bemoreeco

By Juliette Jowit

Report for the UN into the activities of the world’s 3,000 biggest companies estimates one-third of profits would be lost if firms were forced to pay for use, loss and damage of environment

Black clouds over the central business district, Jakarta. The report into the activities of the world’s 3,000 biggest public companies has estimated the cost of use, loss and damage of the environment. Photograph: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images

The cost of pollution and other damage to the natural environment caused by the world’s biggest companies would wipe out more than one-third of their profits if they were held financially accountable, a major unpublished study for the United Nations has found.

The report comes amid growing concern that no one is made to pay for most of the use, loss and damage of the environment, which is reaching crisis proportions in the form of pollution and the rapid loss of freshwater, fisheries and fertile soils.

Ahead of changes which would have a profound effect – not just on companies’ profits but also their customers and pension funds and other investors – the UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment initiative and the United Nations Environment Programme jointly ordered a report into the activities of the 3,000 biggest public companies in the world, which includes household names from the UK’s FTSE 100 and other major stockmarkets

The biggest single impact on the $2.2tn estimate, accounting for more than half of the total, was emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for climate change. Other major “costs” were local air pollution such as particulates, and the damage caused by the over-use and pollution of freshwater.

The true figure is likely to be even higher because the $2.2tn does not include damage caused by household and government consumption of goods and services, such as energy used to power appliances or waste; the “social impacts” such as the migration of people driven out of affected areas, or the long-term effects of any damage other than that from climate change. The final report will also include a higher total estimate which includes those long-term effects of problems such as toxic waste.

Trucost did not want to comment before the final report on which sectors incurred the highest “costs” of environmental damage, but they are likely to include power companies and heavy energy users like aluminium producers because of the greenhouse gases that result from burning fossil fuels. Heavy water users like food, drink and clothing companies are also likely to feature high up on the list.

Sukhdev said the heads of the major companies at this year’s annual economic summit in Davos, Switzerland, were increasingly concerned about the impact on their business if they were stopped or forced to pay for the damage.

“It can make the difference between profit and loss,” Sukhdev told the annual Earthwatch Oxford lecture last week. “That sense of foreboding is there with many, many [chief executives], and that potential is a good thing because it leads to solutions.”

The aim of the study is to encourage and help investors lobby companies to reduce their environmental impact before concerned governments act to restrict them through taxes or regulations, said Mattison.

Read the full article at guardian.co.uk

By Victoria Gill
Science reporter, BBC News, Portland

The SSV Corwith Cramer is involved in the plastics research.

Scientists have discovered an area of the North Atlantic Ocean where plastic debris accumulates.
The region is said to compare with the well-documented “great Pacific garbage patch”.
Kara Lavender Law of the Sea Education Association told the BBC that the issue of plastics had been “largely ignored” in the Atlantic.

She announced the findings of a two-decade-long study at the Ocean Sciences Meeting in Portland, US.
The work is the conclusion of the longest and most extensive record of plastic marine debris in any ocean basin.
Scientists and students from the SEA collected plastic and marine debris in fine mesh nets that were towed behind a research vessel.

We know that many marine organisms are consuming these plastics and we know this has a bad effect on seabirds in particular
Dr Kara Lavender Law, Sea Education Association
The nets dragged along were half-in and half-out of the water, picking up debris and small marine organisms from the sea surface.

The researchers carried out 6,100 tows in areas of the Caribbean and the North Atlantic – off the coast of the US. More than half of these expeditions revealed floating pieces of plastic on the water surface.
These were pieces of low-density plastic that are used to make many consumer products, including plastic bags.
Dr Lavender Law said that the pieces of plastic she and her team picked up in the nets were generally very small – up to 1cm across.

“We found a region fairly far north in the Atlantic Ocean where this debris appears to be concentrated and remains over long periods of time,” she explained.
“More than 80% of the plastic pieces we collected in the tows were found between 22 and 38 degrees north. So we have a latitude for [where this] rubbish seems to accumulate,” she said.

The maximum “plastic density” was 200,000 pieces of debris per square kilometre.
“That’s a maximum that is comparable with the Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” said Dr Lavender Law.
But she pointed out that there was not yet a clear estimate of the size of the patches in either the Pacific or the Atlantic.
“You can think of it in a similar way [to the Pacific Garbage Patch], but I think the word ‘patch’ can be misleading. This is widely dispersed and it’s small pieces of plastic,” she said.
The impacts on the marine environment of the plastics were still unknown, added the researcher.
“But we know that many marine organisms are consuming these plastics and we know this has a bad effect on seabirds in particular,” she told BBC News.

Nets are dragged half-in and half-out of the water

Nikolai Maximenko from University of Hawaii, who was not involved in the study, said that it was very important to continue the research to find out the impacts of plastic on the marine ecosystem.
He told BBC News: “We don’t know how much is consumed by living organisms; we don’t have enough data.
“I think this is a big target for the next decade – a global network to observe plastics in the ocean.”

Read the full article at bbc news

When We Talk Zero, We Sound Crazy. When Bill Gates Does It, Bankers Pick Up the Phone.

On Friday, the world’s most successful businessperson and most powerful philanthropist did something outstandingly bold, that went almost unremarked: Bill Gates announced that his top priority is getting the world to zero climate emissions.

Gates predicted extraordinary climate action: zero. Not small steps, not incremental progress, not doing less bad: zero. In fact, he stood in front of a slide with nothing but the planet Earth and the number zero. That moment was the most important thing that has happened at TED.

Gates spoke about his commitment to using his massive philanthropic resources (the Gates Foundation is the world’s largest) to make life better for people through public health and poverty alleviation (”vaccines and seeds” as he put it). Then he said something he’s never said before: that is it because he’s committed to improving life for the world’s vulnerable people that he now believes that climate change is the most important challenge on the planet.

Even more importantly, he acknowledged the only sensible goal, when it comes to climate emissions, is to eliminate them: we should be aiming for a civilization that produces no net emissions, and we should be aiming to live in that civilization here in the developed world by 2050.

Why is this important? The news stories focused largely on the clean energy aspect of the speech, and certainly the world’s most successful businessman announcing that clean energy is the next frontier is a big headline. However, I think though that the real breakthrough was not Gates’ answer to the problem, but his definition of success: zero.
Bright green advocates understand that we need prosperity without planetary impact. In many of the circles I run in, this is an uncontroversial idea, and, indeed, the conversation has moved on, to discussing how we decouple better lives from ecological footprints (or even go beyond, and build a society that restores the ecosystems on which it depends).

When we talk zero, we sound crazy.

But when Bill Gates talks zero, he sounds visionary. Gates, whatever else he did Friday, just made the most important idea on the planet mainstream credible. That’s a big, big deal.

Please read the full article at WorldChanging.com

Passengers who fly with no-frills carriers leave a softer “carbon footprint” than those on full-service airlines, new research has shown.

A couple flying with Ryanair from London to Venice and returning a week later have a carbon footprint of 410kg, while the equivalent journey on Alitalia would produce 977kg. A flight from London to Zurich with easyJet has a carbon footprint of 277kg per couple, compared with 688kg with Aer Lingus.

An easyJet spokesman said: “Our policy is to expand our fleet through the acquisition of the latest-technology aircraft, as these are more fuel-efficient than older models. The average age of an aircraft in our flight is 3.5 years. We also use these aircraft as efficiently as possible, by maximising load factors and seating density.” On an Airbus A319, the average full-service airline has 124 seats; easyJet has 156.

“Our analysis shows that the environmental stigma of budget travel may be unwarranted,” said Gbenga Kogbe of Liligo.co.uk. “Travellers can now assess the financial and environmental costs of travelling with low-cost airlines, traditional airlines and charter-flight companies.”

While many scheduled carriers report dwindling passenger numbers, low-cost carriers continue to see growth: easyJet reported a 9.3 per cent rise in passenger traffic in December compared with December 2008.
Analysts said the airline had benefited from the threat of Christmas strike action against BA and the disruption by snow of Eurostar services.

BA carried four per cent fewer passengers in December compared with the same month last year. Overall, passenger numbers fell by 750,000 to 25.2 million last year. It is not yet clear how damaging the renewed threat of strikes will be to bookings, but several travel agents have already switched flights away from BA since the cabin crew’s union, Unite, announced plans for a new strike ballot. The vote is expected to be held in early March.

Read the full article at the telegraph.co.uk

Wind turbines and solar panels will be popping up on schools across the country as part of a Government drive to educate children about climate change.

From today every school in the country will be offered a hi-tech smart meter that shows pupils and staff how much energy is being used at any one time.

Ultimately schools will be expected to go carbon neutral by improving energy efficiency through insulation, double glazing, using low energy equipment and encouraging children to turn off appliances. Schools will also be expected to generate their own heat and power where appropriate by installing solar panels, wood chip boilers and wind turbines.

Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, said it was important people learn about cutting carbon at a young age.
“As parents know, their children have a real desire to become the environmental champions of the future and help save the planet for future generations – and we need to harness this interest and do even more,” he said.
The £12 million initiative to provide smart meters to every school will help monitor energy use. It can also be used as a teaching tool by demonstrating how different appliances and lifestyle changes can cut energy use.

See full article at telegraph.co.uk

Climate change dwarfs all other challenges facing the human species. The science is irrefutable and daily grows in the severity of its findings. Humankind has the resources and imagination and creativity to rise to this challenge IF we find or create the motivation to act together FAST. The unprecedented nature of this challenge requires us all to raise our game to a new level of co-operation and combined action for the common good.

“Six Billion Reasons” has been created to provide a platform for people all over the world to communicate their mandate for the climate change decision makers to take bold, urgent, co-operative steps to tackle climate breakdown. It is a response to Ed Miliband’s plea for the public to make a much bigger noise about climate change to impel, compel and empower the climate change negotiators and politicians to make the big leaps necessary. (Ed Miliband heads the British department for climate change and energy).

“Six Billion Reasons” gives people a creative way to “stand up for life on earth” – to move the politicians to move mountains. All that people need to do is to make or find a “pictogram”, which is a photo or short video which communicates their mandate, and upload it to the web (via flickr or You-tube), and tag it with Iamareason. Then OneClimate will use their technology to harvest these and present them all on the Six Billion Reasons platform, creating a stunning global chorus that affirms the power of humanity to meet this challenge together.

The pilot website is already up and running: www.sixbillionreasons.org

But this is only the beginning. We intend sixbillionreasons to become an unmissable global presence which will, in an exciting, empowering way, continue to raise international awareness about climate change, and support action on individual, national and inter-national levels. It’s designed to give a “bottom up” approach “top” significance.

It has been created by:
Susannah and Ya’Acov Darling Khan, (School of Movement Medicine) Peter Armstrong and Anuradha Vittachi (One World and One Climate) and their teams.

Climate change is the greatest challenge facing humanity, but we cannot see the root cause of the problem. We put 80 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere every day, but greenhouse gases are invisible.

This excellent short film shows how the carbon quilt and our emissions are helping to heating up the planet.

>>> For more info visit Carbon Sense.

Unison has teamed up with Great Ormond Street Hospital in a pilot project to green up the NHS. This is a very good thing. As one of the largest public sector employers, the NHS has a huge carbon footprint.

The NHS Sustainable Development Unit (SDU) was set up in April last year to promote sustainability and mitigate climate change.  Built recently, Great Ormond Street Hospital, possesses state of the art technology and equipment with many specialised departments to serve the needs of the county. But in spite of it being a new build with the modernity that comes with new builds, it isn’t fitted with energy saving devices such as solar panels and it doesn’t even appear to have an environmental policy.

On a national level, procurement is a major contributor to the NHS waste/carbon footprint, but it’s not just procurement that needs an eco-overhaul. On the ground that;

• Lights are left switched on day and night
• Computer terminals are often kept on 24/7
• Office equipment is kept on standby overnight, every nig
• Indiscriminate requesting of blood tests occurs daily.
• The food wastage as many untouched meals regularly go back to the kitchens simply to be thrown away.
• Miss use of yellow bags, black or clear bags bins. Different cost of disposal for each type of bag.

I can hear you arguing that over-stretched nurses are too busy saving lives etc to be worrying about climate change but it’s simply a matter of reconditioning – habit-forming changes in behaviour. Nurses can play a crucial role in greening the NHS at ward levels and I’m not alone in thinking that. It’s crucial to form a deep and lasting culture of waste-awareness in the NHS. Of course patient and staff health and safety comes first.

Of course infection control has to be prioritised but green efficiency awareness does not need to compromise health care. It can actually improve it. In fact, there are far greater health implications if we don’t start to seriously mitigate climate change.

Full article written by and found at Earthpal

A website recently delineated a simple list of 10 ways that you can reduce your environmental footprint through changes in your food choices.

The list is fairly straightforward and involves changes that any person in any country can make to reduce their carbon footprint.  Substantive facts for each item are also laid out and explained along with a brief description of how the change can affect the environment in a positive manner.

Here the list of changes you can make to your food choices to reduce your environmental footprint:

    * Eat less beef, pork, and lamb

    * Eat out at restaurants less often

    * Eat fewer dairy products

    * Drink fewer soft drinks

    * Eat seasonal and local fruits and vegetables

    * Eat fewer packaged snacks and junk food

    * Upgrade to an energy efficient refrigerator

    * Eat wild fish that are not endangered

    * Drink less bottled water

    * Walk to your local farmers market or grocery store

Source; Eat Drink Better

Carbon! We hear that word bandied around these days like nobody’s business …we’re meant to save it, offset it, think about how much of it we use, it’s the basis of life, we’re made from it and if we don’t start taking it a bit more seriously then soon it will all be gone and the world will explode – or something? Well, I’ll give it a whirl, but in between the school run, running a business, keeping up with the mortgage, dealing with the modern middle class nightmare that is homework and making sure there’s enough wine (organic of course) in the fridge (A++ rated) to last the week, I’m afraid my carbon footprint is the least of my worries.

Still, politicians and the media wag their fingers at us as though we’re teenagers – walk instead of drive, use low energy light bulbs (mercury-laden by the way), turn the thermostat down and put on a sweater. Okay, I’m happy to do this in the name of energy conservation and the future of the planet, but what I, and most of the rest of the population would really love to know is, is it really going to make a difference? And why should I be so worried about it anyway? Surely one person can’t be responsible for the entire world going to pot – isn’t that the plot of a Superman film?

All I know about carbon is that it’s a natural element trapped in vegetation, coal, the earth, oil etc, and that releasing it into the atmosphere causes the greenhouse effect which is why we should drive a Reliant Robin rather than a Range Rover Vogue monster. Why doesn’t someone tell us more about this stuff? I’m sure people would be a lot more willing to give saving it a go if we knew why and, more to the point, that we were being supported. But sitting shivering in our living rooms watching TV by the light of a candle seems a tad masochistic when, if you take a trip to London at any time of the day or night, half the city is lit up like Las Vegas with only five people actually using the light, heat, computers etc. How much carbon would be saved if the Gherkin building was to please switch off the lights at home time?

Does Gordon Brown give Sarah a hard time for using the Downing Street washing machine more than once a day? Is Barack Obama going to refuse Air Force One and switch to video conferencing in the hope we’ll all choose Dorset over Benidorm for our summer holiday? I doubt that very much. And we’ve all seen David Cameron publicly shunning cars but I bet he tucks into his Sunday roast every week – the global livestock industry reportedly uses just as much energy as transport. And how many times have I heard disinterested friends or family say to me, ‘Well Lisa, I’d readily swap my Trojan Warrior Trailblaster for a moped if I thought that those factories in China would stop throwing out smoke and fumes like there’s no tomorrow.’ (which by the way, there won’t be at this rate!). These are the very same people whose demand for iPods, supermarket clothing and Nikes is the reason for the factories in the first place!

It’s all very well for the Government to put the onus on the homeowner to use less energy and transport, and fine us for having too much rubbish but I can’t help feeling that’s like using a pneumatic drill to open a pistachio. What about ticking off the car companies, heavy industry, the supermarket chains and most of Canary Wharf?

I’m on my children’s Eco-schools Council and it makes me smile right down to my toes to see such passion and commitment about saving energy and doing good for the environment from children as young as seven, who this planet, after all, belongs to. But it also breaks my heart to think that unless everyone from individuals, business owners, governments and multinational organizations, pulls together and takes responsibility for cutting carbon usage then, it seems to me, the earth will surely be doomed.

Confused as Lisa? You can find out more and have your say at http://tinyurl.com/CO2debate

This is a copy of my recent column which appeared in the latest issue of Sustained Magazine…. http://www.sustainedmagazine.com/

Author & Source – Lisa at Eurydice PR