viernes, 8 de febrero de 2008

Biocombustibles empeoran el cambio climático, concluye estudio científico

Sería uno de los mayores fraudes ambientales de la historia, advierten auditores

Por: Steve Connor (The Independent)

La expansión de cultivos para producir biocombustibles conduce al envío de enormes cantidades de dióxido de carbono a la atmósfera y en nada contribuye a detener el cambio climático o el calentamiento global, según la primera auditoría integral de un presupuesto para ese rubro.

Los científicos han producido evidencia condenatoria, la cual sugiere que los biocombustibles podrían ser uno de los mayores fraudes ambientales, porque en realidad empeoran el calentamiento global al contribuir a las emisiones de dióxido de carbono producido por humanos que supuestamente deben reducirse.

Dos estudios separados, publicados en la revista Science, muestran que los cultivos que hoy se desarrollan para producir alternativas “verdes” a los combustibles basados en el petróleo emiten mucho más dióxido de carbono a la atmósfera del que puede ser absorbido por las plantas.

Los científicos descubrieron que en el caso de algunos cultivos se requerirían varios siglos para pagar la “deuda de carbono” que se genera. Estos costos ambientales no toman en cuenta la destrucción adicional del medio ambiente, por ejemplo la pérdida de biodiversidad causada al desmontar áreas de selva.

“Todos los biocombustibles que usamos hoy destruyen los hábitat, ya sea en forma directa o indirecta. La agricultura global ya produce alimentos para 6 mil millones de personas; producir biocombustible basado en plantas también implicará convertir más tierra a uso agrícola”, advierte Joe Fargione, de la organización privada estadunidense The Nature Conservancy, quien encabezó uno de los estudios.

Los científicos llevaron a cabo un análisis que se había omitido ante la precipitación por cultivar biocombustibles, estimulada por las políticas de Estados Unidos y la Unión Europea, cuyos proponentes han estado ansiosos por exaltar las virtudes de los biocombustibles como alternativa verde a los combustibles fósiles para el transporte.

Ambos estudios observaron la cantidad de dióxido de carbono que se libera cuando una porción de tierra se convierte al cultivo de biocombustibles. Descubrieron que cuando las tierras de turba de Indonesia se convierten en plantaciones de palmera para producir aceite de coco, por ejemplo, se requieren 423 años para pagar la deuda de carbono.

Otro caso nocivo es cuando la selva amazónica se desmonta para convertirla en parcelas para soya. Los científicos descubrieron que se requerirían 319 años de producción de biodiesel a partir de la soya para pagar la deuda de carbono causada por el derribamiento de los árboles.

Tales conversiones de tierra para cultivar maíz y caña de azúcar para biodiesel, o aceite de coco y soya para bioetanol, emiten entre 17 y 420 veces más carbono que el que se ahorra al año por el remplazo de combustibles fósiles, calculan los científicos.

“La pregunta es: ¿vale la pena? El carbono que se pierde al convertir bosques, pastizales y turba, ¿supera al que se ‘ahorra’ al usar biocombustibles en vez de combustibles fósiles?”, expresa el doctor Fargione. “La respuesta es no. Estas áreas naturales almacenan gran cantidad de carbono, así que convertirlas en tierras de cultivo conduce a que se emitan toneladas de carbón a la atmósfera”.

“Al encontrar soluciones al cambio climático, debemos asegurarnos de que el remedio no resulte peor que la enfermedad”, señala Jimmie Powell, integrante del equipo científico de The Nature Conservancy. “No podemos darnos el lujo de desdeñar las consecuencias de convertir tierra para biocombustibles. Hacerlo significa que sin proponérnoslo podríamos promover alternativas peores que los combustibles fósiles. Los hallazgos de estos estudios deben incorporarse en las políticas de emisión de carbono de aquí en adelante”, consideró.

© The Independent

Traducción: Jorge Anaya

lunes, 4 de febrero de 2008

Flying clouds the real climate culprit / Volar nubla el verdadero culpable climático

VIEWPOINT
Martin Wright

The aviation industry has become public enemy number one for environmental groups, says Martin Wright. But, he argues in this week's Green Room, they should focus their efforts on "the real elephant in the room" - forest destruction.


Ask some vaguely green people what's the single biggest thing they can do to tackle climate change, and most will respond with a guilty smile: "yes, I know, I should stop flying."

A few brave, selfless souls do just that. But the rest of us are far too used to cheap, quick getaways to kick the habit completely.

There's nothing like a few months of unremitting English mizzle to soften the resolve of the most committed "no flyers".

Environmentalists will always struggle to persuade people to eschew pleasure in favour of the planet. After all, no-one likes being told off for having a good time. Any argument that says, in effect: "save the planet - stay at home in the wet" is hardly going to win hearts and minds.

Sure, there's always the slow train to Provence. But like so much of the Slow Movement (food; travel; life, even), it still reeks of privilege. It's more expensive, it takes (and lasts) longer.

There could be all kinds of ways - from subsidies to sabbaticals - of making it more accessible for those whose only hope of a great escape is an Easyjet south. But for the moment, life in the slow lane is still a velvety green luxury for the favoured few.

So until such time as fuel prices go through the roof, or draconian caps on carbon stifle the market, air travel will remain a seductive option for all but the deepest of greens.

Real carbon culprit

But while we're agonising over our aircraft addiction, we're missing the real "elephant in the living room" of climate change: forest destruction.

It is already the largest single source of carbon emissions after energy, contributing up to 10 times as much as aviation.

The Stern Report, no less, warned that rainforest destruction alone would, in the next four years, release more carbon into the atmosphere than every flight from the dawn of aviation until 2025.

Burning forests produces a particularly nasty double whammy of warming. As they burn, they send vast swathes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. And once they're gone, they can't soak up the carbon from industry, cars and power plants.

But despite all this, people get far more exercised over the evils of aviation than they ever do over forest loss.

This is partly because aviation looms large on those instant "carbon calculators", designed to give a rough-and-ready guide to an individual's impact.

Deforestation, for the most part, doesn't, as it's virtually impossible to quantify individual responsibility for forest loss - unless you happen to be a timber trader or a palm oil planter.

But it's also because the forests are disappearing in "faraway countries": the chainsaws and fires aren't exactly on our doorstep, so it's easy to believe it's nothing to do with us - and there's nothing we can do about it, either.

This is bitterly ironic, because politically and economically it would be much easier to make massive reductions in deforestation than to achieve similar cuts in air travel. And in terms of curbing climate change, that would be massively more effective, too.

Tree hugging

So if we could just persuade people to be as excited about saving forests as they feel guilty about flying, then maybe we'd achieve something.

That means making forest conservation everyone's business - literally. And one of the best ways of doing so is to make the future of forests worth investing in - not just for the planet, but for your own pocket, too.

After all, you don't need complex technical fixes to stop forest destruction. You just have to make trees worth more standing than felled. And with the fate of civilisation cradled in their canopy, they should carry quite a price tag.

On paper, it's a no brainer. By any rational calculation, forests can yield better returns when kept intact than when cleared.

Take their role in protecting watersheds, for example, or their value as a source of fruit, nuts, shade-grown coffee, game and medicinal herbs - even, in some cases, a genuinely sustainable source of high-quality timber.

That's been the basis for a range of initiatives known as "payments for ecological services".

In essence, these are deals between forest communities and "buyers", who benefit from the forest remaining in place - such as towns and cities downstream, or the owners of mines or hydro plants, all of whom depend on the water supply that the forest ensures.

Cool Earth, a charity set up by businessman Johan Eliasch, allows individuals to buy parcels of rainforest - not for their own profit, but to hold them in trust on behalf of local communities, so taking them out of the clutches of the loggers.

It's an intriguing scheme, but it's still driven by charity, not business.

Sound investment

But once you introduce forests' ability to store carbon into the equation, then the balance sheet really starts to shift in their favour.

According to one recent study, most ventures which drive forest destruction - whether logging or for agriculture - generate around $5 (£2.50) for every tonne of carbon released as a result of the forest loss.

Europeans are typically paying up to seven times that amount to offset the same amount of carbon.

And as emissions trading takes off, so the carbon price will rise. One estimate puts the value of greenhouse gas storage in some forests at a healthy $2,200 (£1,100) per hectare.

And it's that which is pricking the interest of the financial markets. Invest in a forest now, and you can expect its value to appreciate substantially over the years - especially since, after the recent UN climate conference in Bali, forest owners can expect to "sell" their benefits on the emerging global carbon markets.

All of a sudden, it opens up the prospect of massive investments from pension funds, drawn to the long-term security which standing forests can provide.

Halving forest destruction by 2030, says the Stern Report, would cost around £10-£15 billion a year - that's roughly the same as we spend on alcohol in Britain alone. It is, in other words, a sum which should be readily available - as long as there's the prospect of a decent return.

The Global Canopy Programme - an alliance of forest scientists - is urging the adoption of a global market in forest carbon credits to help unleash a tide of investment.

Forum for the Future and others are working on schemes for forest-backed bonds; some are predicting the launch of Forest PEPs. Such is the potential value in keeping forests intact that even those masters of the dark arts of finance, the hedge funds, are starting to sniff around.

There are all manner of pitfalls, of course. For some, it smacks of "carbon colonialism".

Others warn that such schemes will inevitably favour wealthy landowners, who can cope with all the complex legal processes involved, rather than forest peoples themselves.

Then there's the question of proving that a particular stretch of forest, which may lie in a remote, hard-to-monitor area, really has survived intact.

But these are not insuperable obstacles. Investors don't have to buy up forests to make a return on them; they merely have to ensure they share in the proceeds of their conservation over times.

So they can for example rent, or lease, an interest in the forests from local communities, who are in any case best placed to safeguard the assets - and so can reasonably expect to share in the profits, too.

On the monitoring side, satellite mapping is now sophisticated enough to zero in to the scale of individual trees, providing pinpoint, 24-hour surveillance. Microchips inserted in selected trunks can report instantly if they're felled - and then track the timber, electronically fingering everyone involved.

So in a few years' time, you could sit at home on the sofa, and, via your laptop, check up on the health of "your" patch of forest, in real time.

Result? The world will have a million or more eagle-eyed forest monitors, casting a protective eye over the green canopy of their investments. (And only occasionally, you'd hope, needing to utter the anguished cry: "Oi! That's my pension plan going up in smoke!")

The logic is simple; the implementation will be anything but. But if we wait till we've a perfect system, we'll be wasting precious time; time in which thousands of square miles of forest will be irrevocably lost.

Martin Wright is editor (at large) of Green Futures Magazine

The Green Room is a series of opinion articles on environmental topics running weekly on the BBC News website




Society depends on more for less / La sociedad depende del más por menos

VIEWPOINT
Sir Mark Moody-Stuart

If the world is to end the threat from climate change, we need to produce more with less energy, says Mark Moody Stuart. In this week's Green Room, he outlines his vision that will help society fulfil this goal.


To address the climate challenge we need to reduce the carbon content of our energy by at least half.

But at the same time we must learn to generate a unit of GDP for about half the energy which we use at present.

Energy efficiency and carbon content of energy are equally important, but they require different approaches to achieve them.

I am a great believer in both the power of consumer choice and the market. As we come to understand the consequences, we do tend to make greener choices.

But most of us will only make those choices if they deliver the convenience and utility to which we are used or aspire; and if they do not cost more (or we can afford the luxury of choice).

Consumer opinion and choice is important, but it will not do the trick on its own. Its importance is in encouraging companies to supply the market in more climate friendly ways, and most importantly in encouraging governments (for whom consumers vote) to take the steps needed.

'Bitter experience'

So what of the market? It is an unsurpassed mechanism for allocating resources to deliver better things. Through competition, technologies are optimised or discarded, opening the field for creativity and choice. I believe in the power and value of markets.

But like most things, they have a failing. Without regulation to channel their power, markets will not deliver things which are of no immediate benefit to the individual making his or her choice, even though they may be beneficial to society.

Without regulation, markets would not have delivered unleaded gasoline, catalytic converters on the exhausts of cars or seatbelts and airbags, nor clean air to London after the killer smogs of the 1950s.

In New Delhi, regulation forced three-wheeled vehicles, taxis and buses to switch to clean gas fuel. The initial complaints were great, but everyone, including the taxi drivers, blessed the result.

These regulations were not cost free, but everyone benefited. Regulation was needed to channel the power of the market, but regulatory frameworks have to be simple and practical.

The gut opposition of business people to regulation comes from bitter experience of regulations which don't just frame the market but bind it hand and foot and tell us how things must be done.

This kills markets and takes the fun and variety out of life.

Carbon price

So what are the frameworks we need?

For carbon content, we need a mechanism which forces energy supplies in the right direction. This means putting a price on carbon for major producers (and large-scale users) of energy through a carbon cap and trade system, such as we already have in Europe.

Unfortunately, this system has been initially subject to government and business special pleading and gaming. Or it means a carbon tax.

Both are complex and should only be applied to major producers or users. Trading encourages carbon-avoiding investment where it has the most impact. It also allows the transfer, through market mechanisms, of financial resources to China and India.

I do not think we will get a more global agreement without such transfer. Taxation has the great merit that it provides a clear floor price of carbon.

So for me the preferred option is a combination - a tax, but with the ability to reduce it through trading, getting the best combination of a floor price and efficiency of investment.

Most people think that a price of something around 40 dollars a tonne of carbon dioxide (CO2) to producers would do the trick.

Market decides

Before you panic about the cost to you and industrial transport, that is only about 5p a litre on fuel - within the noise of oil price variations.

On the other hand, for efficiency we need regulatory frameworks - very tough efficiency standards on buildings, on lighting and on personal transport.

That means banning the manufacture or import of old fashioned light bulbs.

Technically, this actually just means putting a standard on the efficiency of lights so that markets decide whether the best answer is compact fluorescent lights or the newer LEDs - old incandescents would never meet such a hurdle.

It means very tough standards on buildings. This is already having an effect in London where to achieve highly valuable planning permission, developments are already achieving energy efficiency which we thought we would not achieve for a decade or more.

And for personal transportation? That means banning "gas guzzlers" and steadily increasing the total efficiency of any vehicle sold.

You can buy the roomiest, vroomiest car, as long as it meets the efficiency standard.

My wife and I have driven a hybrid since 2001 and it is a beautiful and comfortable piece of engineering, silent and will do 100mph (we tried it, but not in England!).

That may not be the best technology - the market will find out. But we must constrain the market in an efficiency framework.

To achieve the same through taxation would mean fuel taxes at levels which would play havoc with industry, countryside dwellers and the poor who need transport.

Sir Mark Moody-Stuart is non-executive chairman of Anglo American, and is a member of the UN Global Compact and chairman of the Global Compact Foundation

The Green Room is a series of opinion articles on environmental topics running weekly on the BBC News website