Ari's Planet

According to Joe Romm in Hell and High Water, we need to reduce carbon emissions by 8 billion tons per year, which he suggests can be accomplished by implementing 8 "wedges", each of which reduces emissions by 1 billion tons per year. It was unclear whether this needed to be done worldwide or whether he was referring only to steps the US must take. One of the wedges involves replacing vehicles with cars getting 60 mpg (miles per US gallon), or 25.4 km / L or just about 4 L / 100 km. Here, it was unclear , or I cannot recall, if this applied to all vehicles' average fuel efficiency (including trucks and cars, etc.) At any rate, the main point was that he said vehicles need to get 60 mpg and that this can best be accomplished, given current technology, using hybrid vehicles. Does converting to hybrid vehicles make sense?

The US military budget is around $550 billion. That's nearly as much as the rest of the world combined. Now they want us to give some rich folks $700 billion dollars. As I recall, dealing with global warming should cost maybe 1% or so of GDP, if we start addressing it now, which is a few hundred billion (yes, I should look this stuff up instead of just spouting from memory but I'm hungry right now). Jeffrey Sachs says we owe (based on prior commitments) about $70 billion a year, which is only a few tens of billion more than we currently spend ineffectively, and if we and a few other developed nations ponied up we could get rid of extreme poverty in the world in a couple of decades. He also added up a few other useful domestic social programs, like healthcare and insurance for old age, and came up with a few percent of GDP, basically less than it would cost to get out of Iraq and reduce our military budget.

I was booking a flight with Virgin Blue, one of the discount domestic Australian airlines, to fly from Sydney to Perth. The booking page said I would be generating about 270 kg of CO2* and that I could offset this amount for a bit under AUD$4. The money would go to an Australian government approved abatement program. The link about the program brought me to Virgin Blue's Fly Carbon Neutral page. Here, it is stated that the money will go to either LMS Generation or to a Waste Composting facility operated by the Southern Metropolitan Regional Council. LMS Generation uses gases from waste to generate power. This, in itself, does not reduce carbon emissions.

There's a shop outside the Auckland Fish Market where there are all sorts of interesting fish, some for as little as $8/kg. Many fisheries are badly managed and are unsustainable. I do not want to eat fish that are harvested in an unsustainable way or using methods that harm other marine life. The Marine Stewardship Council recently recertified Hoki as sustainably managed. Reading the page on the Hoki at the MSC, it says that Hoki are caught by bottom trawling, which tends to be a very destructive method. The Royal Forest and Bird Society says to avoid Hoki and that the Hoki fishery is not sustainable, "The main concerns with this fishery are: the bycatch of hundreds of NZ fur seals, albatrosses and petrels each year, plus bycatch of the globally threatened basking sharks and impacts on benthic communities." Is the MSC right or wrong? Why would the MSC be wrong?

Earthwatch: Volunteering on an Expedition
http://www.earthwatch.org/site/pp.asp?c=dsJSK6PFJnH&b=2136833

Globalteer: Worldwide Volunteer Opportunities
http://www.globalteer.org/

A couple of years ago Amory Lovins and a couple of other folks (including a local architect) gave a talk in Chapel Hill, NC. Lovins said basically that conservation had a negative cost: implementing conservation measures saves more money than it costs. Economically it therefore should be implemented before building, for instance, new power plants. He pointed out that nuclear power plants would have a higher marginal cost. Interesting, but I had no corroboration, and let it sit there.

We hear a lot about this recently, some pictures are here http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/gallery/2007/jul/18/china.pollution?pictu.... Will be interesting to see, or will I run away choking?