Plastic free Gurukul

Gurukul Community.Com: Towards Green Gurukul, Plastic Free Gurukul

Plastic waste stifles hydel project on Beas

Plastic waste stifles hydel project on Beas

Sat, Jun 28 03:01 AM

Tourism is taking its toll on the Larji Hydel project. While plastic is choking Beas, polythenes and bottles are flowing downwards from Rohtang Pass to the 126 MW hydel project on the river. The recent heavy downpours have swept down the plastic waste left behind by tourists in Manali and Rohtang Pass to the hydel project.

While Manali Municipal Committee Chairperson Naveen Thakur claims that efforts to curb plastic menace by banning plastic bags and removing plastic waste have been on for some time now, this tourist season, the problem has cropped up afresh.

Ajay Mittal, HPSEB Chairman and state's Principal Secretary (Power), says: "On a daily basis, we remove tonnes of plastic waste that gets accumulated at the barrage site. At times, the garbage slips into the machines as well. This could hit power generation and damage the machines."

Till now, the HPSEB has been clearing the plastic waste manually. "Our men go down into the river, close to the barrage and remove heaps of plastic. It is not only plastic bottles but also beer bottles that get stuck here," says D R Sharma, Superintending Engineer at Larji. The annual expenditure incurred in clearing the garbage exceeds Rs 1 crore, say officials.

Harinder Hira, Principal Secretary (Environment and Scientific Technologies) says: "I have directed Deputy Commissioner of Kullu, M Sudha Devi, to start a campaign for clearing all plastic garbage in the area."

Mittal has directed engineers to devise a way to ensure regular removal of plastic garbage from the river. "Cleaning of the river is an arduous task, but we have to do it to protect the project."

Climate Change Linked to National Security : Now the major players can act

Climate Change Linked to National Security
By PAMELA HESS
June 25, 2008



Global warming is likely to increase illegal immigration, create humanitarian disasters and destabilize precarious governments in political hot spots, all of which could affect U.S. national security, according to an assessment by U.S. intelligence agencies.

Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and Central and Southeast Asia are most vulnerable to warming-related drought, flooding, extreme weather and hunger. The intelligence assessment warns of the global impact from the spillover: increased migration and "water-related disputes," according to prepared remarks by Tom Fingar, deputy director of national intelligence for analysis, who was scheduled to speak before a joint House committee hearing.

"We judge that the most significant impact for the United States will be indirect and result from climate-driven effects on many other countries and their potential to seriously affect U.S. national security interests," Fingar stated.
Related

The national intelligence assessment on the national security implications of global climate change to 2030 is one of a series of periodic intelligence reports that offer the consensus judgment of top analysts at all 16 U.S. spy agencies on major foreign policy, security and global economic issues. Congress requested the report last year.

The assessment deals with the projected effects of climate change, and not just the negative ones. It predicts modest improvements in agricultural yields in North America and more water resources in South America. It predicts that most U.S. allies will have the means to cope economically. Fingar says, however, that unspecified "regional partners" could face severe problems.

Fingar states that the quality of the analysis is hampered by the fact that climate data tend not to focus on specific countries but rather on broad global changes.

Africa is among the most vulnerable regions, the report states. An expected increase in droughts there could cut agricultural yields of rain-dependent crops by up to half in the next 12 years.

Creation of the US Environmental Protection Agency

Cuyahoga River Catches Fire (1969)
Described in a Time magazine article as a river that "oozes rather than flows" and a waterway in which a person "does not drown but decays,” Ohio's Cuyahoga River used to be so heavily polluted that it actually caught fire on a number of occasions. The river fire of 1969, which received national media attention, helped spur the environmental movement of the late 1960s and prompted the creation of the US Environmental Protection Agency. What sparked a 1936 fire on the river?

For more details: United States Environmental Protection Agency, Cuyahoga River Area of Concern, June 20th, 2007.

Al Gore looks to India to lead climate change fight

India Today Conclave
India Today ConclaveEvent CoverageDay 3 March 15, '08



Al Gore looks to India to lead climate change fight
Saurabh Shukla
New Delhi, March 15, 2008




"Become activist citizens; India can lead the way on climate change," global eco-warrior and former US Vice-President Al Gore said today.

Al Gore was speaking at the concluding session “Leadership For 21st Century” at the India Today Conclave 2008 in New Delhi.

"Have pollution taxes, reduce other taxes," proposed the Nobel Peace Laureate for 2007, adding that this was the mantra many countries had adopted.

Ringing the alarm bells on the global crisis of climate change, Al Gore said: "We face a planetary emergency. The change of thinking has to happen in India, changing the laws is more important."

Al Gore – an Oscar winner for his movie An Inconvenient Truth and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for creating awareness on climate change – said the sense of urgency on tackling climate change is still not there. "Advanced developing countries like India have to provide leadership," he said.

Asked why countries were not doing enough to address the crisis, Al Gore said: "India has a big role to play, India is not doing it because the US is not doing. We share each other’s excuses for not safeguarding the planet."

AL Gore
Climate change shouldn't be treated as a political problem but a moral imperative, says Al Gore
"The goal is to evoke an effective response that requires mass action," he added.

Al Gore was candid in admitting that the US needs to do much more on climate change. He said US – the single largest emitter of global emissions – has done the least in solving the problem. "The US should be providing leadership which it is not. We need to see it not as a political problem but as a moral imperative."

Al Gore said the opportunity is far more than the danger that climate crisis poses. "We must see the opportunity and rise to it for the future generations to undertake work to do our part and do it well."

Articulating his concerns on the climate change crisis, Al Gore often had the audience in splits. "I am a recovering politician," he said.

"I flew on Air Force Two for eight years, now I have to take my shoes off to get on an airplane," Al Gore earlier said to a loud applause.

Asked why he didn’t do enough about climate change when in power, Al Gore said: "I did everything I could do while I was Vice-President. I went to Kyoto against the advice of everyone, but I was not able to convince more than one out of 100 senators to ratify it. But they feared they will be defeated."

"I realised this (climate change issue) could be solved if there is a sense of urgency and a sea change in public opinion."

Earlier Aroon Purie, Editor-in-Chief, India Today, welcomed Al Gore for the event’s gala dinner. "Al, you are a rock star today in your own right. Your work on climate change is pure genius, you have made climate change a sexy subject," Purie said, complementing the global leader on sensitising the world to the dangers of climate change.

Right and Left together on ecocrisis

tag: environment

Rising sea threatens Bapu's Dandi

Rising sea threatens Bapu's Dandi
7 Jun 2008, 0441 hrs IST,Hitarth Pandya & Melvyn Thomas,TNN

SURAT/BHAVNAGAR: Has global warming started wreaking havoc on Gujarat's winding coastline? A high tide in the Arabian Sea doesn't normally create panic.

But on Friday its rising waters threatened to drown Saifee Villa where Mahatma Gandhi had taken on the British by picking up a pinch of salt at Dandi. Besides, waters were not too far away from Iran Shah, where the Parsis have kept the Holy Fire at Udwada.

Seawater also entered some coastal villages of Surat and Bhavnagar. An alert has also been sounded at Alang, asking fishermen not to venture into the sea. In Bhavnagar, Katpur, Kotda and Jashwantpura villages saw seawaters entering their fields.

"The water has already reached near Dastoor Bag. One can see the water at the rear compound wall of Atash Behram. Generally this happens during the monsoon but this time, it has happened before the monsoon," said local resident Shukkar Tandel at Udwada.

At Dandi, the water reached the makeshift police chowky at the beach. "I had to warn tourists not to go too close to the water since it was deep. Had there been a marginal increase in the water level, it would have entered the village," said forest official PH Mahida at Dandi beach.

Magan Patel, sarpanch of Dabhari village in Surat, said: "A road separates our village from the sea but it was inundated on Friday. We had a similar situation in 1998 when seawaters had entered the village washing away the earthen embankments. This time too the embankment was washed away."

Manish Lodhari, secretary of National Fish Workers' Association said the sea along coastal Saurashtra was volatile.

Biofuels - Harm to the Environment

Biofuel: Bad for the Environment?
Researchers Say Biofuels Could Do More Harm to the Planet Than Good
By ASHLEY PHILLIPS
Feb. 7, 2008



As the debate over what do about human-caused global warming increases and "green fever" sweeps the nation, many environmentalists and politicians have viewed biofuel as a logical replacement for fossil fuels.


But two new studies released Thursday call into question the global movement toward biofuel. According to these researchers, production of biofuel actually contributes to global warming, doing more harm than good.

The studies, one conducted by Minnesota-based Nature Conservancy and one by Princeton University, examined the same issue: What environmental impact does growing vegetation used for biofuel have on global warming?

U.S. demand for ethanol crops like corn, soy and switchgrass has resulted in the conversion across the globe of natural habitats – like grasslands and rainforests – into fuel-ready farmland, according to the studies. That development has released mass amounts of carbon into the air, researchers said.

"You ask the world's farmers to produce energy and that's going to take additional land and that land has to come from somewhere. Unfortunately, much of it is coming from our natural ecosystem. What's the consequence of that?" Joe Fargione, the regional science director for the Nature Conservancy and the lead author of one study, told ABCNews.com. "If you imagine a grassland and a cornfield, there's much more carbon in the grassland soil. When you convert a grassland into a cornfield, that carbon has to go somewhere. It goes into the air as carbon dioxide and contributes to global warming."

"Any biofuel that causes the clearing of natural ecosystems will increase global warming," he continued.

In the Princeton study, which was led by Timothy Searchinger, a German Marshall Fund fellow and a researcher at Princeton University, numbers told a striking story.

Past data that has outlined the benefits of biofuels didn't include the issues surrounding the impact of land use and the carbon released into the air as a result, both studies said.

Using models that calculated carbon emissions in various countries, the Princeton researchers found that the production of corn-based ethanol nearly doubles greenhouse emissions over 30 years and increases greenhouse gasses for 167 years. Similarly, biofuels made from switchgrass, if grown on land originally intended for corn, increase carbon emissions by 50 percent.

$45 Trillion Needed to cut greenhouse gases in half by 2050

$45 Trillion Needed to Combat Warming
New study calls for $45 trillion to cut greenhouse gases in half by 2050
By JOSEPH COLEMAN Associated Press Writer
TOKYO June 6, 2008 (AP)
The Associated Press


The world needs to invest $45 trillion in energy in coming decades, build some 1,400 nuclear power plants and vastly expand wind power in order to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, according to an energy study released Friday.

The report by the Paris-based International Energy Agency envisions a "energy revolution" that would greatly reduce the world's dependence on fossil fuels while maintaining steady economic growth.

"Meeting this target of 50 percent cut in emissions represents a formidable challenge, and we would require immediate policy action and technological transition on an unprecedented scale," IEA Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka said.

A U.N.-network of scientists concluded last year that emissions have to be cut by at least half by 2050 to avoid an increase in world temperatures of between 3.6 and 4.2 degrees above pre-18th century levels.


Scientists say temperature increases beyond that could trigger devastating effects, such as widespread loss of species, famines and droughts, and swamping of heavily populated coastal areas by rising oceans.

Environment ministers from the Group of Eight industrialized countries and Russia backed the 50 percent target in a meeting in Japan last month and called for it to be officially endorsed at the G-8 summit in July.

The IEA report mapped out two main scenarios: one in which emissions are reduced to 2005 levels by 2050, and a second that would bring them to half of 2005 levels by mid-century.

The scenario for deeper cuts would require massive investment in energy technology development and deployment, a wide-ranging campaign to dramatically increase energy efficiency, and a wholesale shift to renewable sources of energy.

Assuming an average 3.3 percent global economic growth over the 2010-2050 period, governments and the private sector would have to make additional investments of $45 trillion in energy, or 1.1 percent of the world's gross domestic product, the report said.

'India won't cut greenhouse emissions’

Friday, June 06, 2008

'India won't cut greenhouse emissions’

New Delhi: India will not reduce greenhouse gas emissions at the cost of development, Minister of State for Environment and Forests Namo Narain Meena said Thursday.

“India is struggling to bring millions of people out of poverty. We cannot accept binding commitments to cut down greenhouse gas emission,” Meena said at a function to mark the World Environment Day.

Though India has no commitment to reduce the global warming gases under the Kyoto Protocol, in recent climate change conferences many developed countries have said India needs to reduce the greenhouse burden.

Meena, however, said climate change was becoming a crucial issue, and needed immediate action. He added that consumptive lifestyle was putting severe pressure on biological resources. “Each of us has to become a saviour of the environment.”

“Each of us can help curb the adverse impact of climate change,” he said adding that afforestation will go a long way in reducing the carbon level in the atmosphere as “forest is the natural sink for CO2.”

S. Regupathy, who is also the minister of state for environment and forests, has said the World Environment Day provides an opportunity every year to reaffirm the commitments to work towards the sustainable conservation of environment.

Source: Indo-Asian News Service

Poor countries appeal to rein in global warming

Uphill Battle Marks New Round of Climate Talks in Germany Amid Concern by Poorer Nations
By ARTHUR MAX
June 2, 2008

(source:ABC News: Technology & Science)

Poor countries appealed to a 162-nation climate conference Monday to move faster on an agreement to rein in global warming, saying they already are suffering from floods and cyclones brought on by rising temperatures. The appeal came at the opening of a two-week meeting where the 2,000 delegates intend to start tackling the details of a new climate change agreement that is to take effect after 2012. "We are concerned over the slow progress of the last two years," said Amjad Abdulla of the Maldives, speaking for a group known as the Least Developed Countries. Climate change "for us is not a distant reality, but a present reality," he said. The recent cyclones that have battered Myanmar and Bangladesh "should be a wake-up call to all of us." The Bonn meeting builds on a landmark accord reached last December on the Indonesian island of Bali. For the first time, the United States, China and India had indicated they would join a coordinated effort to control the carbon emissions blamed for global warming. In Bali, delegates agreed to conclude a new climate change treaty by December 2009. They later adopted a negotiating timetable at another conference in Bangkok. "We have to roll our sleeves up and get down to work," Yvo de Boer, the U.N.'s top climate change official, said in an interview Sunday. Scientists say the world's carbon emissions must peak within the next 10 to 15 years and then fall by half by mid-century to avoid potentially catastrophic changes in weather patterns, a rise in sea levels that would threaten coastal cities and the mass extinction of plants and animals. The new climate change pact will succeed the first phase of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which requires 37 industrialized nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. Delegates in Bonn will begin work on how to help developing countries adapt to anticipated changes in their climate, on transferring new technologies to help them avoid hefty carbon emissions as they expand their economies, and on how to raise the trillions of dollars required over the next decades to curb climate change.

Bisop on Green Taxes

A new green tax covenant
from Pickled Politics by Rumbold

With the price of oil climbing ever higher, there is increasing anger at the level at which petrol is taxed in this country. Britain has the second most expensive fuel in Europe (Germany is top), and it is tax that accounts for the majority of the cost. Protestors want Gordon Brown to reduce the tax on fuel, while environmentalists urge him to resist in the hope that people will use less oil in the future, and/or switch to alternative fuels.

Despite believing that man is contributing to climate change, many people are justifiably suspicious that green taxes, which are theoretically designed to encourage people to adopt a more environmentally-friendly lifestyle, are just an excuse for the government to raise more money. A few people still think that man has nothing to do with climate change, but then they are just incestuous paedophilic kidnappers, according to the Bishop of Stafford.

Let us assume for the moment that green taxes are effective, in that they will lead to people being in a more environmentally-friendly manner. These taxes are thus desirable, so long as the overall tax burden does not rise. There is a simple enough way to convince people that green taxes are not just another means by which the government raises revenue; every pound raised by green taxes should be matched in cuts on income tax, by raising the threshold at which people start to pay income tax. Moreover, the tax on oil should be reclassified, so that 25% of the tax counts as a green tax. This 25% would then be spent on the basic state pension.

Therefore, without raising the overall tax burden, the government can encourage people to behave in a more environmentally-friendly manner (good), raise the threshold at which income tax is paid (good, and which benefits the lowest paid the most), and increase the basic state pension (good, and which benefits the poorest pensioners the most).