From the New York Times
The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.
The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.
An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys.
The vast scale of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth was discovered by a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists. The Afghan government and President Hamid Karzai were recently briefed, American officials said.
While it could take many years to develop a mining industry, the potential is so great that officials and executives in the industry believe it could attract heavy investment even before mines are profitable, providing the possibility of jobs that could distract from generations of war.
“There is stunning potential here,” Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the United States Central Command, said in an interview on Saturday. “There are a lot of ifs, of course, but I think potentially it is hugely significant.”
The value of the newly discovered mineral deposits dwarfs the size of Afghanistan’s existing war-bedraggled economy, which is based largely on opium production and narcotics trafficking as well as aid from the United States and other industrialized countries. Afghanistan’s gross domestic product is only about $12 billion.
“This will become the backbone of the Afghan economy,” said Jalil Jumriany, an adviser to the Afghan minister of mines....
Endless fights could erupt between the central government in Kabul and provincial and tribal leaders in mineral-rich districts. Afghanistan has a national mining law, written with the help of advisers from the World Bank, but it has never faced a serious challenge.
“No one has tested that law; no one knows how it will stand up in a fight between the central government and the provinces,” observed Paul A. Brinkley, deputy undersecretary of defense for business and leader of the Pentagon team that discovered the deposits.
Another complication is that because Afghanistan has never had much heavy industry before, it has little or no history of environmental protection either. “The big question is, can this be developed in a responsible way, in a way that is environmentally and socially responsible?” Mr. Brinkley said. “No one knows how this will work.”
...the Pentagon business development task force brought in teams of American mining experts to validate the survey’s findings, and then briefed Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Mr. Karzai.
So far, the biggest mineral deposits discovered are of iron and copper, and the quantities are large enough to make Afghanistan a major world producer of both, United States officials said. Other finds include large deposits of niobium, a soft metal used in producing superconducting steel, rare earth elements and large gold deposits in Pashtun areas of southern Afghanistan.
Just this month, American geologists working with the Pentagon team have been conducting ground surveys on dry salt lakes in western Afghanistan where they believe there are large deposits of lithium. Pentagon officials said that their initial analysis at one location in Ghazni Province showed the potential for lithium deposits as large of those of Bolivia, which now has the world’s largest known lithium reserves.
For the geologists who are now scouring some of the most remote stretches of Afghanistan to complete the technical studies necessary before the international bidding process is begun, there is a growing sense that they are in the midst of one of the great discoveries of their careers.
“On the ground, it’s very, very, promising,” Mr. Medlin said. “Actually, it’s pretty amazing.”
Showing posts with label resources. Show all posts
Showing posts with label resources. Show all posts
Monday, June 14, 2010
Friday, February 06, 2009
Good News (undoing Bush)
What with torture being stopped, Guantanamo scheduled to be closed, Family Planning info and funding being released, etc..... the Obama administration is off to a good start.
This Bush idea - drilling up some of the best landscapes - was completely ridiculous.
From the New York Times
Drilling Leases Scrapped in Utah
This Bush idea - drilling up some of the best landscapes - was completely ridiculous.
From the New York Times
Drilling Leases Scrapped in Utah
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Wednesday canceled leases to drill for gas and oil on 77 parcels of public land in Utah.
The leases, which cover more than 100,000 acres, including lands near Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, were auctioned in the last weeks of the Bush administration. They were among 11th-hour actions taken by the Bush Interior Department that have been criticized by environmental groups and are being reviewed by Obama officials.
In a news conference, Mr. Salazar said that after a review of the leases he concluded that the Bush administration had “rushed ahead to sell oil and gas leases at the doorstep of some of our greatest national icons, some of our nation’s most treasured landscapes” without proper scientific review or consultation.
Monday, April 21, 2008
"Running Out of Planet to Exploit"
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Nine years ago The Economist ran a big story on oil, which was then selling for $10 a barrel. The magazine warned that this might not last. Instead, it suggested, oil might well fall to $5 a barrel.
In any case, The Economist asserted, the world faced “the prospect of cheap, plentiful oil for the foreseeable future.”
Last week, oil hit $117.
It’s not just oil that has defied the complacency of a few years back. Food prices have also soared, as have the prices of basic metals. And the global surge in commodity prices is reviving a question we haven’t heard much since the 1970s: Will limited supplies of natural resources pose an obstacle to future world economic growth?
How you answer this question depends largely on what you believe is driving the rise in resource prices. Broadly speaking, there are three competing views.
The first is that it’s mainly speculation — that investors, looking for high returns at a time of low interest rates, have piled into commodity futures, driving up prices. On this view, someday soon the bubble will burst and high resource prices will go the way of Pets.com.
The second view is that soaring resource prices do, in fact, have a basis in fundamentals — especially rapidly growing demand from newly meat-eating, car-driving Chinese — but that given time we’ll drill more wells, plant more acres, and increased supply will push prices right back down again.
The third view is that the era of cheap resources is over for good — that we’re running out of oil, running out of land to expand food production and generally running out of planet to exploit.
I find myself somewhere between the second and third views...
In retrospect, the commodity boom of 1972-75 was probably the result of rapid world economic growth that outpaced supplies, combined with the effects of bad weather and Middle Eastern conflict. Eventually, the bad luck came to an end, new land was placed under cultivation, new sources of oil were found in the Gulf of Mexico and the North Sea, and resources got cheap again.
But this time may be different: concerns about what happens when an ever-growing world economy pushes up against the limits of a finite planet ring truer now than they did in the 1970s.
For one thing, I don’t expect growth in China to slow sharply anytime soon. That’s a big contrast with what happened in the 1970s, when growth in Japan and Europe, the emerging economies of the time, downshifted — and thereby took a lot of pressure off the world’s resources.
Meanwhile, resources are getting harder to find. Big oil discoveries, in particular, have become few and far between, and in the last few years oil production from new sources has been barely enough to offset declining production from established sources.
And the bad weather hitting agricultural production this time is starting to look more fundamental and permanent than El Niño and La Niña, which disrupted crops 35 years ago. Australia, in particular, is now in the 10th year of a drought that looks more and more like a long-term manifestation of climate change...
But rich countries will face steady pressure on their economies from rising resource prices, making it harder to raise their standard of living. And some poor countries will find themselves living dangerously close to the edge — or over it.
Don’t look now, but the good times may have just stopped rolling.
Monday, March 24, 2008
"We're all doomed!"
Or most people are doomed. Lovelock speaks of the coming changes. Loss of cropland, etc.
This is the beginning and the end of the article....
The weather forecast for this holiday weekend is wildly unsettled. We had better get used to it.
According to the climate change scientist James Lovelock, this is the beginning of the end of a peaceful phase in evolution.
By 2040, the world population of more than six billion will have been culled by floods, drought and famine....
The secret is to adapt as best we can - and to take the long view. The Earth is elderly, 3.5 billion years old and with another 500 million to go. The sun has another five billion years to go, before it turns into a "white dwarf" - a lump of rock.
"It is like the flashlight on a torch," explains Lovelock. "The battery will eventually run out. Everything is mortal. I would not want everlasting life for myself or for the Earth.
"We are about to take an evolutionary step and my hope is that the species will emerge stronger. It would be hubris to think humans as they now are God's chosen race."
I pretty much agree that this will probably be the case. Although I think adapting includes everyone consuming less - or at least those who have the money to consume much.
Adapting can also include renewable sources of energy, better transportation modes, etc. But I agree with Lovelock that the current number of people on the earth is not sustainable. Nor is the current mode of living except for a small number. I expect that there will always be some who live fairly well. Though food and resources will be scarce. Lifetimes will probably be shorter, etc.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Energy Shortages
Energy shortage forces Central Asians to burn dung
With no heating and just three hours of electricity a day, Malokhat Atayeva is struggling to survive the coldest winter in three decades in her small town in western Tajikistan.
"It's so cold that water turns into ice in the kettle overnight," Atayeva, a mother of two, said by telephone from Tursunzade, as temperatures outside, normally above subzero, plunged to -20 degrees Celsius.
"We sleep fully clothed, wrapped in blankets. Children stopped going to school because it's too cold in the classroom."
Like Atayeva, millions of people across energy-rich Central Asia are scrambling to find refuge from one of the harshest winters in living memory.
Extreme cold is no surprise to the 60 million people scattered across a region wedged between Russia, China and Iran, but this year's winter has exposed the poor state of crumbling Soviet-era utilities and pipelines and sparked energy shortages.
Lying on some of the world's biggest energy reserves, Central Asia has attracted billions of dollars of foreign investment as the European Union and other powers seek energy deals in the region. But the cold snap caught impoverished Tajikistan off guard, forcing the government to resort to daily rations of electricity and gas. Central heating has all but stopped working across Tajikistan, its utilities ruined by a 1990s civil war.
Governments across Central Asia have pledged to carry out urgent repairs and build new electricity generators. But there were no signs of relief as the severe weather has entered a second month.
In a snow-covered China, entire regions are without electricity and gas
China is facing its worst energy shortage in many years, with heightened demand caused by the intense cold and the snow, and insufficient coal supplies unable to keep up. After an energy shortage that has struck at least 13 provinces and reached about 70 gigawatts, approximately equal to the entire capacity of Great Britain, the government has ordered that coal be supplied first of all to the power plants.
The imposition of price controls on coal and the closing of thousands of mines not in compliance with safety regulations have affected coal supplies. The heavy snowfall of recent days has blocked the roads, cut off supply routes, and downed power lines. In seven counties, the power circuits have been completely shut down, leaving 129,000 families without power, while bad weather is hampering repair efforts. In Hubei and Anhui alone, the provinces hardest hit by the snow, the energy shortage has affected 10 million people, and more than a million hectares of crops have been destroyed, at an estimated loss of 1.83 billion yuan. In Wuhan, the capital of Hubei located on the frozen Yangtze river, there have been intermittent blackouts all week, the worst since 1997. Coal fuels 78% of the country's power plants, and produced about 83% of the energy used in 2007.
According to experts, the current coal shortage is due above all to the imposition of price controls, as the sellers watch the price of coal rise rapidly in the world and wait for the government to permit higher prices in the next few months.
In many of the provinces, like Yunnan, Guizhou, and Hubei, drought has aggravated the situation by reducing the production of hydroelectric power.
China in power shortage warning
Thirteen regions have already started to ration power supplies, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
It said coal reserves were down to emergency levels and stockpiles were only high enough to generate power for the whole country for eight days.
China's economic boom has led to surging demand for electricity...
Dark days for African mining
Namibia has become the latest southern African country to freeze all major investment projects due to an energy crisis that threatens to overshadow the region’s growing FDI prospects.
The mining industry will be among the sectors worst hit, with Namibia’s state electricity utility NamPower placing a moratorium on all new mines, saying they would have to wait until at least 2009 to get power.
NamPower has also been forced to resort to load shedding and time-of-use tariffs for electricity usage at peak times as it grapples with the energy shortage across the southern African region.
Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe this week reported power outages caused by aging infrastructure and growing demand.
The situation has been exacerbated by South African energy utility Eskom’s announcement that it would be forced to stop exporting electricity to neighbouring countries as South Africa’s own energy crisis deepened.
Eskom has also asked the government to shelve any new big industrial projects at least until 2013, when the current electricity shortage should have eased.
The utility wants both foreign and local projects requiring 1,000MW or more to be held back, but said projects already under way would go ahead.
This decision has put potential mining expansions at risk, with South Africa’s ferrochrome and platinum industry already worst hit by the blackouts.
Now NamPower’s decision threatens to further hurt mining investments in the region.
The desert country has earmarked its burgeoning uranium mining industry as a key economic growth area with the recent discovery of a major uranium resource, which could end up being one of the world’s biggest uranium deposits.
In the meantime, power outages in Zimbabwe and Zambia have also hit the mining industry.
Outages caused by a major electrical fault on the power line linking the two countries, which engineers from both sides were trying to repair, resulted in 369 miners being trapped at Zambia’s Mopani Copper Mines (MCM) and Konkola Copper Mines (KCM).
The power outages also caused partial flooding at Chililabombwe copper mine, a unit of KCM, as water could not be pumped out.
KCM has since suspended mining operations in Zambia.
With no heating and just three hours of electricity a day, Malokhat Atayeva is struggling to survive the coldest winter in three decades in her small town in western Tajikistan.
"It's so cold that water turns into ice in the kettle overnight," Atayeva, a mother of two, said by telephone from Tursunzade, as temperatures outside, normally above subzero, plunged to -20 degrees Celsius.
"We sleep fully clothed, wrapped in blankets. Children stopped going to school because it's too cold in the classroom."
Like Atayeva, millions of people across energy-rich Central Asia are scrambling to find refuge from one of the harshest winters in living memory.
Extreme cold is no surprise to the 60 million people scattered across a region wedged between Russia, China and Iran, but this year's winter has exposed the poor state of crumbling Soviet-era utilities and pipelines and sparked energy shortages.
Lying on some of the world's biggest energy reserves, Central Asia has attracted billions of dollars of foreign investment as the European Union and other powers seek energy deals in the region. But the cold snap caught impoverished Tajikistan off guard, forcing the government to resort to daily rations of electricity and gas. Central heating has all but stopped working across Tajikistan, its utilities ruined by a 1990s civil war.
Governments across Central Asia have pledged to carry out urgent repairs and build new electricity generators. But there were no signs of relief as the severe weather has entered a second month.
In a snow-covered China, entire regions are without electricity and gas
China is facing its worst energy shortage in many years, with heightened demand caused by the intense cold and the snow, and insufficient coal supplies unable to keep up. After an energy shortage that has struck at least 13 provinces and reached about 70 gigawatts, approximately equal to the entire capacity of Great Britain, the government has ordered that coal be supplied first of all to the power plants.
The imposition of price controls on coal and the closing of thousands of mines not in compliance with safety regulations have affected coal supplies. The heavy snowfall of recent days has blocked the roads, cut off supply routes, and downed power lines. In seven counties, the power circuits have been completely shut down, leaving 129,000 families without power, while bad weather is hampering repair efforts. In Hubei and Anhui alone, the provinces hardest hit by the snow, the energy shortage has affected 10 million people, and more than a million hectares of crops have been destroyed, at an estimated loss of 1.83 billion yuan. In Wuhan, the capital of Hubei located on the frozen Yangtze river, there have been intermittent blackouts all week, the worst since 1997. Coal fuels 78% of the country's power plants, and produced about 83% of the energy used in 2007.
According to experts, the current coal shortage is due above all to the imposition of price controls, as the sellers watch the price of coal rise rapidly in the world and wait for the government to permit higher prices in the next few months.
In many of the provinces, like Yunnan, Guizhou, and Hubei, drought has aggravated the situation by reducing the production of hydroelectric power.
China in power shortage warning
Thirteen regions have already started to ration power supplies, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
It said coal reserves were down to emergency levels and stockpiles were only high enough to generate power for the whole country for eight days.
China's economic boom has led to surging demand for electricity...
Dark days for African mining
Namibia has become the latest southern African country to freeze all major investment projects due to an energy crisis that threatens to overshadow the region’s growing FDI prospects.
The mining industry will be among the sectors worst hit, with Namibia’s state electricity utility NamPower placing a moratorium on all new mines, saying they would have to wait until at least 2009 to get power.
NamPower has also been forced to resort to load shedding and time-of-use tariffs for electricity usage at peak times as it grapples with the energy shortage across the southern African region.
Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe this week reported power outages caused by aging infrastructure and growing demand.
The situation has been exacerbated by South African energy utility Eskom’s announcement that it would be forced to stop exporting electricity to neighbouring countries as South Africa’s own energy crisis deepened.
Eskom has also asked the government to shelve any new big industrial projects at least until 2013, when the current electricity shortage should have eased.
The utility wants both foreign and local projects requiring 1,000MW or more to be held back, but said projects already under way would go ahead.
This decision has put potential mining expansions at risk, with South Africa’s ferrochrome and platinum industry already worst hit by the blackouts.
Now NamPower’s decision threatens to further hurt mining investments in the region.
The desert country has earmarked its burgeoning uranium mining industry as a key economic growth area with the recent discovery of a major uranium resource, which could end up being one of the world’s biggest uranium deposits.
In the meantime, power outages in Zimbabwe and Zambia have also hit the mining industry.
Outages caused by a major electrical fault on the power line linking the two countries, which engineers from both sides were trying to repair, resulted in 369 miners being trapped at Zambia’s Mopani Copper Mines (MCM) and Konkola Copper Mines (KCM).
The power outages also caused partial flooding at Chililabombwe copper mine, a unit of KCM, as water could not be pumped out.
KCM has since suspended mining operations in Zambia.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
"World Bank accused of razing Congo forests"
The World Bank encouraged foreign companies to destructively log th world's second largest forest, endangering the lives of thousands o Congolese Pygmies, according to a report on an internal investigation b senior bank staff and outside experts. The report by the independent inspectio panel, seen by the Guardian, also accuses the bank of misleading Congo' government about the value of its forests and of breaking its own rules
Congo's rainforests are the second largest in the world after the Amazon, locking nearly 8% of the planet's carbon and having some of its richest biodiversity. Nearly 40 million people depend on the forests for medicines, shelter, timber and food.
The report into the bank's activities in Democratic Republic of Congo since 2002 follows complaints made two years ago by an alliance of 12 Pygmy groups. The groups claimed that the bank-backed system of awarding vast logging concessions to companies to exploit the forests was causing "irreversible harm".
It will be discussed at board level in the World Bank within weeks and may lead to a complete rethink of how forestry in the DRC is practised.
It is particularly embarrassing for the British government, which is a development partner of the bank and its third largest financial contributor. It encouraged the bank to intervene in the Congo forests with export-driven industrial logging and has earmarked £50m for further Congo basin forestry aid.
When the bank moved back into Congo in 2002, after years of war which cost up to 4 million lives, it said industrial forestry could contribute most strongly to the country's recovery. In its rush to reform the economy it devised new forestry laws, divided the county into zones and aimed to create a favourable climate for industrial logging.
But although the bank is legally committed to protecting the environment, and trying to alleviate poverty, the panel found that the policies it imposed on the Congo were having the opposite social and environmental effects:
· An area of 600,000 square kilometres (232,000 square miles) of forest was earmarked for logging companies.
· The bank failed to address critical social and environmental issues.
· It ignored between 250,000 and 600,000 Pygmies believed to be living in the Congolese forests, even though their presence was well known and documented.
· It put the Pygmies in serious potential harm.
Criticism is made of the forestry reforms that the bank imposed in return for loans of more than $450m. Initially, said the panel, "the bank provided [to the government] estimates of export revenue from logging concessions that turned out to be far too high. This encouraged a focus on reform of the forestry system at the expense of pursuing sustainable uses of forests, the potential for community forests and for conservation.
For the most part foreign companies, or local companies controlled by foreigners, have been the beneficiaries of this," the report said...
One Pygmy leader told the panel: "We are being made poor in every aspect ... the [logging] company prevents us from going into the forests." Another said that the company had bought the land so that people could no longer live in the forests.
"Roads are going ever deeper into the forests, opening it up. We are increasingly deprived of our foods and drugs. We have never seen anything from the bank except promises," said a third...
Congo's rainforests are the second largest in the world after the Amazon, locking nearly 8% of the planet's carbon and having some of its richest biodiversity. Nearly 40 million people depend on the forests for medicines, shelter, timber and food.
The report into the bank's activities in Democratic Republic of Congo since 2002 follows complaints made two years ago by an alliance of 12 Pygmy groups. The groups claimed that the bank-backed system of awarding vast logging concessions to companies to exploit the forests was causing "irreversible harm".
It will be discussed at board level in the World Bank within weeks and may lead to a complete rethink of how forestry in the DRC is practised.
It is particularly embarrassing for the British government, which is a development partner of the bank and its third largest financial contributor. It encouraged the bank to intervene in the Congo forests with export-driven industrial logging and has earmarked £50m for further Congo basin forestry aid.
When the bank moved back into Congo in 2002, after years of war which cost up to 4 million lives, it said industrial forestry could contribute most strongly to the country's recovery. In its rush to reform the economy it devised new forestry laws, divided the county into zones and aimed to create a favourable climate for industrial logging.
But although the bank is legally committed to protecting the environment, and trying to alleviate poverty, the panel found that the policies it imposed on the Congo were having the opposite social and environmental effects:
· An area of 600,000 square kilometres (232,000 square miles) of forest was earmarked for logging companies.
· The bank failed to address critical social and environmental issues.
· It ignored between 250,000 and 600,000 Pygmies believed to be living in the Congolese forests, even though their presence was well known and documented.
· It put the Pygmies in serious potential harm.
Criticism is made of the forestry reforms that the bank imposed in return for loans of more than $450m. Initially, said the panel, "the bank provided [to the government] estimates of export revenue from logging concessions that turned out to be far too high. This encouraged a focus on reform of the forestry system at the expense of pursuing sustainable uses of forests, the potential for community forests and for conservation.
For the most part foreign companies, or local companies controlled by foreigners, have been the beneficiaries of this," the report said...
One Pygmy leader told the panel: "We are being made poor in every aspect ... the [logging] company prevents us from going into the forests." Another said that the company had bought the land so that people could no longer live in the forests.
"Roads are going ever deeper into the forests, opening it up. We are increasingly deprived of our foods and drugs. We have never seen anything from the bank except promises," said a third...
Monday, July 16, 2007
"Logged to death" (Solomon Islands)
By Dev Nadkarni / from the NZherald.co.nz
As it enters its 30th year of independence this month, the Solomon Islands finds itself on the brink of a twin disaster. In those three decades, its economy has overwhelmingly depended on just one rapidly disappearing natural resource - timber - which successive governments have failed to manage well, jeopardising the country's environmental health and economic wealth.
Estimates of how much tree cover is left vary, but the general agreement from most international environment groups is that the archipelago will be rendered almost completely treeless in the next five to six years. Moses Rohana, project manager for Environmental Concerns Action Network of Solomon Islands, fears commercial forestry will end as early as 2010.
The International Monetary Fund warned that at current felling rates, the natural forests will be depleted much sooner than envisaged.
Rick Houenipwela, governor of the Central Bank of the Solomon Islands, is clearly worried. "The extraction rate is faster than before. We will get to the other end of the forest much before our earlier estimates," he says.
Despite these loud alarm bells, the country's logging industry is growing at a rate of as much as 12 per cent, according to some estimates. Against a computed sustainable rate of a quarter-million tons a year, more than four times that volume - more than a million tons - was felled last year.
Perversely, that growth rate makes the Solomon Islands the fastest-growing economy in the Pacific Islands region at an impressive 6 per cent. But it is fated to be shortlived, as the main resource propelling it disappears in the next few years.
Over the years, sustainable forestation initiatives have consistently failed to catch up with this indiscriminate rate of felling, and most replanting projects, except for a handful in the country's western province, have been all but abandoned.
________________________
History from APACE (2004)
As it enters its 30th year of independence this month, the Solomon Islands finds itself on the brink of a twin disaster. In those three decades, its economy has overwhelmingly depended on just one rapidly disappearing natural resource - timber - which successive governments have failed to manage well, jeopardising the country's environmental health and economic wealth.
Estimates of how much tree cover is left vary, but the general agreement from most international environment groups is that the archipelago will be rendered almost completely treeless in the next five to six years. Moses Rohana, project manager for Environmental Concerns Action Network of Solomon Islands, fears commercial forestry will end as early as 2010.
The International Monetary Fund warned that at current felling rates, the natural forests will be depleted much sooner than envisaged.
Rick Houenipwela, governor of the Central Bank of the Solomon Islands, is clearly worried. "The extraction rate is faster than before. We will get to the other end of the forest much before our earlier estimates," he says.
Despite these loud alarm bells, the country's logging industry is growing at a rate of as much as 12 per cent, according to some estimates. Against a computed sustainable rate of a quarter-million tons a year, more than four times that volume - more than a million tons - was felled last year.
Perversely, that growth rate makes the Solomon Islands the fastest-growing economy in the Pacific Islands region at an impressive 6 per cent. But it is fated to be shortlived, as the main resource propelling it disappears in the next few years.
Over the years, sustainable forestation initiatives have consistently failed to catch up with this indiscriminate rate of felling, and most replanting projects, except for a handful in the country's western province, have been all but abandoned.
________________________
History from APACE (2004)
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Australia moves to militarise Antarctic
From Stuff.co.nz:
The prospect of a militarised Antarctica has been raised with Australia being urged to sharply increase military capability there so as to head off competition from other countries.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute says Australia could need a war-fighting capability to prevent nations staking claims on its Antarctic territory and to address disputes on oil, fisheries and other resources.
In New Zealand, the proposal won support from Peter Cozens, director of Victoria University's centre for strategic studies, who said we should also consider boosting our military presence in Antarctica.
"New Zealand has already taken a tentative step toward recognising resource competition with the new naval vessels being ice-strengthened," he said. "(But) the Government should think in terms of increasing New Zealand's military presence in the Antarctic."...
The prospect of a militarised Antarctica has been raised with Australia being urged to sharply increase military capability there so as to head off competition from other countries.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute says Australia could need a war-fighting capability to prevent nations staking claims on its Antarctic territory and to address disputes on oil, fisheries and other resources.
In New Zealand, the proposal won support from Peter Cozens, director of Victoria University's centre for strategic studies, who said we should also consider boosting our military presence in Antarctica.
"New Zealand has already taken a tentative step toward recognising resource competition with the new naval vessels being ice-strengthened," he said. "(But) the Government should think in terms of increasing New Zealand's military presence in the Antarctic."...
Friday, March 16, 2007
Eco-suicide
Jared Diamond on Eco-suicide:
"Failed civilizations share five common characteristics, according to Diamond, including environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbors, shifting trade patterns, and a shortsighted or greedy leadership response to the threat.
Not every collapse has an environmental origin, but an "eco-meltdown"-especially de-forestation- is often the primary culprit, he argues, particularly when combined with societal disregard for the coming disaster.
"The typical pattern starts with population growth, leading to intensified agricultural production and ecological damage," he said. "The agricultural practices become unsustainable, leading to shortages and starvation, wars and civil unrest, and ultimately to collapse."...
"These are societies that have come to success by right thought and action," according to Diamond. "They are sensible stewards of the environment."
What lessons does Diamond want us to draw from these case studies?
First we must take environmental problems seriously. Ecological suicide has replaced nuclear holocaust as the biggest threat to global civilization, according to Diamond. Second, society needs to move beyond the "either-or" mind set of the environment vs. the economy. Saving the environment does not need to be a "luxury". The deferred maintenance on New Orleans' levee system serves as a notorious reminder that fixing environmental problems early on is cheaper than waiting until after a disaster.
Finally, Diamond said he believes that the notion of the collective good must be re-calibrated. The rights of the individual property owner are indeed important, they but can be taken too far. He speculated bemusedly that the owner of the last tree on Easter Island must have been a libertarian.
Here in the United States, he's particularly concerned about the trend in his home city of Los Angeles toward gated communities of private security, bottled water, private schools, private pension plans, and private health insurance. He'd like the residents of the U.S. to be more like those of the Netherlands, where rich and poor alike live below sea level-a situation which creates a shared appreciation of common risks....
_______________________________
The people leading our country - the Republicans and the leaders of the rightwing Christians have been promoting greed, consumption and have an anti-environmental attitude. When some of the evangelicals came out in favor of environmental protections - they were considered to be traitors. It's very important to some Christians (esp. the literal variety) to think that humans have been given divine authority over the planet. Unfortunately they take it so far - that they will be left without a planet that is sustainable to people. If other life is considered then those lives are seen as competitive against humans - whether it's owls taking away jobs, forests taking away opportunities or whathaveyou.
Both the neoconservative Republicans and rightwing Christians like to promote consumption including the idea that "good" people can and should consume more than other people. And both groups are against birth control - which would be important for bringing any kind of solution. That idea seems to go along with the idea that people can and should be considered to be more important than other life forms. That is also taken to the extreme that other life forms and resources are not being given even the consideration people will require so as to sustain ourselves .
I think the neoconservative Republicans and rightwing Christians are living in some kind of Disney-like fantasyland built on greed and a blindness to the needs of interconnected life among plants and animals. I don't think it is at all a coincidence that in response some people have been returning to a worldview based on "Mother Earth", goddess thealogy, and a return to pre-patriarchal ideas.
"Failed civilizations share five common characteristics, according to Diamond, including environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbors, shifting trade patterns, and a shortsighted or greedy leadership response to the threat.
Not every collapse has an environmental origin, but an "eco-meltdown"-especially de-forestation- is often the primary culprit, he argues, particularly when combined with societal disregard for the coming disaster.
"The typical pattern starts with population growth, leading to intensified agricultural production and ecological damage," he said. "The agricultural practices become unsustainable, leading to shortages and starvation, wars and civil unrest, and ultimately to collapse."...
"These are societies that have come to success by right thought and action," according to Diamond. "They are sensible stewards of the environment."
What lessons does Diamond want us to draw from these case studies?
First we must take environmental problems seriously. Ecological suicide has replaced nuclear holocaust as the biggest threat to global civilization, according to Diamond. Second, society needs to move beyond the "either-or" mind set of the environment vs. the economy. Saving the environment does not need to be a "luxury". The deferred maintenance on New Orleans' levee system serves as a notorious reminder that fixing environmental problems early on is cheaper than waiting until after a disaster.
Finally, Diamond said he believes that the notion of the collective good must be re-calibrated. The rights of the individual property owner are indeed important, they but can be taken too far. He speculated bemusedly that the owner of the last tree on Easter Island must have been a libertarian.
Here in the United States, he's particularly concerned about the trend in his home city of Los Angeles toward gated communities of private security, bottled water, private schools, private pension plans, and private health insurance. He'd like the residents of the U.S. to be more like those of the Netherlands, where rich and poor alike live below sea level-a situation which creates a shared appreciation of common risks....
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The people leading our country - the Republicans and the leaders of the rightwing Christians have been promoting greed, consumption and have an anti-environmental attitude. When some of the evangelicals came out in favor of environmental protections - they were considered to be traitors. It's very important to some Christians (esp. the literal variety) to think that humans have been given divine authority over the planet. Unfortunately they take it so far - that they will be left without a planet that is sustainable to people. If other life is considered then those lives are seen as competitive against humans - whether it's owls taking away jobs, forests taking away opportunities or whathaveyou.
Both the neoconservative Republicans and rightwing Christians like to promote consumption including the idea that "good" people can and should consume more than other people. And both groups are against birth control - which would be important for bringing any kind of solution. That idea seems to go along with the idea that people can and should be considered to be more important than other life forms. That is also taken to the extreme that other life forms and resources are not being given even the consideration people will require so as to sustain ourselves .
I think the neoconservative Republicans and rightwing Christians are living in some kind of Disney-like fantasyland built on greed and a blindness to the needs of interconnected life among plants and animals. I don't think it is at all a coincidence that in response some people have been returning to a worldview based on "Mother Earth", goddess thealogy, and a return to pre-patriarchal ideas.
Saturday, March 03, 2007
"Warm Winters Upset Rhythms of Maple Sugar"
In the New York Times
...Dr. Perkins and Tom Vogelmann, chairman of the plant biology department at the University of Vermont, said that while new sap-tapping technology is helping sugar makers keep up syrup production, for now, at some point the season will become so short that large syrup producers will no longer get enough sap to make it worthwhile.
“It’s within, well, probably my lifetime that you’ll see this happen,” Professor Vogelmann said. “How can you have the state of Vermont and not have maple syrup?”...
“In the ’50s and ’60s, 80 percent of world’s maple syrup came from the U.S., and 20 percent came from Canada,” said Barrett N. Rock, a professor of natural resources at the University of New Hampshire. “Today it’s exactly the opposite. The climate that we used to have here in New England has moved north to the point where it’s now in Quebec.”
...Still, he said, “I think what we’re experiencing is a tragic, disastrous change.” He added that he tapped too late last year and made only 1,800 gallons of syrup, instead of his usual 2,500. This year, he said, “in the first week of January, heaven sakes, it was 60 degrees in Vermont.”
...Dr. Perkins and Tom Vogelmann, chairman of the plant biology department at the University of Vermont, said that while new sap-tapping technology is helping sugar makers keep up syrup production, for now, at some point the season will become so short that large syrup producers will no longer get enough sap to make it worthwhile.
“It’s within, well, probably my lifetime that you’ll see this happen,” Professor Vogelmann said. “How can you have the state of Vermont and not have maple syrup?”...
“In the ’50s and ’60s, 80 percent of world’s maple syrup came from the U.S., and 20 percent came from Canada,” said Barrett N. Rock, a professor of natural resources at the University of New Hampshire. “Today it’s exactly the opposite. The climate that we used to have here in New England has moved north to the point where it’s now in Quebec.”
...Still, he said, “I think what we’re experiencing is a tragic, disastrous change.” He added that he tapped too late last year and made only 1,800 gallons of syrup, instead of his usual 2,500. This year, he said, “in the first week of January, heaven sakes, it was 60 degrees in Vermont.”
Monday, February 05, 2007
"Eco-millionaire's land grab prompts fury"
Douglas Tompkinscalls himself a 'deep ecologist'. He is a millionaire on a quest to preserve some of Argentina's last frontier lands from human encroachment by buying them and turning them into ecological reserves.
But Argentina may not permit him such philanthropy. Opponents are branding him a new-age 'imperialist gringo' and claim he has a secret aim: to help the US military gain control of the country's natural resources. Tompkins, who sold his Esprit clothing firm in 1989 for a reported $150m to devote his time and wealth to ecology, takes such attacks in his stride. 'Land ownership is a political act; it arouses passions,' he says.
Tompkins, 63, holds to a very severe brand of environmentalism and is fond of reminding listeners that, unless runaway consumerism is halted, 'we humans will be building ourselves a beautiful coffin in space called planet Earth'.
Yet such statements do not carry much weight with Argentinian nationalists. The heaviest fire has come from radicals in the ruling Peronist party. Left-wing legislator Araceli Mendez introduced draft legislation in Congress a few months ago to confiscate the American's vast holdings. At the centre of the storm is a 310,000-acre estate Tompkins owns in the Ibera wetlands, a labyrinth of marshes, lakes and floating islands of nearly 2 million acres. 'He says he's worried about the birds and the wildlife,' said Mendez. 'But his land is above the Guarani aquifer, one of the most important fresh water reserves in the world, only 700km from an airbase the United States plans to build in neighbouring Paraguay.'
The aquifer is soon to become an issue of strategic defence policy. Argentina's military planners are convinced the country's oil and fresh water deposits could become targets for world powers in an ecologically dark future, and are putting together 'Plan 2025', dividing the country into regions based on their resource potential.
The Argentinian press has suggested Tompkins might be a covert CIA operative securing US access to the aquifer. And even Argentinians who don't share such conspiracy theories are uncomfortable with Tompkins transforming his properties into environmentally pristine but unpopulated and economically unproductive areas....
Tompkins and his wife say they are not old-fashioned imperialists in a new guise. 'All the fears created by the fact that I am American buying land are ridiculous,' said Tompkins. 'My intention has always been to eventually turn over the land to the Argentinian government for a national park.' He has already done so, donating an estate in Patagonia to the National Parks administration in 2004. In the late Nineties he had bought the 155,000-acre Monte Leon sheep farm, including a 25-mile stretch of South Atlantic coast, home to one of the largest Magellan penguin rookeries in the world and also abundant in sea lions, pumas and birds.
But pressure to pass an anti-Tompkins bill in Congress could be strong. The presence of other high-profile foreigners fuels passions. The Italian clothing giant Benetton holds 2.2 million acres in sheep farms in Patagonia and has clashed with the indigenous Mapuche people over land ownership claims. And US media magnate Ted Turner likes to go trout fishing on his Patagonian estates.
For Tompkins, it has been a long road from fashion king to 'deep ecologist'. As the founder of North Face and Esprit, he sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of clothes worldwide every year. All that changed when he became involved in radical environmental projects, what he calls his 'restoration work', returning native animal and plant species to the nation-sized swaths of land he owns....
But Argentina may not permit him such philanthropy. Opponents are branding him a new-age 'imperialist gringo' and claim he has a secret aim: to help the US military gain control of the country's natural resources. Tompkins, who sold his Esprit clothing firm in 1989 for a reported $150m to devote his time and wealth to ecology, takes such attacks in his stride. 'Land ownership is a political act; it arouses passions,' he says.
Tompkins, 63, holds to a very severe brand of environmentalism and is fond of reminding listeners that, unless runaway consumerism is halted, 'we humans will be building ourselves a beautiful coffin in space called planet Earth'.
Yet such statements do not carry much weight with Argentinian nationalists. The heaviest fire has come from radicals in the ruling Peronist party. Left-wing legislator Araceli Mendez introduced draft legislation in Congress a few months ago to confiscate the American's vast holdings. At the centre of the storm is a 310,000-acre estate Tompkins owns in the Ibera wetlands, a labyrinth of marshes, lakes and floating islands of nearly 2 million acres. 'He says he's worried about the birds and the wildlife,' said Mendez. 'But his land is above the Guarani aquifer, one of the most important fresh water reserves in the world, only 700km from an airbase the United States plans to build in neighbouring Paraguay.'
The aquifer is soon to become an issue of strategic defence policy. Argentina's military planners are convinced the country's oil and fresh water deposits could become targets for world powers in an ecologically dark future, and are putting together 'Plan 2025', dividing the country into regions based on their resource potential.
The Argentinian press has suggested Tompkins might be a covert CIA operative securing US access to the aquifer. And even Argentinians who don't share such conspiracy theories are uncomfortable with Tompkins transforming his properties into environmentally pristine but unpopulated and economically unproductive areas....
Tompkins and his wife say they are not old-fashioned imperialists in a new guise. 'All the fears created by the fact that I am American buying land are ridiculous,' said Tompkins. 'My intention has always been to eventually turn over the land to the Argentinian government for a national park.' He has already done so, donating an estate in Patagonia to the National Parks administration in 2004. In the late Nineties he had bought the 155,000-acre Monte Leon sheep farm, including a 25-mile stretch of South Atlantic coast, home to one of the largest Magellan penguin rookeries in the world and also abundant in sea lions, pumas and birds.
But pressure to pass an anti-Tompkins bill in Congress could be strong. The presence of other high-profile foreigners fuels passions. The Italian clothing giant Benetton holds 2.2 million acres in sheep farms in Patagonia and has clashed with the indigenous Mapuche people over land ownership claims. And US media magnate Ted Turner likes to go trout fishing on his Patagonian estates.
For Tompkins, it has been a long road from fashion king to 'deep ecologist'. As the founder of North Face and Esprit, he sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of clothes worldwide every year. All that changed when he became involved in radical environmental projects, what he calls his 'restoration work', returning native animal and plant species to the nation-sized swaths of land he owns....
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