"Sea lice killing off wild salmon"

Researchers have new evidence that as the density of salmon farms increases, they can drive nearby wild salmon runs to extinction. The problem is sea lice, a natural parasite that normally attaches to adult salmon with little ill effect and has little contact with vulnerable juvenile salmon. All that changes, however, when fish farms move in.

A study in the journal Science to be published Friday shows that sea lice infestations around salmon farms in British Columbia's Broughton Archipelago have reached a density so high they are killing juvenile wild pink salmon at a rate fast enough to drive local runs to extinction in eight years if nothing is done — and four years have already passed.

"We've seen sea lice infestations on juvenile salmon in Norway, Ireland, Scotland and Canada, but it's been unclear and very contentious what the impact of the sea lice is on the wild salmon population," said Martin Krkosek, lead author of the study and a doctoral candidate at the Center for Mathematical Biology at the University of Alberta.

"What's really new and exciting about this paper is this is the first time scientists have had enough detailed data to actually measure the impact of sea lice on wild salmon populations," he said.

Principally funded by the Canadian Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, the peer-reviewed study is the latest in a series by a group of scientists trying to push the Canadian government to place more strict regulations on salmon farms to control sea lice.

Based on government stream surveys, the study used a computer model to analyze pink salmon returns in 64 rivers without exposure to salmon farms and seven rivers where young fish must migrate past at least one salmon farm. The study considered returns before and after sea lice infestations were noticed in wild fish in 2001....

When fish farms move in, hundreds of thousands of adults are raised in floating net pens anchored year-round in the channels where the young fish migrate. The study suggested that the density of fish farms reached a tipping point in 2001 that triggered a killer sea lice infestation.

Alexandra Morton, a co-author and director of the Salmon Coast Field Station in the archipelago, said wild salmon are surviving commercial fishing but not sea lice...

Arctic Warmups

Without its insulating ice cap, Arctic surface waters warm to as much as 5 C above average

A comparison of 2000 and 2007 shows how the ice edge has retreated as the ice cap has shrunk and how surface waters

Record-breaking amounts of ice-free water have deprived the Arctic of more of its natural "sunscreen" than ever in recent summers. The effect is so pronounced that sea surface temperatures rose to 5 C above average in one place this year, a high never before observed, says the oceanographer who has compiled the first-ever look at average sea surface temperatures for the region.

Such superwarming of surface waters can affect how thick ice grows back in the winter, as well as its ability to withstand melting the next summer, according to Michael Steele, an oceanographer with the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory. Indeed, since September, the end of summer in the Arctic, winter freeze-up in some areas is two months later than usual.

The extra ocean warming also might be contributing to some changes on land, such as previously unseen plant growth in the coastal Arctic tundra, if heat coming off the ocean during freeze-up is making its way over land, says Steele, who is speaking Wednesday at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

He is lead author of "Arctic Ocean surface warming trends over the past 100 years," accepted for publication in AGU's Geophysical Research Letters. Co-authors are physicist Wendy Ermold and research scientist Jinlun Zhang, both of the UW Applied Physics Laboratory. The work is funded by the National Science Foundation.

"Warming is particularly pronounced since 1995, and especially since 2000," the authors write. The spot where waters were 5 C above average was in the region just north of the Chakchi Sea. The historical average temperature there is -1 C – remember that the salt in ocean water keeps it liquid at temperatures that would cause fresh water to freeze. This year water in that area warmed to 4 C, for a 5-degree change from the average.

That general area, the part of the ocean north of Alaska and Eastern Siberia that includes the Bering Strait and Chukchi Sea, experienced the greatest summer warming. Temperatures for that region were generally 3.5 C warmer than historical averages and 1.5 C warmer than the historical maximum.

Such widespread warming in those areas and elsewhere in the Arctic is probably the result of having increasing amounts of open water in the summer that readily absorb the sun's rays, Steele says. Hard, white ice, on the other hand, can work as a kind of sunscreen for the waters below, reflecting rather than absorbing sunlight. The warming also may be partly caused by increasing amounts of warmer water coming from the Pacific Ocean, something scientists have noted in recent years.

The Arctic was primed for more open water since the early 1990s as the sea-ice cover has thinned, due to a warming atmosphere and more frequent strong winds sweeping ice out of the Arctic Ocean via Fram Strait into the Atlantic Ocean where the ice melts. The wind effect was particularly strong in the summer of 2007.

Now the situation could be self-perpetuating, Steele says. For example, he calculates that having more heat in surface waters in recent years means 23 to 30 inches less ice will grow in the winter than formed in 1965. Since sea ice typically grows about 80 inches in a winter, that is a significant fraction of ice that's going missing, he says.

Then too, higher sea surface temperatures can delay the start of freeze-up because the extra heat must be discharged from the upper ocean before ice can form. "The effect on net winter growth would probably be negligible for a delay of several weeks, but could be substantial for delays of several months," the authors write.

"Bio-plastic production coming to Seymour" (IN)

ereplast, a designer and manufacturer of bio-based plastic resin, announced today it will locate what is billed as the world’s largest bio-based plastic resin manufacturing and distribution facility in Seymour, creating up to 200 new jobs.

The Hawthorne, Calif. company designs, manufactures and distributes plastic resin based on plant starches instead of petroleum.

It will initially invest more than $7 million to equip an existing 100,000-square-foot industrial building, the Indiana Economic Development Corp. said in a news release.

"Cereplast is exactly the kind of business that we’re most interested in attracting. A unique company like this that has market-changing possibilities and the potential for rapid growth is a big win for Indiana," said Gov. Mitch Daniels in a statement.

The six-year-old company manufactures two families of plastic resins based on biopolymers and mixtures of plant starches.

Its Cereplast Compostables product line, which has earned certification as biodegradable and compostable in the United States and Europe, replaces 100 percent of the petroleum-based additives found in traditional plastics with renewable, plant-based starches.

Its Cereplast Hybrid Resins replaces half or more of the petroleum-based content in plastic resin with bio-based compounds such as cornstarch or tapioca starch.

The IEDC offered Cereplast up to $665,000 in performance-based tax credits and up to $60,000 in training grants based on the company’s job creation plans.

Indiana will provide Seymour with a grant of up to $200,000 to assist in off-site infrastructure improvements needed to serve the new facility.

"Oil Spill Threatens South Korea's West Coast Wetlands"

About 15,000 tons of oil spilled off the west coast on Friday when a barge carrying a crane collided with a tanker lying at anchor, puncturing it in three places. The accident is the largest offshore oil spill ever to take place in South Korea, a police spokesman said.
South Korea's Coast Guard said the amount of oil spilled by the collision with the tanker was lower than originally estimated. The new estimate is that about 10,500 kiloliters - 66,043 barrels or 2.77 million gallons - of crude oil had been spilled into the Yellow Sea, staining the waters black.

The accident occurred around 7:10 am local time when the Samsung Corp. barge struck the 146,000 ton tanker Hebei Spirit in waters off Mallipo beach, about 90 miles southwest of Seoul...

"We are worried about an ecological disaster," said Kim Jong-sik, an official with the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries. "This is the country's worst oil spill.

Oil spill responders have set up a boom, trying to stop oil from spreading along the coast, but oil sometimes overflows it, depending on the currents, he said. The oil slick now measures 4.6 miles long and 1.2 miles wide, officials said.

"Energy Department Fined $500,000 for Hanford Radioactive Spill"

The Washington State Department of Ecology has issued a $500,000 penalty against the U.S. Department of Energy, DOE, for a release of radioactive hazardous tank waste to the soil at the Hanford Nuclear Site on the Columbia River in central Washington.
The waste endangered workers and brought a halt to cleanup of the leaky underground single-shell tanks.

The spill occurred on July 27, 2007, when contractor CH2M HILL Hanford Group was pumping waste from a tank. Workers tried to unblock a pump by running it in reverse. This resulted in a high-level waste spill to the ground.

"Over 80 gallons of highly radioactive tank waste spilled to the environment," said Jane Hedges, manager of Ecology's Nuclear Waste Program. "Before the spill was discovered, a series of poor decisions put workers in grave danger from exposure to the tank waste and vapors. This accident calls into question the adequacy of the safety culture which is so critical at the tank farms."

Hedges, who leads the state's oversight of the Hanford cleanup, said, "We are troubled by the length of time it took CH2M HILL and the Department of Energy to determine there was a release of radioactive tank waste. There was a delay of more than seven hours from the time the first high radiation readings were discovered. This is completely unacceptable."

...Van Mason said, "The inspection found that too few staff were on the job to manage the incident during the graveyard shift. Inspections determined that lighting was inadequate in the pump pit area, and poor positioning of the S Tank Farm video camera also contributed to the delay in response to the accident."

As a result of this accident, all work related to retrieving the liquids from Tank 241-S-102 has been stopped. Additionally, all tank waste retrieval work throughout the tank farms has been suspended until the contributing factors can be identified and resolved and work can resume safely.

The Department of Energy has already missed several deadlines for retrieval of waste from the 149 single-shell tanks.

"Radioactive tank waste is the greatest human health and environmental risk at Hanford," said Hedges. "Getting the waste out of the aging, leaky Hanford tanks is the state of Washington's top cleanup priority. The mismanagement of the retrieval work that caused this spill has set back the already delayed tank retrieval work even further."

"S.C. nuke landfill to close; 36 states left in lurch"

COLUMBIA, S.C. - Starting next summer, many power plants, hospitals, universities and companies in 36 states will be forced to store low-level radioactive waste on their own property because a South Carolina landfill is closing its doors to them.

The states have known for years that this day would come. But because of political opposition, environmental fears and cost concerns, most of them have done almost nothing to construct new landfills in the meantime.

At issue is the Barnwell County dump site, a 235-acre expanse that opened in 1971 close to the Georgia line. The equivalent of more than 40 tractor-trailers full of radioactive trash from 39 states was buried there each year before South Carolina lawmakers in 2000 ordered the place to scale back because they no longer wanted the state to be the nation’s dumping ground.

As of July 1, the landfill will take waste only from South Carolina and the two states with which it formed a partnership: New Jersey and Connecticut.

State and industry officials say the not-in-my-backyard resistance will ironically lead to “temporary” storage sites in backyards across the nation...

The danger, some officials say, is that storing the waste in potentially hundreds of locations across the country could allow radiation to escape.

While none of the trash could be used to make a nuclear bomb, some experts fear it could be stolen to make “dirty bombs,” which use conventional explosives to scatter radioactive debris.

“As a matter of national security, health and safety, it makes good sense to ultimately dispose of this stuff and not just store it all over the country,” said Rick Jacobi, a nuclear engineer and former general manager of the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Authority.

“There will be hundreds, maybe thousands of them. People won’t want to pay others to store the material. They’ll find a closet or warehouse or a shed out back and stick it in there and see what happens.”

The trash sent to Barnwell includes protective clothing and gloves, tools, cleaning rags, lab equipment, industrial measuring devices and equipment used to treat cancer patients. It does not include spent fuel from nuclear power plants. The waste is stored in steel containers that are put in concrete vaults and then buried in long trenches.


Most waste from hospitals, universities and power plants falls into the lowest-hazard class, which means it decays to nonradioactive levels within 100 years.

The closing of Barnwell will mean roughly 20,000 cubic feet of trash per year, or enough to fill six tractor-trailers, will be turned away.

Only two other landfills now exist nationwide for low-level nuclear waste.

One, in Clive, Utah, takes only the least hazardous trash, such as slightly contaminated clothing. It accepts waste from all states.

The other landfill, in Richland, Wash., receives such material along with hotter waste that decays to non-hazardous levels within 500 years. But it accepts shipments from only 11 states, including Idaho, Nevada and Colorado...

Ag Dept. Fights Meatpackers From Testing For Mad Cow

AP - The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease .

The Agriculture Department tests less than 1 percent of slaughtered cows for the disease, which can be fatal to humans who eat tainted beef. But Kansas-based Creekstone Farms Premium Beef wants to test all of its cows.

Larger meat companies feared that move because, if Creekstone tested its meat and advertised it as safe, they might have to perform the expensive test, too.

The Agriculture Department regulates the test and argued that widespread testing could lead to a false positive that would harm the meat industry.

A federal judge ruled in March that such tests must be allowed. U.S. District Judge James Robertson noted that Creekstone sought to use the same test the government relies on and said the government didn't have the authority to restrict it.

The ruling was to take effect June 1, but the Agriculture Department said Tuesday it would appeal effectively delaying the testing until the court challenge plays out.

Mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is linked to more than 150 human deaths worldwide, mostly in Britain.

There have been three cases of mad cow disease in the U.S. The first, in December 2003 in Washington state, was in a cow that had been imported from Canada. The second, in 2005, was in a Texas-born cow. The third was confirmed last year in an Alabama cow.

Meanwhile:

Scripps scientists develop faster tests on mad cow disease

Scientists at Scripps Florida have made headway in the study and testing of the infectious proteins that cause mad cow disease and a human variant of the disease known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob.

The findings open the door to better understanding of the diseases and their diagnoses and are expected to significantly accelerate the pace of research into how the diseases develop within cells.

The advances come in the form of two new tests developed by scientists at the infectious disease laboratory of The Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter. One test, called the Standard Scarpie Cell Assay, measures the infectivity levels of the infected protein, or prion. The test takes only two weeks as opposed to the current 150-250 days, according to Sukhvir Mahal, a Scripps scientist and author of a study published this week in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The second test, called the Cell Panel Assay, enables researchers to quickly distinguish between different strains of prions. The tests enabled scientists to show that four different cell lines exhibit widely different responses to four different strains of the infections proteins...

"'Flying Saucers' Around Saturn Explained"

The formation of strange flying-saucer-shaped moons embedded in Saturn's rings have baffled scientists. New findings suggest they're born largely from clumps of icy particles in the rings themselves, an insight that could shed light on how Earth and other planets coalesced from the disk of matter that once surrounded our newborn sun.

Saturn's rings orbit the planet in a flat disk that corresponds to the planet's equator. Likewise, Earth and the other planets orbit the sun in a fairly flat plane that relates to the sun's equator. The planets, at least the rocky ones, are thought to have formed when bits of material orbiting the newborn sun stuck together, forming larger and larger objects that collided and coalesced.

Observations by NASA's Cassini spacecraft revealed the Saturnian moons Atlas and Pan, each roughly 12 miles (20 kilometers) from pole to pole, have massive ridges bulging from their equators some 3.7 to 6.5 miles (6 to 10.5 kilometers) high, giving them the flying-saucer appearance.

In principle, fast rates of spin might have stretched Atlas and Pan out into such unusual shapes, just as tossing a disk of pizza d ough flattens it out. But neither moon whirls very quickly, each taking about 14 hours to complete a rotation. Earth, far bigger, rotates in 24 hours, of course.

Carolyn Porco, a planetary scientist at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo., and her colleagues suspected these peculiar moons could be formed mostly from Saturn's rings, rather than just from fragments produced in collisions of larger moons, as some have suggested. The location of the ridges lined up precisely with the rings of icy particles in which they were embedded, findings which are detailed in the Dec. 6 issue of the journal Science.

After analyzing the shapes and densities of the moons from data captured by Cassini, Porco's team now finds Pan and Atlas appear to be mostly light, porous, icy bodies, just like the particles making up the rings. Computer simulations suggest one-half to two-thirds of these bizarre moons are made of ring material, piled up on massive, dense fragments of bigger moons that disintegrated billions of years ago after catastrophic collisions with one another.

These findings could shed light on the behavior of "accretion disks"—disks that build up as matter falls toward a gravitational pull.

"Accretion disks are found everywhere in the universe—around black holes, around stars, around Jupiter," said astrophysicist Sebastien Charnoz at University of Paris Diderot in France. He is the lead author of a related new study—also described in the Dec. 6 issue of Science—that shows how the Saturnian ice-clump moons elongated and bulged out into the flying-saucer shapes.

Understanding how the icy particles piled up to make these shapes could shed light on how matter in the protoplanetary disk that accreted around our newborn sun could have clumped together to make planets, Charnoz added.

"Group touts seaweed as warming weapon"

BALI, Indonesia - Slimy, green and unsightly, seaweed and algae are among the humblest plants on earth. A group of scientists at a climate conference in Bali say they could also be a potent weapon against global warming, capable of sucking damaging carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere at rates comparable to the mightiest rain forests.

"The ocean's role is neglected because we can't see the vegetation," said Chung Ik-kyo, a South Korean environmental scientist. "But under the sea, there is a lot of seaweed and sea grass that can take up carbon dioxide."

The seaweed research, backed by scientists in 12 countries, is part of a broad effort to calculate how much carbon is being absorbed from the atmosphere by plants, and figure out ways to increase that through reforestation and other steps.

Such so-called "carbon sinks" are considered essential to controlling greenhouse gases, which trap heat in the atmosphere and are blamed for global warming.

The conference in Bali is aimed at launching two-year negotiations for a new global warming pact to replace the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012, and using the earth's natural resources to remove carbon from the air is a major topic of discussion.

While the lion's share of attention to carbon sinks has been on forests, the seaweed scientists say the world should look to the sea, where nearly 8 million tons of seaweed and algae are cultivated every year.

That solution is a largely Asian one and it's not without complications.

China is by far the world's largest producer of seaweed, followed by South Korea and Japan. The Asia-Pacific — where seaweed is used in soups, sushi and salads — accounts for 80 percent of global production.

Proponents say seaweed and algae's rapid rate of photosynthesis, the process of turning carbon dioxide and sunlight into energy and oxygen, is a top factor in its effectiveness in carbon absorption.

Some types of seaweed can grow three or four meters (yards) long in only three months. Lee Jae-young, with South Korea's fisheries ministry, said some seaweeds can absorb five times more carbon dioxide than terrestrial plants.

"These are very productive ecosystems, they're drawing down a lot of carbon," said John Beardall, with Australia's Monash University...

Other obstacles remain. Some critics wonder if removing sea water from the seaweed as it's converted to fuel would require a large amount of energy that reduces its environmental benefits, though supporters say sun-drying could be used.

The environmental impact of rapid expansion of seaweed farms has also not been thought out, scientists concede. Huge floating farms could complicate fishing, shipping and other maritime activities.

Chung acknowledged the idea was in its infancy...

"Scientists beg for climate action"

For the first time, more than 200 of the world's leading climate scientists, losing their patience, urged government leaders to take radical action to slow global warming because "there is no time to lose."

A petition from at least 215 climate scientists calls for the world to cut in half greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. It is directed at a conference of diplomats meeting in Bali, Indonesia, to negotiate the next global warming treaty. The petition, obtained by The Associated Press, is to be announced at a press conference there Wednesday night.

The appeal from scientists follows a petition last week from more than 150 global business leaders also demanding the 50 percent cut in greenhouse gases. That is the estimate that scientists calculate would hold future global warming to a little more than a 3-degree Fahrenheit increase and is in line with what the European Union has adopted.

In the past, many of these scientists have avoided calls for action, leaving that to environmental advocacy groups. That dispassionate stance was taken during the release this year of four separate reports by the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

But no more.

"It's a grave crisis, and we need to do something real fast," said petition signer Jeff Severinghaus, a geosciences professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif. "I think the stakes are way way too high to be playing around."

The unprecedented petition includes scientists from more than 25 countries and shows that "the climate science community is essentially fed up," said signer Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria in Canada. It includes many co-authors of the intergovernmental climate change panel reports, directors of major American and European climate science research institutions, a Nobel winner for atmospheric chemistry and a winner of a MacArthur "genius" award.

"A lot of us scientists think the problem needs a lot more serious attention than it's getting and the remedies have to be a lot more radical," said Richard Seager, a scientist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory....

What's happening is people are agreeing "that the cost of inaction is on the high side and the cost of action is affordable," said Joseph Romm, a policy analyst at the liberal think-tank Center for American Progress, energy business consultant and trained physicist.

But Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute said "scientists are in no position to intelligently guide public policy on climate change." Scientists can lay out scenarios, but it is up to economists to weigh the costs and benefits and many of them say the costs of cutting emissions are higher than the benefits, he said.

Granger Morgan, a professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, said he sees "a growing realization among a wide variety of players that we've got to stop talking about this and start some action." But, he added, "I'm not going to hold my breath that we're going to get anything."

The declaration: http://www.climate.unsw.edu.au/bali/

"Australia ratifies Kyoto Protocol"

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd signed the instrument of ratification of the Kyoto Protocol in his first act after being sworn in this morning.

The ratification will come into force in 90 days.

“This is the first official act of the new Australian government, demonstrating my government’s commitment to tackling climate change,” Mr Rudd said in a statement.

Mr Rudd said the ratification was considered and approved by the first executive council meeting of the government this morning.

“The governor-general has granted his approval for Australia to ratify the Kyoto Protocol at my request,” he said.

Under United Nations guidelines, ratification comes into force 90 days after the instrument of ratification is received by the UN, making Australia a full member of the Kyoto Protocol by the end of March 2008.

“Australia’s official declaration today that we will become a member of the Kyoto Protocol is a significant step forward in our country’s efforts to fight climate change domestically - and with the international community,” Mr Rudd said.

He said the federal government would do everything in its power to help Australia meet its Kyoto obligations, including setting a target to reduce emissions by 60 per cent on 2000 levels by 2050.

It also would establish a national emissions trading scheme by 2010 and set a 20 per cent target for renewable energy by 2020...

"Mummified Dinosaur Unveiled"

Dakota, a 67-million-year-old "dino mummy" unveiled today by a British paleontologist, is seen here in an artist's rendering.

The extraordinarily preserved hadrosaur, or duck-billed dino, still had much of its tissues and bones intact, encased in an envelope of skin.

Research into the dinosaur's remains may further scientists' understanding of how the ancient creatures' skin appeared and how quickly they moved, said team leader Phillip Manning of the University of Manchester, a National Geographic Expeditions Council grantee.

"This specimen exceeds the jackpot," Manning said.

Dakota was about 35 feet (12 meters) long and weighed some 35 tons, but the dinosaur was no slowpoke, according to preliminary studies...

The 67-million-year old "dino mummy," nicknamed Dakota, was discovered in 1999 by then-teenage paleontologist Tyler Lyson on his family's North Dakota property...

Much of Dakota's fossilized skin has maintained its texture, allowing scientists to map it in 3-D and get a better picture of how duck-billed dinosaurs may have appeared..."And there seems to be striping patterns associated with joint areas on the arm," he added...

"Our models confirm this hadrosaur would have had potential to run faster than T. rex," Manning said. Preliminary calculations suggest that the dino could run 28 miles (45 kilometers) an hour, while T. rex topped out at about 20 miles (32 kilometers) an hour.

"Stretch Of China's Yangtze River Caves In"

A 100-metre (330 ft) stretch of the Yangtze river's bank collapsed in eastern China on Saturday, sending some 10 warehouses and several cranes into the river, the official Xinhua news agency said on Sunday.

The landslide happened near the city of Wuhu in Anhui province, which lies roughly 100 km (60 miles) southwest of Nanjing, capital of the relatively prosperous province of Jiangsu on the eastern seaboard.

Wuhu lies hundreds of km (miles) downstream from the Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest hydropower project, which officials have said would help control flooding in downstream areas.

Xinhua cited a local official as saying the collapse could have been caused by a vortex of water. It said others believed construction at a nearby shipyard might have loosened the foundations of a dyke and caused the collapse.

No casualties were reported, but an elderly couple was saved from a barge before it crashed into the water.

"150 Global Firms Seek Mandatory Cuts in Greenhouse Gas Emissions"

A sizable fraction of the international business community launched an effort to press for mandatory cuts in greenhouse gas emissions yesterday, on the eve of a major round of climate negotiations set to begin Monday in Bali.

In an unprecedented show of solidarity, leaders from 150 global companies endorsed the idea of a legally binding framework in a statement published in the Financial Times newspaper.

Some of the world's largest firms -- including Coca-Cola, General Electric, Shell, Nestlé, Nike, DuPont, Johnson & Johnson, British Airways and Shanghai Electric -- said that the scientific evidence for climate change is "now overwhelming" and that a legally binding agreement "will provide business with the certainty it needs to scale up global investment in low-carbon technologies."

A separate coalition of environmental groups and U.S. companies, including Honeywell, Shell Oil and Pacific Gas & Electric, helped underwrite a report, released yesterday by the consulting firm McKinsey & Co., that analyzes how much it would cost to reduce U.S. emissions significantly by 2030. The report, which examines 250 options, concludes that the United States could cut emissions by 3 billion to 4.5 billion metric tons a year through existing approaches and "high-potential emerging technologies" if the federal government signaled that it was determined to reduce greenhouse gases dramatically. That would represent a 7 percent to 28 percent reduction from the 2005 levels.

"At some point, we need to establish a clear national commitment," said Jack Stephenson, one of the report's authors. "You're probably going to need standards, mandates and financial incentives."

The report suggests that these reductions, which would rely on a significant improvement in energy efficiency, can be achieved at a cost of less than $50 per metric ton. Nearly 40 percent of these efforts would save money over the long term, the study says, and the measures would range from storing carbon dioxide emissions from power plants to adopting no-till farming practices.

"Global warming is becoming a core driver for business and the American economy," said Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the report's sponsors. "McKinsey has drawn up an excellent roadmap. But it's up to Washington to get us out of the driveway. We have a chance to get this right, but the window of opportunity is very short."

In an interview yesterday with Washington Post editorial writers and reporters, James L. Connaughton, chairman of the White House's Council on Environmental Quality, said the Bush administration is committed to reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, even though it opposes a mandatory, economy-wide carbon cap...

“We built a 100% eco resort”

A small resort in Bangalore, India, took up the gauntlet to create a near-perfect, eco-friendly outfit.

At the recent Wild Asia 2007 Responsible Tourism Awards & Seminar, Indian resort operator C. B. Ramkumar gave a talk on responsible tourism and social change. He said matter of factly: “We built a 100% eco resort.”

Call it a marketing ploy or a bold claim, but now Ramkumar had everyone sit up and listen.

This genial yet unassuming 44-year-old owns and runs a 24-room resort in a village 40km from Bangalore City in southern India. Called Our Native Village, the resort started operating in September 2006.

Sitting on 4.8 hectares of land, the resort was constructed of bricks made with mud from the building site. The layout of the building allows natural light to filter through, and strategically placed windows create airy and cool spaces, hence the resort did away with air-conditioning.

The Village generates 80% of its electricity through solar panels, a windmill and biogas plant. Sixty percent of its water is harvested from rain and stored in underground tanks or tapped from bore wells. With its zero-waste policy, all food and animal wastes are converted into methane gas and electricity at the biogas plant. Slurry from the biogas plant is used as fertiliser for the resort’s organic farm. Reed waterbeds recycle grey water from sinks and showers for gardening. “Black” water from the toilets is fed into leach pits and later used as manure.

“All my water is used at least twice, if not three times,” says Ramkumar.

“We use soap nut powder and ash for cleaning dishes and the water can be used for watering plants.”

Specially handmade for the resort, the soaps and shampoos are biodegradable. Pretty clay bottles, water jugs and cups are sourced from local potters. Plastics go for recycling in Bangalore where they are made into pellets for paving roads.

A solar water heater and a traditional Gujarat boiler provide hot showers for guests. The resort’s organic farm supplies fresh, chemical-free veggies for guest meals and herb oil extracts for the spa. Guests can also splash about in the chlorine-free swimming pool.

“We use aquatic plants to clean and oxygenate the fully natural pool – a first in India and a rare one in a tropical climate,” says Ramkumar...

Guests get to pick from a smorgasbord of activities. The Village boasts the first resort in the world to issue a bullock cart-driving licence. Or indulge in traditional village games like gilli-danda (similar to cricket), top spinning and kite-flying. Guests can learn the art of rangoli (floor painting with intricate designs) or take short excursions to the Nrityagam dance school or to a 10th century monolithic temple...

innovative operator also revives traditional Indian arts. Murals painted by rural artists adorn the guestrooms and replicas of Hero stones dot the resort landscapes. Unique to Karnataka, the hero stones, or veerakallu, are stone engravings and sculptures of heroic kings and knights of ancient times....