his and his family's life.

You can watch the full Pagean Day program HERE, or just watch the films HERE.

ABC News takes a look inside the Panea Day Festival.

Enjoy!  Be Inspired!  Be Enlightened!