The Speaker » Economy

Greenpeace Convinces World’s Top Logging Company to End Natural Logging

The Speaker — Mon, 21 Jul 2014 07:05:38 +0000

One of the world’s largest pulp and paper companies, Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), has been convinced to end all logging of natural forests. The Jakarta-based company, which has 14 major companies in Indonesia and China and an annual capacity of 18 million tons of paper and pulp products, has received an endorsement by Greenpeace, long its rival, after signing a contract to log only certain timber lands this week. APP’s owner and chairman, Teguh Ganda Wijaya, put his personal seal on the commitment–the first time he has done so on an environmental agreement. The move is expected to cost APP a significant amount of money, but, according to APP’s sustainability managing director, “We now want to be a true global player and true leader.” APP, which has cleared an estimated 2 million hectares of tropical forest in Sumatra since 1994, will now log only plantation timber, according to the agreement. Its suppliers will be bound to stay clear of timber with high conservation value and carbon-rich peat swamps. They will also be required to obtain “free, prior and informed consent” from landholders upon opening new concessions. Greenpeace had targeted APP for years in a campaign that cost the logging company over 130 customers. Recently, Disney, Mattel and Hasbro dropped APP due to the Greenpeace campaign. Although Greenpeace has endorsed APP’s contract, the endorsement was qualified. Greenpeace’s lead forest campaigner in Indonesia, Bustar Maitar, said that Greenpeace would continue to “watch and monitor closely” APP’s activities. APP has broken environmental commitments in the past. “We welcome this move, but we urge everyone to wait and see, after independent monitoring is done,” commented the pulp and paper manager of the World Wildlife Federation, an organization that has seen environmental commitments made by APP broken in recent years.

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Fracking Can Be Banned by Local Communities, Says New York’s Highest Court

The Speaker — Mon, 30 Jun 2014 16:11:41 +0000

Local communities have the power to use local zoning laws to ban heavy industry, such as oil and gas production and fracking, according to New York’s Court of Appeals Monday. The state’s highest court ruled in a 5-2 decision that the towns of Dryden and Middlefield could ban such industry within municipal borders. “Today the Court stood with the people of Dryden and the people of New York to protect their right to self determination,” said Dryden Deputy Supervisor Jason Leifer. “It is clear that people, not corporations, have the right to decide how their community develops.” The ruling effects more than just Dryden and Middlefield. More than 170 New York municipalities and many communities in Colorado, Ohio, Texas, New Mexico, Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and California have passed or are attempting to pass measures against fracking, and the ruling is considered to significantly empower those citizens to establish bans or moratoriums on unwanted industry. Read more: One Little US Town Is Showing the World How a Small Community Can Stand Up to Big Oil and Gas and Stop Fracking “Heavy industry has never been allowed in our small farming town and three years ago, we decided that fracking was no exception,” said Dryden Town Supervisor Mary Ann Sumner. “The oil and gas industry tried to bully us into backing down, but we took our fight all the way to New York’s highest court. And today we won.” Communities have faced daunting odds in their attempts to assert self determination when industry interests are at stake. “This decision by the Court of Appeals has settled the matter once and for all across New York State and has sent a firm message to the oil and gas industry,” said Deborah Goldberg, managing attorney at Earthjustice, who worked on the case. “For too long the oil and gas industry has intimidated and abused people, expecting to get away with it. That behavior is finally coming back to haunt them, as communities across the country stand up and say ‘no more.’ Earthjustice is proud to have stood with, and fought on behalf of, one such community.” “Town by town, New Yorkers have taken a stand against fracking. Today’s victory confirms that each of these towns is on firm legal ground,” said Helen Slottje, an Ithaca-based attorney whose legal research inspired New York’s fracking ban. “The oil and gas industry tried to take away a fundamental right that pre-dates even the Declaration of Independence: the right of municipalities to regulate local land use. But they failed. The anti-fracking measures passed by Dryden, Middlefield and dozens of other New York municipalities are fully enforceable.” Read more: New York Votes to Not Drill or Frack Dryden began its organized opposition to oil and gas projects in 2009 when it began to learn about the technique the companies planned to use to extract oil and gas–fracking. Dryen residents organized under the Dryden Resource Awareness Coalition (DRAC) and convinved the town board to prohibit oil and gas development activities, including fracking. An interested oil and gas company sued the town weeks later. Dryden argued that they had the right to make local land use decisions under the provisions of the New York State Constitution, including where oil and gas interests were involved. In 2012, a trial court agreed, and a mid-level appeals court also found for the residents in 2013. “Today’s ruling shows all of America that a committed group of citizens and public officials can stand together against fearful odds and successfully defend their homes, their way of life and the environment against those who would harm them all in the name of profit,” said Leifer. Dryden – The Small Town that Changed the Fracking Game

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Illegally Dumping Iron Ore Into Pacific Coast Water Has “Amazing” Positive Impact, Increases Fish 400 Percent

The Speaker — Sat, 21 Jun 2014 22:26:53 +0000

In 2012, California businessman Russ George illegally dumped 120 tons of iron sulfide over a 25,000 kilometer (15,000 mile) square area off the British Columbia coast in order to create a massive algae bloom to feed Pacific fish and increase catches. Now, salmon runs are setting a new records to the tune of an added 100,000 tons, and the results have been hailed a “a stunningly over-the-top success” in addition to being criticized by more wary environmental groups. Russ George initiated the precedent-setting iron sulfide test in July 2012. The test involved a geoengineering technique called ocean fertilization, whereby plankton are nourished with carbon dioxide–a source of nutrition which has decreased by 25 percent in recent decades. Russ George hoped to gain lucrative carbon credits from the project. Iron commonly reaches offshore algae by being blown into the sea by dust storms on land, and sometimes iron enrichment occurs naturally, such as after the 2008 eruption of the Kasatochi volcano in Alaska, which spewed mineral-rich ash into the Northeast Pacific Ocean salmon pasture, causing the 2010 “volcano miracle salmon run.” Iron nourishes the marine food cycle from the ground up, directly feeding zooplankton, which feed young salmon, which in turn feed larger fish and sea mammals. Some of the waters that George seeded with iron, in the words of Timothy Parsons, professor emeritus of fisheries science at the University of British Columbia, were so nutrient-poor as to be a “virtual desert dominated by jellyfish.” The iron sulphide was applied thinly from a fishing boat in an eddy 370 kilometers (200 miles) off the Haida Gwaii/Queen Charlotte Islands, after George convinced the Old Masset village council to establish the Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation (HSRC) and offered to fund the project with $1 million of his own money. The corporation was also funded by $2.5 borrowed money from a Canadian credit union. The area covered by the dump was 25,657 km square, roughly the size of Lake Erie. Evidence of the massive artificial plankton bloom has been provided by satellite images. The bloom is as large as 10,000 km square–10 times larger than any previous test. Although the dump was illegal under Canadian Law (due to its scale) and United Nations resolutions (See here, here and here) , and although the Canadian government raided the headquarters of the offices of HSRC and George was compelled to resign from the HSRC presidency, recent evidence has suggested that the Canadian government may have known about the geoengineering scheme, but not stopped it. George said of the project, “Let’s not make this a story all about CO2 and Carbon… it’s really about whether the ocean pastures come back to the abundance of life that they and we enjoyed 100 years ago. My hypothesis is that if we can help replenish and restore the ocean pastures we will see the results in the one thing that mankind is most connected to the ocean by, it’s FISH! “Indeed my experiment, which at a size of 30,000+ sq. km. is perhaps the largest single experiment of its kind ever conducted, has demonstrated that the fish come back in incredible abundance, quickly… All species of fish have responded but the best data comes from those fish who swim back to us instead of making us go hunt them down.” It appears that fish catches in the area have increased massively. It is estimated that the dump boosted catches by over 100,000 tons. The largest run of Pink salmon–which take two years to mature–occurred 12-20 months after the iron seeding project took place.Salmon are able to grow bigger in rich environments and more frequently reach catchable size. In a rich ocean environment, salmon can gain more than one pound per month, it has been reported. In the northeast Pacific Ocean, salmon catches more than quadrupled–from 50 million to 226 million–and in BC’s Fraser River, where catches only once exceeded 25 million, 72 million fish were caught. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game recently completed an assessment of the 2013 commercial salmon fishery. With the record pink salmon harvest of 219 million fish, the 2013 harvest ranks as the second most valuable on record. In 2013 the value of the Pink harvest was $691.1 million, below only the 1988 harvest value of $724 million. The total number of salmon harvested also set a new record at 272 million fish, well above the expected 50 million. . This years Fraser River Sockeye salmon run is projected to be at a record high as well–twice the previous record set in 1900. Up to 72 million Sockeye are expected. In history, the number has not exceeded 45 million. Some have hailed the project as a boon, such as leading sustainability media outlet Treehugger, who said George’s results “had truly amazing, positive impact,” and Robert Zubin, who in a piece for the National Review called the experiment “a stunningly over-the-top success.” Other environmentalists have targeted the Haida First Nations and George for tampering with the marine environment. “It appears to be a blatant violation of two international resolutions,” said senior high-seas adviser for the International Union for Conservation of Nature Kristina Gjerde. “Even the placement of iron particles into the ocean, whether for carbon sequestration or fish replenishment, should not take place, unless it is assessed and found to be legitimate scientific research without commercial motivation. This does not appear to even have had the guise of legitimate scientific research.” “It is now more urgent than ever that governments unequivocally ban such open-air geoengineering experiments,” said Silvia Ribeiro, of the international anti-technology watchdog ETC Group. “They are a dangerous distraction providing governments and industry with an excuse to avoid reducing fossil-fuel emissions.” One of the witnesses to an unprecedented 2012 orca group sighting commented, “If Mr. George’s account of the mission is to believed, his actions created an algae bloom in an area half of the size of Massachusetts that attracted a huge array of aquatic life, including whales that could be ‘counted by the score.’ . . . I began to wonder: could it

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“Our Coastline is Not for Sale to Big Oil.” Canadian First Nations Groups Vow to Be “the Wall” Against Northern Gateway Pipeline, Threaten Action

The Speaker — Thu, 19 Jun 2014 18:38:15 +0000

First Nations Canadians who have banded together to oppose the recently approved the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline that would connect Alberta with the British Columbia coast–albeit with 209 conditions–have rejected the government’s decision to proceed with the project. First Nations groups have stated that they “will take whatever measures are necessary to prevent that from happening.” “Our coastline is not for sale to big oil, no matter how much money is on the table. There are thousands of British Colombians and Canadians who feel the same way, and who will stand with us to stop this dangerous project,” stated one of the opposing First Nations groups, the Heiltsuk First Nation. First Nations groups, such as the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, First Nations Summit and B.C. Assembly of First Nations, have stated that they “unequivocally reject” the decision to approve the pipeline, and have vowed to fight the pipeline with legal and direct action. National Program Director for Sierra Club Canada John Bennet said, “I’ve been doing this for 30 years now, and I’ve never see such strength and opposition to a project.” Under the Canadian constitution, the government of Canada legally must consult First Nations and accommodate First Nations treaties in decisions that could impact First Nations lands and resources. First nations groups say that the government failed to consult tribal bands before approving the pipeline. Read more: Northern Gateway Pipeline Illegal if Without Consultation with First Nations “Our position is that before a decision can be made, there has to be a complete report in accordance with the law — and the report was flawed, so the government cannot legally make the decision,” said a staff lawyer for EcoJustice, Barry Robinson. “If the courts find we are correct, then the decision made yesterday would have to be reversed.” “The government has moved their legal responsibility to consult with First Nations to Enbridge, and that’s a wrong move on their part,” said Tl’azt’en Nation Grand Chief Edward John. Enbridge’s Norther Gateway pipeline is a 730-mile (1175 km) that would carry tar sands oil from Alberta to Kitimat, a town on the British Columbia coast, where the oil would be loaded onto tankers for transport. Enbridge spokesman Ivan Giesbrecht emailed a statement out that read that 60 percent of the First Nations population along the route of the pipeline had agreed to the project, but the challenges of the First Nations opposition are considered to be significant. “We are the wall that Enbridge and Harper cannot pass,” said Chief Terry Teegee of the Carrier Sekani Tribal Council, and Grand Chief Stewart Philip of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs warned, “We will take whatever measures are necessary to prevent that from happening.” First Nations Governance

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New York Votes to Not Drill or Frack

The Speaker — Wed, 18 Jun 2014 07:46:28 +0000

New York’s general assembly voted Monday on whether to drill or frack within the state. The majority voted in favor of a three-year ban on drilling and fracking. An 89-34 vote favored a three-year moratorium on oil and gas drilling permits. The moratorium is intended in part to allow time for study of the environmental impact of drilling and fracking. “We do not need to rush into this. The natural gas deposits within the Marcellus Shale are not going to go anywhere,” said New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. “We have heard from thousands of residents across the state about many issues associated with hydrofracking, and prudent leadership demands that we take our time to address all these concerns.” New York State has been under moratorium since 2008. The most recent moratorium passed in 2013, and would have expired in 2015. Passage of the vote depends on the New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Senate. “Now, we’re urging Gov. Cuomo and the State Senate to stand up against the out-of-state oil and gas industry, and stand up for our state’s health, environment and long-term economy by rejecting fracking,” said Alex Beauchamp of Food & Water Watch and New Yorkers Against Fracking. Health concerns have been raised by groups such as the American Lung Association in New York, and these health concerns have been recognized by the legislation. “Oil and gas development utilizing High volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing (HVHF) involves the use and/or production of numerous toxic and hazardous air and water contaminants, a number of them known or suspected carcinogens,” reads the legislation. “Oil and gas development utilizing HVHF has also been associated with a range of adverse environmental impacts, including impacts to water and air quality, land and habitat, and community character.”

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20,000 Elephants Were Poached in Africa in 2013

The Speaker — Tue, 17 Jun 2014 13:21:08 +0000

At least 20,000 African elephants were poached last year–hunted for their tusks, which are still in high demand on the Asian ivory market. The statistics were published last Friday the Secretariat of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), a group which observes 35,000 world species, including 30-40 percent of all elephant populations. There has also been an increase in large seizures of ivory–over 500 kg–mainly in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, which account for 80 percent of the seizures reported by CITES. John E. Scanlon, Secretary-General of CITES, commented on the trend, “Africa’s elephants continue to face an immediate threat to their survival from high-levels of poaching for their ivory and with over 20,000 elephants illegally killed last year the situation remains dire. Due to the collective efforts of so many, we also see some encouraging signals, but experience shows that poaching trends can shift dramatically and quickly, especially when transnational organized crime is involved.” CITES monitors sites where poaching is taking place. Sites where poaching is increasing include Dzanga Sangha (Central African Republic). In Zakouma National Park (Chad) poaching is declining. Besides Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, five other countries have been implicated by CITES: China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. These are the main origin, transit and destination locations for the trade. The rates of killing are far higher than elephant repopulation rates, and the species are declining across Africa. Poaching is thought to continue in such high levels due to poverty and weak governance, coupled with demand for the illegal commodity. On July 7-11, the CITES Standing Committee will meet to discuss the figures in Geneva. The Monitoring Illegal Killing in Elephants (MIKE) program and the Elephant Trade Information System (ETIS) will also participate. CITES collects data for 35,000 species around the globe. The data comes from law enforcement patrols and others who collect such information. CITES monitors 30-40 percent of the entire elephant population. CITES Press Release Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora

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One Little US Town Is Showing the World How a Small Community Can Stand Up to Big Oil and Gas and Stop Fracking

The Speaker — Mon, 16 Jun 2014 04:32:43 +0000

One little US town is showing the world how a small community can take on big oil and gas. Lafayette, Colo. (pop. 25,733) was unhappily facing fracking within their town area. The citizens banded together with environmental groups and amended their Community Bill of Rights to secure their right to clean air, pure water, and the rights of ecosystems to exist and flourish. Besides Lafayette’s stand, moratoriums and bans have been enacted in six small cities and towns with a combined total of more than 400,000 citizens. The Community Bill of Rights was amended on November 6, Election Day. The margin for the vote was nearly 60 percent, and in nearby Oberlin, OH. (pop. 8,286) the vote was over 70 percent in favor. The vote was held after an employee of Halliburton, the world’s second largest oil field services company, filed a complaint with the elections board that the amendment being proposed by the community would have to include a summary of the measure according to state law. The petitioners included the entirety of the amendment language, and the city clerk, Susan Koster, threw out the petition challenge, stating, “As a home rule city, Lafayette operates under a citizen adopted charter. In the case of this protest, the petition submitted to amend the City’s Charter complied with the Colorado Home Rule Act.” Among the other challenges anti-fracking citizens faced were the Colorado Oil and Gas Association’s (COGA) $66,974 investment in local media and claims that the “Bowling Green” charter amendment would kill jobs and raise energy costs buy over 80 percent. The city itself enacted an ordinance that banned fracking. This was a way of dissuading voters from voting for the charter amendment, according to the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF),which helped craft the Community Bill of Rights, because the ordinance was subject to being rescinded by the Council after the election was over. Similar actions had recently succeeded in nearby Broadview Heights and Mansfield, OH, according to CELDF. However, Lafayette voted to adopt the charter amendment, banning fracking. One month later, COGA filed suit against the city in attempt to overturn the fracking ban. Then, energy industry representatives began private meetings with Gov. John Hickenlooper. Eleven environmental groups formally requested to be present at any such meetings. “Apparently, it is now simply business as usual to shut out the voice of the people when making decisions that effect us all,” said the president of Protect our Loveland, Sharon J. Carlisle. “We demand our rightful place in your smoke-filled, oil- and gas-filled rooms of secret wheelings and dealings.” Hickenlooper approved a Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission’s lawsuit with Longmont City in an attempt to overturn that city’s fracking ban last summer, but weeks later admitted fracking was something “no one wants in their backyard.” Reacting to the COGA suit, Lafayete residents filed a class-action lawsuit against COGA, the state of Colorado and Hickenlooper. The lawsuit is the first of its kind. Although the particular focus of the suit is fracking, it insists on the right of local self governance for citizens, protected through a community bill of rights. The residents’ suit alleges that their right to self governance is guaranteed by the US Constitution, the COGA Act infringes that right, and Colorado officials are guilty of not enforcing the ban on fracking. The residents allege that the ban passed in November was not being enforced. CELDF executive director, Thomas Linzey, Esq., said of the suit, “This class action lawsuit is merely the first of many by people across the United States whose constitutional rights to govern their own communities are routinely violated by state governments working in concert with the corporations that they ostensibly regulate. “The people of Lafayette will not stand idly by as their rights are negotiated away by oil and gas corporations, their state government, and their own municipal government.” Halliburton Co. is incorporated in the US, where its headquarters is in Houston, TX., but its chairman and CEO, David Lesar, works and lives in Dubai, where Halliburton’s other headquarters is located. The company took in $5 billion of profits for the past three fiscal years, and billions in the years before. Halliburton has recently been the source of several controversies. In 2013, the company pled guilty on charges of destroying evidence relating to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill, incurring a $200,000 statutory fine. In addition, Halliburton has been implicated in the creation of a toxic cloud that forced evacuations in Farmington, New Mexico in 2006, and it may also be implicated in spill in a 2009 Timor Sea off Australia and a 2010 improper cementing in the Gulf of Mexico. Market Watch CELDF EcoWatch

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Long Dismissed, BRICS Beginning to Grab Attention as Serious Competitor to G7, World Bank and IMF

The Speaker — Sun, 15 Jun 2014 21:58:50 +0000

The BRICS alliance is considered to have been largely dismissed by Western players in recent years, but, with new developments, including this years Russian aggression in Ukraine and recent trade and banking agreements and talks among the BRICS community, analysts are beginning to look at BRICS as a potentially historic challenge to a global order that has been in place since World War II. Russia lost its welcome in the G8 and saw economic sanctions imposed on it by much of the Western world due to its illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea and more recent continued military aggression in Eastern Ukraine. Russia remains a part of BRICS, however, which is causing analysts to pay more attention to a possibility of the inauguration of a new phase of global bipolarity. BRIC was created officially in 2009, and attracted many attention and investors due to the massive combined total population and landmass of the four original members. Nearly 3 billion people lived in Brazil, Russia, India and China–40 percent of the world’s population–and the nations cover 25 percent of the world’s land. Investors and others saw the potential for rapid growth in domestic consumption as millions of people elevated their socioeconomic status into the middle class bracket. The BRICS nations recently have signed trade agreements and begun the formation of institutions to rival the current monopoly of their Western and European counterparts IMF and the World Bank, which are much criticized by economists in the developing world. Russia and China signed a multi-billion dollar Sino-Russian gas deal in May–the so-called Agreement on Cooperation, which was 10 years in the making. The deal undercuts the US dollar in international transactions. Recently, the leaders of China and Russia have been holding talks about the creation of a new credit rating agency to cater to BRICS countries. The BRICS countries have been reported to be near a deal on the New Development Bank, each valued at $100 billion. In addition, a BRICS development bank was proposed by India, which would directly rival the World Bank and IMF. The future of global economics has seen many preditions, but it is still uncertain. In 2003, Goldman Sachs reported their speculation that by 2050 the BRIC economies would surpass most current major powers in wealth, due to a dominating supply of manufactured goods and services from China and India combined with Brazil’s raw materials. More recently, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) also projected that of the three percent annual growth it expects up to 2060, emerging economies will have much stronger, faster growth than already established economies. Whereas the US economy represents nearly a quartre of global economic activity today, GDP is expected to shrink to 18 percent by 2030. China, which currently produces 17 percent of world GDP, will produce 28 percent in 2030, according to OECD estimates. India, which accounts for 7 percent today, will account for 17 percent in 2030 and 18 percent in 2060. Europe’s share of world GDP will gradually drop from 17 percent today to nine percent by 2060. Japans economy will similarly shrink. The OECD itself–composed of 34 countries–which accounts for 65 percent of global GDP will shink to 43 percent by 2060, at which time the combined GDP of China and India will be 46 percent, and other OECD nations will have a combined percentage of 18 percent. Global GDPs will be affected largely by population growth, the OECD predicts. Personal incomes and living standards will also see the global gap narrowed. Emerging economies will increase living standards and the aging populations of the EU and US will stagnate living standards. Alternatively, some global economists think that factors besides population growth will factor considerably into future developments, pointing to actual economic progress so far in BRICS countries. In recent years, only China has maintained strong growth rates. The other economies have been hampered by rule-of-law and other challenges. Some commenters point to models of international organization besides the G7 and BRICS as the hope of international cooperation, such as the G20, where emerging economies are thought to have more of an equal footing with OECD nations, providing what may be a better model of dialogue between the various levels of economic development in the 21st century. The G20 takes into account contemporary and future economic rebalancing and seeks international consensus on universal global issues. NASDAQ Youtube Investopedia Al Jazeera Telegraph UK

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