Emissions Trading

Emissions’ trading is a means of achieving environmental objectives at potentially lower cost than the more traditional use of uniform standards on emissions sources. Properly designed emissions trading systems can also encourage innovation.

A number of different types of emissions trading approaches have been used in the United States and elsewhere. The least structured, termed emission “offsets,” involves a reduction of emissions at one place to compensate for increased emissions somewhere else. Such offsets can be between different plants or different sources within the same plant. Offsets can be particularly useful in allowing new or expanded sources of pollution to exist in a region already failing to meet its environmental objectives.

A more ambitious approach, which requires additional governmental infrastructure, is the open-market trading system. This approach allows a pollution source to earn marketable emission rights by reducing its emissions to levels below a regulatory standard or by making reductions in advance of a prescribed deadline. The credits earned may be sold to other sources and used to offset an equal amount of excess emissions. The credits may also be resold or (where allowed) banked for future use. Open-market trading has not been formally implemented in the United States.

Still more ambitious, flexible, and demanding in terms of government infrastructure is a cap-and-trade system, where sources in an area may trade pollution reduction responsibilities among themselves to meet an aggregate emissions cap for a given region. Under this system, the regulatory authorities decide on the aggregate level of allowable emissions for all the parties participating in the program (the "cap") and then it allocates to each party a portion of this amount in the form of "allowances," which are tradable rights to pollute. Once allowances are allocated, parties are prohibited from emitting more pollution than their allocation, unless they purchase additional allowances from another party.

The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) acid rain program, widely hailed a success from both environmental and economic perspectives, is the most prominent example of the cap-and-trade type of emissions trading. Emission reductions are ahead of schedule and the costs are considerably lower than anticipated.

Emissions’ trading has several potential advantages compared to traditional regulatory approaches. Firms are free to use the options they believe to be most cost-effective, and they do not need to seek approval from government authorities or engage in lengthy negotiations about the "appropriateness" of their actions. At the same time, some remain skeptical of emissions trading, on both ethical and technical grounds. One thing that is widely agreed upon is that credible monitoring systems are essential to ensure the environmental integrity of emissions trading regimes.

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Emissions Trading

Encyclopedia of Public Health: Emissions Trading

Emissions’ trading is a means of achieving environmental objectives at potentially lower cost than the more traditional use of uniform standards on emissions sources. Properly designed emissions trading systems can also encourage innovation.

A number of different types of emissions trading approaches have been used in the United States and elsewhere. The least structured, termed emission “offsets,” involves a reduction of emissions at one place to compensate for increased emissions somewhere else. Such offsets can be between different plants or different sources within the same plant. Offsets can be particularly useful in allowing new or expanded sources of pollution to exist in a region already failing to meet its environmental objectives.

A more ambitious approach, which requires additional governmental infrastructure, is the open-market trading system. This approach allows a pollution source to earn marketable emission rights by reducing its emissions to levels below a regulatory standard or by making reductions in advance of a prescribed deadline. The credits earned may be sold to other sources and used to offset an equal amount of excess emissions. The credits may also be resold or (where allowed) banked for future use. Open-market trading has not been formally implemented in the United States.

Still more ambitious, flexible, and demanding in terms of government infrastructure is a cap-and-trade system, where sources in an area may trade pollution reduction responsibilities among themselves to meet an aggregate emissions cap for a given region. Under this system, the regulatory authorities decide on the aggregate level of allowable emissions for all the parties participating in the program (the "cap") and then it allocates to each party a portion of this amount in the form of "allowances," which are tradable rights to pollute. Once allowances are allocated, parties are prohibited from emitting more pollution than their allocation, unless they purchase additional allowances from another party.

The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) acid rain program, widely hailed a success from both environmental and economic perspectives, is the most prominent example of the cap-and-trade type of emissions trading. Emission reductions are ahead of schedule and the costs are considerably lower than anticipated.

Emissions’ trading has several potential advantages compared to traditional regulatory approaches. Firms are free to use the options they believe to be most cost-effective, and they do not need to seek approval from government authorities or engage in lengthy negotiations about the "appropriateness" of their actions. At the same time, some remain skeptical of emissions trading, on both ethical and technical grounds. One thing that is widely agreed upon is that credible monitoring systems are essential to ensure the environmental integrity of emissions trading regimes.

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PanAmerican Properties on Carbon Credits

Informative web site on carbon credits and how paulownia is used in reforestation for CER's. There is a glossary of terms on the site & examples of typical documents in the industry.

clipped from paulowniapanama.org A Mature Managed Paulownia Farm Everything is always impossible before it works. That is what entrepreneurs are all about--doing what people have told them is impossible.

Paulownia vs Balsa

Paulownia Wood... the Cheaper, Stronger Alternative to Balsa Wood

Balsa has been incorrectly considered to have the highest strength to weight ratios of any wood in the world.

Paulownia has been thoroughly tested and found to have a higher strength to weight ratio than Balsa!

Auburn University tested the strength of 18 lb p/cubic ft. Paulownia against Balsa, with an average weight of 10 lbs p/cubic foot.

(See Table 1)

Strength modus of rupture mor (psi)
Balsa 2800
Paulownia 5740
- Source: Dr. R.C. Tang, Auburn University

Some Balsa core material is sliced at 3/8 inch with end-grained material. Paulownia can be cut at 3/16 and offer approximately the same strength and weight. Paulownia offers a space saving benefit, being cut half as thick. There is also a significant cost savings because half as much material is needed.

Lighter grades of Paulownia weigh only 14lbs per cubic foot. This is lighter than many Balsa grades.

When considering the large amount of epoxy that Balsa soaks up, Paulownia gains an even larger weight advantage.

Paulownia is easily carved and can hold nails and screws without splitting. It also provides greater stability and flexibility for making molds and models.

Paulownia Lumber Characteristics

Tags: paulownia, lumber characteristics, paulownia strength, balsa, aluminum of hardwood, conductivity, fire resistant, insect resistant

Lightweight

Paulownia is about 2/3 the weight of the lightest commercial wood grown in the US. It weighs an average of 14 to 19 lbs per cubic foot. Paulownia is almost 1/3 the weight of Oak (44 lbs p/cubic ft) and half the weight of Pine (30 lbs p/cubic ft).

The specific gravity of Paulownia ranges between 0.23 to 0.30 (23 to 30% of the density of water).

Strength

Paulownia has one of the highest strength to weight ratios of any wood.

Strength modus of rupture MOR (psi) of Paulownia is 5740.

Paulownia holds nails and screws well and does not require pilot holes to be drilled. In fact both yellow poplar and white pine have proven to split before Paulownia. Flat head screws can be driven flush with the surface.

Plantation grown Paulownia is mostly knot free, making it very consistent.

Workability

Paulownia has been widely used in the orient for fine furniture, musical instruments, carvings and decorative finishes for over 1000 years. It can be peeled for veneer in 1/16 inch thickness and has even been sliced at 1/32 inch.

Intricate patterns can be cut with a jig saw or band saw without splitting easily. Paulownia has been a favorite for many carvers in the US. Furniture, doors and windows can be made with close tolerances. All normal finishing materials can be applied and it bonds well with glue.

Stability

Air-drying takes as little as 30 days. Boards can be kiln dried at high temperatures in as little as 24 hours to 10% to 12% moisture content with no warping. Reported shrinkage from green to oven-dry is only 2.2% radial and 4.0% tangential.

Paulownia remains stable during changes in humidity and experiences little shrinkage or expansion compared to most other woods. It is highly durable and resists decay under non-ground contact conditions. The wood is insect resistant.

Conductivity

Paulownia is a very good insulator. Paulownia log homes are said to have twice the R factor as pine or oak logs. This temperature resistance serves to give the wood a high fire resistance. Ignition temperature is approximately 400 deg. C. which is almost twice many conventional American hard and soft woods.

Attractiveness

Paulownia has a light blond appearance and resembles White Ash. It stains well with a variety of colors and can be made to mimic other woods. Once planed a silky luster is revealed. The feel is also very silky.

For more information on paulownia or to purchase paulownia seeds or seedlings (elongata, fortunei, tomentosa) please refer to http://www.paulownianow.org or http://www.panampro.com

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In US bill, a potential climate-forest model for Europe

Tags: greenhouse gas, carbon credits, climate change, conservation, reforestation, EPA,Waxman-Markey legislation, Kyoto protocol, paulownia

By Jeff Horowitz

The tropical forest provisions in the recently passed Waxman-Markey legislation represent a rare area of emerging US leadership on climate policy – one that will create a new era for forests, tropical development and carbon markets.

If these provisions are enacted into law and equaled or surpassed by other developed nations, the world can rapidly (and affordability) reduce and reverse deforestation, eliminating the 20 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions caused by deforestation and provide a sustainable route to prosperity for the planet’s millions of forest dependent people.

The legislation bridges a political gap that has long plagued efforts to tackle climate change in the US and around the world: the dispute over whether companies should be able to receive credit for investing in tropical forest conservation or whether efforts to protect forests should rely exclusively on government funding.

Instead of continuing to debate these questions while the planet’s forests burn (300 million acres of forests have been lost since the Kyoto protocol excluded tropical forest protections in 1997), major US environmental groups and companies decided to do something about it – and entered a negotiating process facilitated by Jeff Horowitz, the founder of Avoided Deforestation Partners.

This process yielded a major insight: it’s not a choice between governments and markets. Rather, both government funding and incentives for private investment are essential to end deforestation – and will build on one another.

This insight was embodied in a Forest-Climate Unity Agreement signed by groups and companies across the ideological spectrum, from the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council to the Environmental Defense Fund, Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy, American Electric Power and Duke Energy.

With such a powerful alliance behind it, policy makers took note and the Waxman-Markey legislation broadly reflects this consensus. First, it sets aside five per cent of the bill’s emissions allowances to help tropical government’s end illegal logging, conduct conservation activities to which markets may not be suited, and build the capacity they need to meet the legislation’s strict requirements for participation in carbon markets.

Companies can only get credit for reducing emissions from forest conservation once the reductions have already occurred – and either they or EPA has to compensate for any subsequent reversals that occur because of fire, logging, or other intentional or unintentional activities.

In major emitting countries such as Brazil and Indonesia, companies can receive credit only if conservation activities are part of a national plan that ensures a countrywide reduction in deforestation, not just a local one. In the program’s early years, conservation projects run through major emitting states and provinces will also be eligible, as will projects in small-emitting countries that are working to develop national plans for reducing deforestation.

Critically, no conservation will receive credit unless biodiversity is protected, and indigenous and forest-dependent people share in the proceeds. Consider the numbers: by 2015, the combination of the set-aside funding and offsets will generate $12-15 billion annual investment in tropical forest conservation, preventing the destruction of millions of hectares of forest and reducing pollution by a conservatively estimated one billion tons of CO2 a year – equivalent to wiping away all of Germany’s pollution.

Many of these funds will go directly to forest dependent and indigenous communities – and for the first time on a large scale, the quest for a better life will be tied to conservation of the earth’s natural treasures, not their destruction.

The legislation also credits environmentally-sound reforestation and afforestation activities, giving hope that the millions of acres of forests that have already been destroyed might one day approach something like their former glory (and carbon storage capacity).

All this is achieved on an extremely affordable basis. EPA has estimated the bill would be 89 per cent more expensive without international offsets, most of which will be forest based, allowing the US to take on more ambitious emissions reduction targets than would otherwise have been politically possible.

That could be an important insight for European countries and others with stronger pollution reduction targets than the US: although they’re starting from a better baseline, including affordable, high quality tropical forest offsets in their climate policies would allow these countries to achieve even greater pollution reductions at the same economic and political cost –with extraordinary benefits for the climate.

For more information on carbon credits and REDDs and reforestation you may read www.paulownianow.org and www.panampro.com which explains how paulownia acts as a carbon sink helping to restore the environment.

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In US bill, a potential climate-forest model for Europe

By Glenn Hurowitz, Avoided Deforestation Partners Tags: greenhouse gas, carbon credits, climate change, conservation, reforestation, EPA, Waxman-Markey legislation, Kyoto protocol, paulownia

The tropical forest provisions in the recently passed Waxman-Markey legislation represent a rare area of emerging US leadership on climate policy – one that will create a new era for forests, tropical development and carbon markets.

If these provisions are enacted into law and equaled or surpassed by other developed nations, the world can rapidly (and affordably) reduce and reverse deforestation, eliminating the 20 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions caused by deforestation and provide a sustainable route to prosperity for the planet’s millions of forest dependent people.

The legislation bridges a political gap that has long plagued efforts to tackle climate change in the US and around the world: the dispute over whether companies should be able to receive credit for investing in tropical forest conservation or whether efforts to protect forests should rely exclusively on government funding.

Instead of continuing to debate these questions while the planet’s forests burn (300 million acres of forests have been lost since the Kyoto protocol excluded tropical forest protections in 1997), major US environmental groups and companies decided to do something about it – and entered a negotiating process facilitated by Jeff Horowitz, the founder of Avoided Deforestation Partners.

This process yielded a major insight: it’s not a choice between governments and markets. Rather, both government funding and incentives for private investment are essential to end deforestation – and will build on one another.

This insight was embodied in a Forest-Climate Unity Agreement signed by groups and companies across the ideological spectrum, from the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council to the Environmental Defense Fund, Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy, American Electric Power and Duke Energy.

With such a powerful alliance behind it, policy makers took note and the Waxman-Markey legislation broadly reflects this consensus. First, it sets aside five per cent of the bill’s emissions allowances to help tropical government’s end illegal logging, conduct conservation activities to which markets may not be suited, and build the capacity they need to meet the legislation’s strict requirements for participation in carbon markets.

Companies can only get credit for reducing emissions from forest conservation once the reductions have already occurred – and either they or EPA has to compensate for any subsequent reversals that occur because of fire, logging, or other intentional or unintentional activities.

In major emitting countries such as Brazil and Indonesia, companies can receive credit only if conservation activities are part of a national plan that ensures a countrywide reduction in deforestation, not just a local one. In the program’s early years, conservation projects run through major emitting states and provinces will also be eligible, as will projects in small-emitting countries that are working to develop national plans for reducing deforestation.

Critically, no conservation will receive credit unless biodiversity is protected, and indigenous and forest-dependent people share in the proceeds. Consider the numbers: by 2015, the combination of the set-aside funding and offsets will generate $12-15 billion annual investment in tropical forest conservation, preventing the destruction of millions of hectares of forest and reducing pollution by a conservatively estimated one billion tons of CO2 a year – equivalent to wiping away all of Germany’s pollution.

Many of these funds will go directly to forest dependent and indigenous communities – and for the first time on a large scale, the quest for a better life will be tied to conservation of the earth’s natural treasures, not their destruction.

The legislation also credits environmentally-sound reforestation and afforestation activities, giving hope that the millions of acres of forests that have already been destroyed might one day approach something like their former glory (and carbon storage capacity).

All this is achieved on an extremely affordable basis. EPA has estimated the bill would be 89 per cent more expensive without international offsets, most of which will be forest based, allowing the US to take on more ambitious emissions reduction targets than would otherwise have been politically possible.

That could be an important insight for European countries and others with stronger pollution reduction targets than the US: although they’re starting from a better baseline, including affordable, high quality tropical forest offsets in their climate policies would allow these countries to achieve even greater pollution reductions at the same economic and political cost –with extraordinary benefits for the climate.

For more information on carbon credits and REDDs  and reforestation you may read www.paulownianow.org and www.panampro.com which explains how paulownia acts as a carbon sink helping to restore the environment.

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Earth Day is Upon Us: What Can I Do?

Tags: global warming, Earth Day, ecosystems, extinction, environment

April 22, 2009, marks the 39th celebration of Earth Day, a time when people around the world hold events to honor our home planet -- and to remind everyone about the importance of our ecosystem. Founded in 1970 by Gaylord Nelson, a former United States senator from Wisconsin, Earth Day has grown into a global event. In 1970, 20 million Americans demonstrated in streets, parks, and auditoriums for a healthier, cleaner environment. This year, hundreds of millions of people in more than 180 countries are expected to participate in Earth Day activities around the world.

How the First Earth Day Came About

By Senator Gaylord Nelson, Founder of Earth Day

What was the purpose of Earth Day? How did it start? These are the questions I am most frequently asked.

Actually, the idea for Earth Day evolved over a period of seven years starting in 1962. For several years, it had been troubling me that the state of our environment was simply a non-issue in the politics of the country. Finally, in November 1962, an idea occurred to me that was, I thought, a virtual cinch to put the environment into the political "limelight" once and for all. The idea was to persuade President Kennedy to give visibility to this issue by going on a national conservation tour. I flew to Washington to discuss the proposal with Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who liked the idea. So did the President. The President began his five-day, eleven-state conservation tour in September 1963. For many reasons the tour did not succeed in putting the issue onto the national political agenda. However, it was the germ of the idea that ultimately flowered into Earth Day.

I continued to speak on environmental issues to a variety of audiences in some twenty-five states. All across the country, evidence of environmental degradation was appearing everywhere, and everyone noticed except the political establishment. The environmental issue simply was not to be found on the nation's political agenda. The people were concerned, but the politicians were not.

After President Kennedy's tour, I still hoped for some idea that would thrust the environment into the political mainstream. Six years would pass before the idea that became Earth Day occurred to me while on a conservation speaking tour out West in the summer of 1969. At the time, anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, called "teach-ins," had spread to college campuses all across the nation. Suddenly, the idea occurred to me - why not organize a huge grassroots protest over what was happening to our environment?

I was satisfied that if we could tap into the environmental concerns of the general public and infuse the student anti-war energy into the environmental cause, we could generate a demonstration that would force this issue onto the political agenda. It was a big gamble, but worth a try.

At a conference in Seattle in September 1969, I announced that in the spring of 1970 there would be a nationwide grassroots demonstration on behalf of the environment and invited everyone to participate. The wire services carried the story from coast to coast. The response was electric. It took off like gangbusters. Telegrams, letters, and telephone inquiries poured in from all across the country. The American people finally had a forum to express its concern about what was happening to the land, rivers, lakes, and air - and they did so with spectacular exuberance. For the next four months, two members of my Senate staff, Linda Billings and John Heritage, managed Earth Day affairs out of my Senate office.

Five months before Earth Day, on Sunday, November 30, 1969, The New York Times carried a lengthy article by Gladwin Hill reporting on the astonishing proliferation of environmental events:

"Rising concern about the environmental crisis is sweeping the nation's campuses with an intensity that may be on its way to eclipsing student discontent over the war in Vietnam...a national day of observance of environmental problems...is being planned for next spring...when a nationwide environmental 'teach-in'...coordinated from the office of Senator Gaylord Nelson is planned...."

It was obvious that we were headed for a spectacular success on Earth Day. It was also obvious that grassroots activities had ballooned beyond the capacity of my U.S. Senate office staff to keep up with the telephone calls, paper work, inquiries, etc. In mid-January, three months before Earth Day, John Gardner, Founder of Common Cause, provided temporary space for a Washington, D.C. headquarters. I staffed the office with college students and selected Denis Hayes as coordinator of activities.

Earth Day worked because of the spontaneous response at the grassroots level. We had neither the time nor resources to organize 20 million demonstrators and the thousands of schools and local communities that participated. That was the remarkable thing about Earth Day. It organized itself.

Did You Know There Are Actually Two Earth Day’s?

International Earth Day

March 20 is the International Earth Day, you may say isn’t Earth Day April 22? Well, yes there are two different Earth Days, The International Earth Day on March 20 and Earth Day on April 22. There are different origins and they both started about the same time.

The March 20 observance of International Earth Day started in 1969 with the proposal to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and it was followed by an Earth Day Proclamation by the City. Then in 1971, at the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organizations) Conference in San Francisco John McConnell proposed International Earth Day and it was signed by U.N. Secretary General U Thant. To date, a total of 39 world leaders, such as, Yasir Arafat, Yehudi Menuhin, Cosmonaut Anatoli Berezevoi Margaret Mead, and John Gardner have signed leaving space for one more signature.

Margaret Mead wrote an Earth Day Essay featured by International News Service.
This quote by Margaret Mead says it all “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.”

On 1974 McConnell, discussed his Earth Right proposal at the United Nations Raw Materials Conference his with Sheik Yamani of Saudi Arabia, and other leading delegates. McConnell later stated at the United Nations Church Center, “Underlying property rights and sovereignty rights is the fundamental right of every person on Earth to an equal share in Earth’s raw materials and natural resources.”In 2007 Weekly Reader Research surveyed 1,657 students between ages 6 and 18 from schools around the country. The organization found that 64 percent of America's youth have discussed the environment and global warming in class, and a majority (especially girls) expressed concern.

Still, most people are not freaking out over the prospect of climate change, the Gallup polling organization finds.

"While Americans say they are worried about global warming, they also believe the worst manifestations of the problem are a long way off," writes Lydia Saad of the Gallup News Service in her analysis of a poll taken last month.

Gallup asked Americans how worried they are about seven weather events tied to climate change including hurricanes, droughts, rising ocean levels, tropical diseases, and species extinction.

"Generally speaking, not much more than one-third of Americans are 'very worried' about any of the seven effects of global warming measured in the survey," says Ms. Saad. "However, a solid majority are at least 'somewhat worried' about nearly all of them."

At the same time, Gallup finds, Americans by a wide margin – 58 percent to 34 percent – think "the government should put a higher priority on protecting the environment than on increasing energy production." Even though 92 percent think the energy situation in the United States is "serious" (of whom 37 percent say "very serious"), those surveyed favor energy conservation over production by 64-26 percent.

"A lot more people seem willing to go the extra mile, spending a few dollars to help the environment," says Steve Haskins, a Williamstown, Mass., home builder, who's seen a rapid increase in the numbers of requests for sustainable building practices. "Concern about climate is driving it. But it's also cost of energy and cost to heat the house."

Corporate boardrooms are getting the message, too. "There's been a dramatic shift in the business community's attitude toward the environment," says Dan Esty, director of the Yale Center. "Rather than seeing environmental issues as a set of costs to bear, regulation to follow, and risks to manage, companies have begun to focus on the upside, recognizing that society's desire for action on climate change, in particular, will create a huge demand for reducing carbon-content products."

This year, April 22, the annual day to tout personal and community greenness, has a new emphasis for many people: global warming and its predicted effects on Mother Earth.

Around the country and around the world, a batch of recent opinion surveys show swelling public interest in and concern about climate change.

There is "a significant shift in public attitudes toward the environment and global warming [with] fully 83 percent of Americans now saying global warming is a 'serious' problem, up from 70 percent in 2004," reports the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy.

"The last six months have been the most rapid period of change in public awareness and attitudes on climate change that I've ever seen," says William Moomaw, a Tufts University climate expert and coauthor of the recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a UN-sponsored group of scientists.

Demand for climate-change briefings he's delivered for the past five years have jumped in the past year, says Dr. Moomaw. Audiences who were once polite are now actively engaged.

Do Your Part to Make a Difference!

· Encouraging your family to recycle on a regular basis is a good way to help the Earth!

· Switching to energy-efficient light bulbs in your house helps to reduce the effects of global warming.

· Every glass bottle you recycle saves enough energy to run a TV for an hour and a half, while recycling an aluminum can saves enough energy to run your TV for three hours!

· Turn out the lights when you leave a room - unless someone's still in there!

· Use re-usable containers for you school lunches and snack

· Plant a tree to replenish the earth. I recently visited a huge magnolia tree my grandmother and I planted 40 years ago at our old home. I recalled every detail of that long-ago day and felt a strong connection with the graceful beauty of that tree. If tree planting isn't feasible where you live, consider donating to a tree-planting organization. Sons of David Foundation is a nonprofit foundation dedicated to planting, maintaining, and protecting as many indigenous trees as possible worldwide. Find out more at www.paulownianow.org

Nature restores our sense of peace and allows us to feel life touching us--it soothes and nourishes our spirits and sometimes frightens us with its power. We make this gift available to our children as we teach them to become respectful of the earth, to walk with awareness, to recycle, and to leave no destructive record of their visit. The natural world is our perpetual, yet ever-changing link with the universe. God, nature, and child all share the same space, connected in the powerful web of life. All parts of the web have importance and purpose. Celebrate Earth Day as an opportunity to become reacquainted with our glorious Mother Earth. You and your child will be blessed by the effort.

A Party for the Earth!

Planet Earth has been around for a very long time. Some call the planet "Mother Earth". This is a good name because the Earth provides shelter and food for our survival, just as a mother protects and provides for her children. Even though the earth is tough and sturdy, it is also fragile.

The Earth's "ecosystems" (ekko-sis-tems) help it to stay in balance. Imagine a picture puzzle that has been put together. The person who has the puzzle can dust it off and take care of it and it will be like new for a long time. But if the puzzle is taken apart and put back together too many times, pieces of it will be torn and bent and probably smudged. Some pieces might even be lost, and then the picture wouldn't be the same at all.

When something damages one part of our ecosystems, it hurts the other parts.

When any living thing on Earth is having problems surviving and continuing its species, it is endangered. If the problems are not solved, there is a chance that it might become extinct. When something becomes extinct, it means that it doesn't exist anymore. Over the years, many mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, insects and plants have become extinct. Quite a few are on the endangered list now. Could there ever come a time when Earth becomes extinct?

Earth has always been a natural environment but, through the years, it has had to put up with what mankind's progress has done to it. Factory smokestacks pour pollution into the air; cars and other vehicles add even more fumes into the atmosphere; waste materials get dumped here and there and everywhere; and animals and other living things lose their habitats because construction needs to take place in order to keep up with the needs of a growing population.

We have taken a natural environment and have been turning it into an un-natural one. But we can't stop progress and we know the world's population is going to get larger. However, what mankind CAN do is find better ways to help the Earth survive along with us. We have been depending on this planet for decade after decade and century after century. Now it seems that it is depending on us to make better choices and find better answers. That's what Earth Day is all about. It is a party for Mother Earth. It is also a chance to discover what each of us can do to help her stay strong and healthy.

"Let every individual and institution now think and act as a responsible trustee of Earth, seeking choices in ecology, economics and ethics that will provide a sustainable future, eliminate pollution, poverty and violence, awaken the wonder of life and foster peaceful progress in the human adventure." (Earth Trustee Formula, International Earth Day Site)

“Man is the only species which can save another species from extinction” (David W. Morris)

Forest Fires have become a Wildcard in the Global-Warming Game.

Dr. Nitish Priyadarshi April 01, 2009 Tags: global warming, forest fires, paulownia, ENOCIS, Enoch Olinga College, reforestation, environment

Imagining Earth without forests is a horrifying picture to conceive. As its knowledge base has expanded and deepened, mankind has realized that forests are extremely important to the survival of humans and other life forms on earth. Yet deforestation in the form of forest fire continues unabated in different parts of the world. According to the World Resource Institute based at Washington DC (U.S.A.), the rates of rainforest destruction are 2.4 acre per second, 149 acres per minute, and 214,000 acres per day and 78 million acres per year.

The forest is also vital as a watershed. Because of the thick humus layer, loose soil, and soil-retaining powers of the trees' long roots, forests are vitally important for preserving adequate water supplies. Almost all water ultimately feeds from Forest Rivers and lakes and from forest-derived water tables. In addition, the forest provides shelter for wildlife, recreation and aesthetic renewal for people, and irreplaceable supplies of oxygen and soil nutrients. Deforestation, particularly in the tropical rain forests, has become a major environmental concern, as it can destabilize the earth's temperature, humidity, and carbon dioxide levels.

Besides being the source for food, plants help us in a number of other ways. Animals, including humans, inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide; plants take up carbon dioxide and in return they release oxygen – this exchange is very important. Forests in particular act as a huge carbon dioxide sink. If there were not enough trees to absorb carbon dioxide, its accumulation would make the environment poisonous. Over the last 150 years, the amount of carbon dioxide has increased.

While all living plant matter absorbs CO2 as part of photosynthesis, trees process significantly more than smaller plants due to their large size and extensive root structures. In essence, trees, as kings of the plant world, have much more "woody biomass" to store CO2 than smaller plants, and as a result are considered nature´s most efficient "carbon sinks."

According to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), tree species that grow quickly and live long are ideal carbon sinks.An excellent species to serve as a carbon sink is paulownia. It is fast growing, fire resistant and its large leaves can absorb huge amounts of carbon dioxide.The Enoch Olinga College (ENOCIS) is experimenting with paulownia in its agricultural extension center in Panama. They are using paulownia to provide alternate income sources for farmers of extreme poverty.

Forests are carbon stores, and they are carbon dioxide sinks when they are increasing in density or area. In Canada's boreal forests as much as 80% of the total carbon is stored in the soils as dead organic matter. A 40-year study of African, Asian, and South American tropical forests by the University of Leeds, shows tropical forests absorb about 18% of all carbon dioxide added by fossil fuels, thus buffering some effects of global warming. Tropical reforestation can mitigate global warming until all available land has been reforested with mature forests. About 70-80 billion tons of carbon dioxide is fixed annually by terrestrial and aquatic photoautotrophs.

Life expectancy of forests varies throughout the world, influenced by tree species, site conditions and natural disturbance patterns. In some forests carbon may be stored for centuries, while in other forests carbon is released with frequent stand replacing fires.

From the last hundred years forests are being reduced drastically due to forest fire, the most common hazard in forests. Though the forests fires are as old as the forests themselves, but in recent years the incidence of forest fire, either man made or natural, has increased many fold.

They pose a threat not only to the forest wealth but also to the entire regime to fauna and flora seriously disturbing the bio-diversity and the ecology and environment of a region. During summer, when there is no rain for months, the forests become littered with dry senescent leaves and twinges, which could burst into flames ignited by the slightest spark.

The burning of forest trees gives off not only carbon dioxide but also a host of other, noxious gases (Green house gases) such as carbon monoxide, methane, hydrocarbons, nitric oxide and nitrous oxide, that lead to global warming and ozone layer depletion. Consequently, thousands of people suffered from serious respiratory problems due to these toxic gases. Burning forests and grasslands also add to already serious threat of global warming. Recent measurement suggest that biomass burning may be a significant global source of methyl bromide, which is an ozone depleting chemical.

Wild land fires are taking tons of carbon out of storage and feeding it into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, a primary greenhouse gas.

Usually it is cars, factories and power stations that are most often mentioned as sources of carbon dioxide (CO2), a gas which traps heat in the atmosphere. Trees, considered the "lungs of the planet", soak the gas up. But what if they burn?

Trees absorb carbon dioxide as they grow and climatologists see forests as carbon "sinks" - places where large amounts of that element are stored. When they burn, whether in forest fires or as logs in a stove, it is released.

In the atmosphere, CO2 is the main gas which contributes to the greenhouse effect - trapping the earth's heat which would otherwise be radiated into space.

The latest UN report on global warming says temperatures will rise by a best estimate of 1.8 to 4.0 Celsius (3 to 7 Fahrenheit) this century and sea levels will rise by between 18 and 59 centimeters. The resulting hotter, drier summers.

Bushfires that have scorched Australia's Victoria state released millions of tons of carbon dioxide and forest fires could become a growing source of carbon pollution as the planet warms.

A raging forest fire in the Saranda forest, one of the largest Sal forests in Asia, of Jharkhand State of India has become a cause of concern for locals as well as the authorities. According to recent reports large area has been covered with fire. From the last two decades we already are seeing the effects of global warming in Jharkhand State. From last several years Jharkhand is facing extremes of the climate. Earlier thick forest cover played major role in absorbing excess carbon dioxide and balancing the temperature difference. But unfortunately due to deforestation in large scale in Jharkhand, carbon dioxide may have increased in the atmosphere many fold.

During the 1997-98 El Nino 20M hectares burnt. This one event released 2.6 billion tons of carbon - the highest annual increase since measurements began. They were so massive that the output of CO2 from combustion reached 40% of the world total. This happened again in 2006.

Indonesian fires have shown us that catastrophic events in small areas can release vast amounts that have been locked away for millennia.

The WWF said about 10 million hectares of forest were burned in the 1997 forest fires, releasing about 2.57 gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, making Indonesia the world´s third-largest emitter after the United States and China.

There has been a four-fold jump in the average number of wildfires beginning, a process that began in the mid-1980s. The total area being burned is six and a half times greater, and the length of the bush fire season has been extended by 75 percent. In South-East Asia, in Russia and in the Amazon the extent of bush fires has increased.

Sources:

http://himachal.gov.in/home/HomeGuards/pdfs/forest%20Fires.pdf

http://www.financialexpress.com/news/greek-huge-forest-fires-could-be-co2-threat/214144/0http://nidm.gov.in/Forest_Fires2_ii.asp

http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/sci/A0858185.htmlhttp://www.planetextinction.com/planet_extinction_trees.htm

http://72.14.235.132/search?q=cache:

http://redapes.org/news-updates/major-forest-fires-in-sight-as-more-hotspots-detected/

http://www.enocis.org

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_sink

http://environment.about.com/od/whatyoucando/a/best_trees.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulownia

http://www.paulownianow.org

http://www.panampro.com



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Biochar: Applying Ancient Knowledge in the Information Age

Source: Planet2025 News Network Tags: Panama, paulownia, ENOCIS, biochar, Amazon, carbon footprint, environment, agriculture, Chepo, New Era Farms, greenhouse gases, slash and burn, biofuel

Biochar: Applying Ancient Knowledge in the Information Age

Careless development without regard for the earth’s natural balance, has led to potentially disastrous levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Now, that we have to deal with the reality of climate change, we commonly find ourselves looking to modern technology to provide a solution.

NASA has just announced that in January 2009, it will make use of the latest technologies and equipment available to man, when it launches a new mission called the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO). The goal of the mission is to obtain accurate measurements of the level of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere and a more precise understanding of where it is being captured and stored on Earth.

For various reasons, precise information about how much carbon is being put into the atmosphere and where it is being absorbed by natural carbon sinks has been, up to this point, lacking. The OCO will use three high-resolution spectrometers to observe “sunlight reflected off Earth at the precise wavelengths that reveal the presence of carbon dioxide and molecular oxygen.”¹ and will be able to obtain the most precise data on this subject ever collected which should allow them to uncover unknown patterns and cycles in the Earth’s carbon dioxide.

It is true that advances in technology, such as this mission by NASA, can give us the opportunity to better understand the natural carbon cycle of our Earth. Yet, relying on modern technology alone is an expensive and therefore, for many countries, inaccessible route towards solving the climate change problem.

Instead, many experts are pointing to the potential of an ancient, low-tech, carbon sequestration technique once used by the Amazonian Indians, called biochar, that could provide an integrated solution for the current and related issues of climate change, food security, and sustainable energy production.

When trees and other organic materials decay or burn they release all the carbon they had stored during their lifetimes, as part of a carbon neutral cycle. The process of making biochar involves the heating or burning of organic materials (can be waste materials) in the absence of oxygen, a process known as pyrolysis, which results in the production of a carbon-rich, fine-grained form of charcoal that is then buried. The heated, non-oxygenated decomposition that occurs in the “burning” stage, gives off energy that can be used as an efficient biofuel.

This process reduces the carbon that would be emitted by the natural decaying or oxygenated burn of the material by 90%, and stores that carbon in the leftover charred material. Therefore the production of energy in the biochar process goes beyond being carbon-neutral and is actually considered carbon-negative because it takes carbon dioxide out of its natural cycle and sequesters it in the soil, for up to 5,000 years.

In addition, the resulting biochar is extremely helpful when added to soils, because it holds onto nutrients and water. In recent experiments on 10 farms, using biochar as a fertilizer resulted in up to three times greater crop yields than without it.² Biochar is also the secret ingredient behind the famously fertile terra pretta (dark earth) of the ancient Amazonians, that was first observed by European explorers in the 16th century.³ As reported by Reuters “Soils containing biochar made by Amazon people thousands of years ago still contain up to 70 times more black carbon than surrounding soils and are still higher in nutrients”.

The beauty of biochar is that it's a time-tested and integrated solution. Biochar minimizes waste, while producing energy, and sequestering carbon. It has also been shown to further reduce greenhouse gases by decreasing nitrous oxide and methane gas emissions from soil. It reduces the use of fossil-fuel based fertilizers, and increases soil fertility and crop yields. The “slash-and char” method, which involves slow smoldering of farm wastes to fertilize existing plots, could replace the less effective and more damaging slash-and-burn farming technique that generates greenhouse gases and destroys forests.

The main boundary to its use is that it has yet to be proven on a commercial scale. But perhaps that is about to change. Biochar is already being used on a number of small farms. For example, the Times Magazine recently reported on a chicken farm in West Virginia that uses chicken manure as the organic material for pyrolysis, which creates enough energy to run the farm. The farmer is also able to profit by selling the resulting biochar as fertilizer.

Just last Friday, a large-scale biochar enterprise created by British environmental entrepreneurs, Craig Sams, (one of the founders of the popular Green & Black organic chocolate company) and Dan Morrel, (co-founder of Future Forests, the first carbon offsetting company), got its first multi-million-pound investment from venture capitalists in California’s Silicon Valley.

This project will begin running trials with biochar in Sussex and Belize starting in early 2009, and hopes to build biochar into a worldwide enterprise. According to Mr. Sams, who called biochar “a treasure to be buried in the earth”, CO2 in the air could be reduced to pre-Industrial Revolution levels by 2050, if only 2.5% of the world’s productive land would be used to produce biochar.⁴

The ancient people of the Amazon who used biochar techniques could probably not have conceived of the OCO mission NASA will soon undertake, and yet they developed a land management technique that shows they had a superior understanding of the Earth’s delicate balance. Perhaps it is a sign of our true modernity that we are growing more willing to recognize and incorporate ancient knowledge alongside new technologies in our quest for solutions to the greatest crisis of our time.

Biochar techniques are one of the various agricultural processes being experimented with by the Enoch Olinga College (ENOCIS) www.enocis.org at their Agricultural Extension Center “New Era Farms” in Chepo, Panama www.paulownianow.org

By Mallika Nair

Sources

1. Discovery News “NASA Space Probe to Track CO2 on Earth” Dec. 5, 2008 by Irene Klotz. http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/12/05/carbon-dioxide-space.html

2. Reuters “Scientists say ancient technique cuts greenhouse gases” Dec. 5, 2008, by Gerard Wynn http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSTRE4B45KB20081205

3. Carbon: The Biochar Solution Dec. 4, 2008 by Lisa Abend http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1864279,00.html

4. The Independent “Ancient skills ‘could reverse global warming’” Nov. 7, 2008, by Geoffrey Lean. http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/ancient-skills-could-reverse-global-warming-1055700.html

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THE WORLD AFTER 2020: MBendi South Africa

In August 2008 I wrote about Wangari on our blogs. I recently decided to expand on that thought process and refocus on her efforts in Africa.

A couple of years ago I attended a stirring speech given by Wangari Mathaai, then little-known Kenyan winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. At the time I thought that the reason she had been awarded the prize was simply because she had founded a women's movement in East Africa which had planted more than six million trees. After her speech, I was little the wiser. It was only when I read her wonderful biography, Unbowed, recently that I discovered the real reason for the prize.

As East Africa's first woman with a Ph D she had taken on a very male chauvinist, highly corrupt political establishment. First she had prevented a major park in the centre of Nairobi being used to build a privately owned office block and later she was instrumental in overturning the sale of a state forest to a developer of upmarket housing. In between she planted trees, uplifted women and fought both the bureaucracy and bad farming practices. For her sins, she was physically attacked, arbitrarily arrested, faced privations in prison, ridiculed in the press and parliament and ostracized. But she persevered and today Kenya is a much greener country than it might otherwise have been.

Her book is really in two parts, with the second part given over to her fights with the powers that be. In the early chapters she paints a beautiful picture of growing up in rural Kenya - the family home and village life but most of all growing crops and vegetables. One thinks of traditional African peasants as ignorant, but they understood the soil and the climate, the plants and the animals, the insects and the old fig trees that protected the springs of gushing water. In a very sensitive way, she also describes her father's life as a worker on the farm of a white settler at the time of the Mau Mau rebellion.

Both parts of Dr Mathaai's book have resonated with me recently as I have contrasted UN forecasts of the world's undernourished growing by 40 million people to 963 million people this year and prices of staple foods up 15% or more in just the last eight weeks with news reports of new agricultural projects being started in Africa. Just a couple of months ago there was the story about how South Korea's Daewoo had been allocated 1.3 million hectares of Madagascar, a chunk the size of a small European country, to grow food for the home country; last week it was a Wall Street banker who had signed a deal with a Sudanese warlord for 400,000 hectares of land alongside the Nile; and this week it was Lonrho taking over a block of 25,000 hectares of sparsely populated land in Angola.

For a couple of years now we have been reading of biofuels projects springing up in Mozambique especially, but also Tanzania. In Sierra Leone, Addax Petroleum, with the support of the national government, is to set up a 20,000 hectares sugar cane plantation together with an ethanol distillery/factory would produce more than 1,200,000 litres of ethanol per year and a 30 MW power plant that would be able to supplement Bumbuna. The project will employ 4,000 people. All across Africa, commercial farmers are growing sugar and tobacco, two of the biggest contributors to health problems worldwide.

As I read about all these projects - and with Dr Mathaai's words ringing in my ears - I find myself asking questions. Why was the land not already being used for agricultural production when Africa is so chronically short of food? Who really owns the land being used for the projects - the national government, the tribe or the individual families living on it? What is going to happen to the people currently living on the land? Will those given jobs really earn enough to live a better life than they enjoyed before? Will the country and community really be better off or is it the offshore investors who are the only beneficiaries? More than anything, I wonder whose pockets and offshore bank accounts are going to bulge even further as a result of these projects?

If all this sounds like just another African bad news story, let me end with a ray of hope. After years of drought and famine, the government of Malawi, against the wishes and so-called better judgment of the donor community, set up a scheme to distribute seeds and fertilizer at subsidized prices to small farmers. The result is that today Malawi produces more food than it consumes and earns foreign currency from exporting to the countries round about. What we really need is for Africans to use African land to fill African stomachs first, then foreign stomachs in exchange for filling the bank accounts of the local farmers who did all the hard work.

Incidentally, if you go searching the Internet for information on the African agricultural sector, you will find there is plenty of information on agricultural aid to the continent, but precious little about who produces how much of what. So our researchers have started pulling together all the pieces of this tricky jig-saw puzzle, starting with paulownia elongata, which you canread more about at www.paulownianow.org. We'll keep you posted as they update more of our pages. Some other useful links to further stimulate your thinking about where the world is going.Tags: reforestation, Africa, Wangari, Wangari Mathaai, Nobel Peace Prize, Nobel Prize, Africa, reforestation, fertilizer, biomass, paulownia

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Planting Trees Saves Cash, Research Confirms

Emily Sohn, Discovery News Tags: global warming, reforestation, environment, ecology, paulownia, agriculture

Jan. 22, 2009 -- Plant a tree: Save 25 bucks. Researchers in California have found that planting trees in strategic locations around your house can lower your summertime electricity bill by that much or more.

The concept is common sense: Extra shade reduces the need for air conditioning. But this is the first study to use actual utility bills to nail down the details of where trees should be placed to help people chip away at their environmental footprints -- and their budgets.

"Nobody says we're going to cure global warming just with urban trees," said lead researcher Geoffrey Donovan, an economist at the Portland Forestry Sciences Lab in Oregon. "But they're one of the nicer ways of doing it."

For the new study, Donovan and colleague Dave Butry, an economist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, looked at 460 single-family homes in one neighborhood of Sacramento, Calif.

Using Google Earth, the researchers looked down on each house from above. They measured the diameter of all tree crowns in three zones: 20, 40, and 60 feet away from the building, and in four directions: north, south, east and west.

Based on the distances of the trees from the buildings and the sizes of their crowns, they calculated where shadows would be cast at various times throughout the day.

The electric company provided copies of each home's electric bill, while the county gave data about factors that might affect electricity use, including house size, lot size, and whether the house had a pool. A computer model then controlled for these variables to see whether trees had an effect on summertime energy use above and beyond those factors.

The study, in press at the journal Energy and Buildings, found that people used about 5 percent less electricity (about $25 less) during the summer when they had trees within 40 feet of their home's south side or within 60 feet of its west side.

Late in the day, when temperatures are highest and people are more likely to turn on the A/C, trees cast longer shadows, which explains the bigger buffer zone on the house's west side.

These findings gave real-world support for the results of previous, more theoretical work.

Unexpectedly, when trees sat on a house's north side, electric bills went up. The result might be a statistical anomaly, Donovan said. But he speculated that blocked breezes or the need for more lighting could also explain the finding.

Over a 100-year period, the scientists calculated, planting a London pine tree on the west side of a Sacramento home could reduce the house's net carbon use by 30 percent -- half through sequestering by the tree and half through reduced electricity use. Financial savings will increase, Donovan added, as utility companies start charging more for electricity at peak times of day.

It's probably worth planting trees around your home, agreed Jim Simpson, a meteorologist at the Center for Urban Forest Research in Davis, Calif., despite the costs of buying trees and taking care of them. But the specifics of which trees to plant and where to plant them will likely differ in places that are colder, wetter, or otherwise different from the steaming valleys of California.

"In the Sacramento area, air conditioning is a fairly big thing, and we have mild winters," Simpson told Discovery News. "It would be a good idea to do this sort of study in other climate zones where heating is a bigger deal."

One of the fastest growing shade trees in the world is paulownia elongata which can grow an amazing sixteen feet a year offering shade and energy savings in as little as two years. For more information on paulownia you may refer to the web site www.paulownianow.org

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