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A thousand whacky ideas may bring a few answers

Feb 11th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

PLANTING nut trees and salvaging old frying fat to make biodiesel are among ideas devised by communities across Britain competing for government money to fight climate change. Twenty-two struck lucky. Over the past two months the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has given these winners of the Low Carbon Community Challenge (LCCC) grants of up to £500,000 ($780,000). Most of the projects involve small communities of 1,000 to 3,000 people planning a mix of measures such as new hydro-, wind, solar and biomass power; home insulation; electric transport and growing their own food.

This may seem small beer given Britain’s target of an 80% cut in greenhouse- gas emissions by 2050. But by letting a thousand flowers bloom, DECC wants to understand “what is and isn’t working…on the ground,” said Joan Ruddock, minister for energy and climate change, on February 8th. Many local councils have appointed climate-change officials. A plethora of foundations offer advice and support. But there is nothing like a bit of competition to stiffen sinews.

DECC is seizing a moment which may be brief. It announced the challenge in July, awarded the first ten grants in December and another 12 on February 4th. Why the hurry? DECC was stitched together from the Department for Business and the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs late in 2008 and needs to make its mark soon. Moreover, an election looms, which may see Ms Ruddock and her boss, Ed Miliband, thrown out of office.

Most important, perhaps, the programme will coincide with the birth of electricity feed-in tariffs on April 1st. Small electricity providers with up to 5MW capacity will be able to sell their excess power to the grid at a subsidised premium. Many of the LCCC projects depend on getting repaid through such sales. Ministers hope the new tariffs will create up to 750,000 micro-power installations by 2020. (That may be overly optimistic: in Germany, where feed-in tariffs began in 2000, there were just 290,000 micro-power installations by the end of 2006.)

The question is whether these measures will make much difference. A study by the Royal Academy of Engineering suggests that small wind turbines are not cost-effective and that insulating homes is a better use of money. One LCCC project includes building 30 German-inspired Passiv houses, which require less than 15kWh per square metre per year to heat (a standard house uses 55kWh).

Fortunately for those that missed out on the latest handouts, there are other sources of cash. The South West has grand ambitions to make itself a renewable-energy powerhouse. Its Regional Development Agency (with some assistance from Europe) has financed the Wave Hub project in Cornwall, which will feed power from numerous offshore wave-power machines into the grid. Russell Geake at Community Energy Plus, a charity, thinks the county could save £260m a year on its energy bills.

Read this PDF to learn more:  Transition Initiatives Primer

Maria Cantwell and the politics of global warming

Feb 4th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

Illustration by KAL

NOT long after the flood, when Noah was safely back on dry land, God promised: “Never again will I curse the ground because of man…And never again will I destroy all living creatures.” The implication is clear. “Man will not destroy this earth,” says John Shimkus, a Bible-reading Republican congressman from Illinois. So there is no need to worry about global warming.

On January 28th, America formally pledged to the UN that it would reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions by 17% (from what they were in 2005) by 2020. But there was a planet-sized catch. Meeting the target will depend on getting a climate bill through Congress, and that will be horribly hard. A bill to erect a cap-and-trade system to curb carbon-dioxide emissions squeaked through the House of Representatives last summer. But similar bills have stalled in the Senate, where nearly anything big needs a supermajority to pass.

Various obstacles block the way. First, Barack Obama has not yet decided what to do about health care, and he cannot wage two domestic wars at once. Second, cap-and-trade is a tough sell. An increasing number of Americans, like Mr Shimkus, doubt the science. The proportion who believe there is “solid evidence” that the earth is warming fell from 71% in 2008 to 57% last year. Among Republicans, disbelief is the norm: only 35% think there is solid evidence of warming, according to a Pew poll. The news that some climate scientists tried to muzzle dissenting voices has spread like the common cold on conservative blogs, fuelling widespread suspicion that global warming is an elaborate hoax. Many climate sceptics are furious. “My Carbon Footprint Will Fit Nicely in Your Liberal Ass,” reads a typical T-shirt. Even among Americans who believe in global warming, there is little appetite for tackling it. A hefty 85% told Gallup that the government should place a higher priority on fixing the economy, with only 12% saying the opposite.

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Sustany is pleased to participate in the Stetson Law School internship program and offers a special thanks to Professor Roy Gardner, Jessica’s internship sponsor.

Read this PDF from NaturesAcademy with information about their new building.

Read this article by Connie Schultz (PDF)

Falling fertility

Oct 29th 2009
From The Economist print edition

Astonishing falls in the fertility rate are bringing with them big benefits

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THOMAS MALTHUS first published his “Essay on the Principle of Population”, in which he forecast that population growth would outstrip the world’s food supply, in 1798. His timing was unfortunate, for something started happening around then which made nonsense of his ideas. As industrialisation swept through what is now the developed world, fertility fell sharply, first in France, then in Britain, then throughout Europe and America. When people got richer, families got smaller; and as families got smaller, people got richer.

Now, something similar is happening in developing countries. Fertility is falling and families are shrinking in places— such as Brazil, Indonesia, and even parts of India—that people think of as teeming with children. As our briefing shows, the fertility rate of half the world is now 2.1 or less—the magic number that is consistent with a stable population and is usually called “the replacement rate of fertility”. Sometime between 2020 and 2050 the world’s fertility rate will fall below the global replacement rate.

Read the rest of the story here.