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Green Notes - 16 Mar 09

By Chinthana ⋅ March 16, 2009 ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

• Scientists are gloomy; economists are more upbeat. Such was the bottom line of an epic, three-day international congress of climate change experts that ended here yesterday. At the congress, it seemed that all the scientists had to share with their peers was bad news, but a number of economists saw the climate crisis rather as an historic opportunity to reorganize the world economy and develop new, clean and job-creating activities. Temperatures, sea levels, acid levels in oceans and ice sheets were already moving “beyond the patterns of natural variability within which our society and economy have developed and thrived,” scientists said in a report released Thursday. The group called on policy-makers to use all tools available to reduce dangerous emissions of greenhouse gases.
• In response to growing demand from investors for environmentally focused indices, Standard & Poor’s has launched the S&P U.S. Carbon Efficient Index that will measure the performance of large cap U.S. companies with relatively low carbon emissions, while closely tracking the return of the S&P 500. S&P says organizations are paying more attention to the impact of greenhouse gases on the climate and increasingly more investors consider carbon efficiency as an important investment theme. Lacking third-party, independent validation and absent nationally standardized GHG-e emissions measurement protocols, this service puts a micrometer on a fog bank - so to speak. Missing items include: How far up the supply chain do the emission calculations go; do the estimates include shipping and on-ground distribution; does it capture electricity supplied to leased versus owned offices, to contract manufacturers; how much of a joint venture (JV) is included; and, is company travel captured?
• Those involved in the Veg Climate Alliance stress that the best thing a person can do to stop global warming and its catastrophic consequences is to switch to a plant-based diet. There is strong evidence to support this cause: According to the United Nations 2006 report “Livestock’s Long Shadow,” animal-based agriculture contributes more to global warming than the entire transport sector. Hence, noted NASA climatologist James Hansen and Dr. Rachendra Pachauri, the Director of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, have urged people to eat less meat. Many experts are warning that global warming may soon spiral out of control. This could lead to an unprecedented global disaster. TreeHugger also states that becoming vegetarian is one of the strongest personal steps that can be taken towards reducing you personal carbon footprint, as well as your ecological footprint more broadly. At the Copenhagen Climate Congress, Elke Stehfest of the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency presented additional evidence that a vegetarian diet, or one at least that radically reduces meat consumption, can have massive climate change mitigation benefits.