The Economist: The environment

The mystery of Scotland’s shrinking sheep may have been solved

ON THE remote island of Hirta, in the St Kilda archipelago beyond the Outer Hebrides, live hundreds of wild Soay sheep. Over the past 20 years biologists studying this primitive breed, which has not changed much since the Bronze Age, have noticed that the sheep are getting smaller. This was a puzzle because, in general, bigger animals are usually much better at surviving the island’s extremely cold winters. The biologists now think that climate change could be involved.

Tim Coulson of Imperial College, London, and his colleagues examined the weights of about 2,000 female sheep that lived on the island in the two decades of their study. They combined this information with detailed histories of individual animals. They found that daughters were, on average, lighter than their mothers had been at the same age. Their legs were shorter, too, suggesting that the breed really was shrinking. ...

Earthquakes, and the preparations for them, are metaphors for Japan’s malaise

A CAPRICIOUS, mythical catfish lies beneath the Japanese archipelago. Usually the Shinto god of the earth keeps the brute’s head pinned down with a granite keystone. But when Kashima drops his guard, the thrashings of the grotesque fish convulse the earth.

Japan is extraordinarily prone to earthquakes, accounting for nearly a fifth of the world’s supply of them. No city, not even Los Angeles, surpasses Tokyo for seismic action. With tsunamis and typhoons too, an acceptance of natural disasters is said to be hard-wired into the Japanese psyche. ...

The Hudson River, 400 years on

AS AMERICA celebrates its birthday on July 4th, New York is celebrating the discovery of its Hudson river. The Dutch East India Company hired Henry Hudson, an English explorer, to find a north-west passage to Asia. He failed: the route defied all explorers until Roald Amundsen in 1906. But Hudson’s journey of 1609 up the river that would later bear his name led to a valuable trade in furs and eventually to settlement by the Dutch. His shipmate recorded abundant fish and that the surrounding lands “were as pleasant with Grasse and Flowers, and goodly Trees, as euer they had seene, and very sweet smells came from them.” The smells unfortunately, have not always been so sweet.

The Hudson has been exploited and abused. Factories used the river as a dumping-ground. At one time a 20-mile stretch of the Hudson had little or no aquatic life. “You could tell what colour the GM plant in Sleepy Hollow was painting its cars by the colour of the water,” recalls Alex Matthiessen, president of Riverkeeper, an environmental watchdog. Since the 1960s, groups like Riverkeeper and advocates such as Pete Seeger, a folk singer, have fought to restore the river’s ecosystem. The 1972 Clean Water Act helped deter polluters. And in 1984 the federal Environmental Protection Agency classified 200 miles of the river as a Superfund site, eligible for special attention. As a result of all this the river has begun to look like its old self. Water quality has improved. Some fish populations look healthier. The Bald Eagle once again nests nearby. ...

An ambitious scheme to save pristine forest starts to take shape

THOUGH half of Ecuador lies in the Amazon basin, its rainforest is shrinking faster than in neighbouring countries (by 1.67% a year). It has been ravaged by logging, poachers and oil extraction. Settlers have streamed in to carve out a precarious life. Over the past decade they have been joined by thousands of refugees fleeing violence in Colombia, as well as guerrillas and drug traffickers who inflict it. Native tribes have been uprooted, forced deeper into the forest or have disappeared.

The government of President Rafael Correa now wants help to keep pristine one of Ecuador’s most important remaining jungle areas, in the Yasuni national park. In a corner of the park known as ITT (after the Ishpingo, Tambococha and Tiputini rivers) lies an oilfield which preliminary seismic studies show holds almost 846m barrels of oil, or around 20% of Ecuador’s reserves. The ITT area is unusually biodiverse. It is thought to be home to several hundred tribesmen who shun the modern world and whose way of life is protected under a new constitution promoted by Mr Correa. ...

Steven Chu wants to save the world by transforming its largest industry: energy

WHETHER Steven Chu, America’s energy secretary, would be flattered or horrified by the comparison is unclear, but he and Margaret Thatcher have something important in common. They are both scientists who have risen to political power. That Mr Chu has a Nobel prize for physics, whereas Lady Thatcher swiftly abandoned chemistry for the more lucrative pastures of the law, does not make the comparison unfair. What matters is that both of them understand something that some politicians from softer intellectual backgrounds often seem to forget: you cannot negotiate with nature. Nor can you ignore it, for it will not go away.

Lady Thatcher showed her mettle in this regard in 1989, when she became the first politician of stature to raise the alarm about global warming. When her adviser Crispin Tickell pointed out to her that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was rising and that carbon dioxide was a greenhouse gas, she got the point instantly and alerted the world in a speech to the United Nations. Mr Chu’s job is harder: he is charged with spotting, nurturing and promoting promising energy technologies, thereby helping America to create the tools that the world needs to wean itself off fossil fuels. ...

The energy secretary continues to show his frustration

THE economy is wobbly, oil prices are rising and voters have climate change on their minds. What better, surely, than a “green stimulus”? Barack Obama duly set aside some $39 billion of February’s $787 billion stimulus bill for the Department of Energy, hoping to create lots of sustainable, high-tech “green jobs”. Steven Chu, the secretary of energy, was in Iowa on June 22nd to announce $16m in spending—soon to grow to $40m—on green fuels and energy efficiency there. “I want to shove this money out the door as quickly as possible,” said the secretary. And well he might. Just $5.8 billion of that $39 billion had been allocated as of June 19th. The department is trying hard to spend the cash faster, and has since then made a flurry of announcements (see article).

Why has spending money proved so hard, when the whole point of the stimulus was to jolt the economy quickly? One problem is structural: the department has historically focused mainly on America’s nuclear-weapons stockpile. The modern role of funding green-energy projects has grown in prominence, but that old priority still sucks up the biggest share of the department’s people and money. ...

So many challenges. So little spare cash

HAVING campaigned in poetry, Barack Obama doubtless expected to govern in prose. But it is arithmetic that threatens to cramp his ambitions. Last week, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its long-term budget outlook. If current policies are continued, federal debt held by the public will rise from 41% of GDP at the end of 2008 to 87% by 2020, and (theoretically) to a staggering 716% by 2080.

Meanwhile, Mr Obama is trying to save the planet and reshape America’s health-care system. The first task will be fantastically expensive. The second does not have to be, but probably will be. A president who refused to put off unpleasant decisions, as Mr Obama promised during his inauguration, would be honest about all this. He would tell Americans that stopping global warming means higher energy prices, and that arresting health-care inflation means cutting back on medical procedures that people want but don’t need. ...

Nano-engineering can produce substances with unique properties that will give renewable energy a boost

BIG improvements in the production of energy, especially from renewable sources, are expected over the coming years. Safer nuclear-power stations, highly efficient solar cells and the ability to extract more energy from the wind and the sea are among the things promised. But important breakthroughs will be needed for these advances to happen, mostly because they require extraordinary new materials.

The way researchers will construct these materials is now becoming clear. They will engineer them at the nanoscale, where things are measured in billionths of a metre. At such a small size materials can have unique properties. And sometimes these properties can be used to provide desirable features, especially when substances are formed into a composite structure that combines a number of abilities. A series of recent developments shows how great that potential might be. ...

How to green your grill

SUMMER has arrived in the northern hemisphere, and with it one of the traditional rituals of languid, warm evenings: the barbecue. How pleasant to cook and dine al fresco, as the sun casts long shadows across the lawn. The steaks sizzle over a smoky heat, sending a delicious aroma into the air. But, of course, that is not all that escapes from the grill. Barbecues also release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. So how does a tree-hugger salve her conscience during the barbecue season? Three things spring to mind. Thought must be given to the style of barbecue used, the food that is cooked on it and where that food comes from.

Is it better for the environment to use a device that burns charcoal to cook food or a design that is connected to steel cylinders of liquefied petroleum gas? At first glance, your correspondent suspects that the biofuel might be best. The carbon dioxide released when it is burned is only that which the tree took from the air as it was growing, after all. Yet when the question was addressed by a piece of research by Eric Johnson, of Atlantic Consultants in Gattikon, Switzerland, published earlier this year in Environmental Impact Assessment Review, he came to a different conclusion. ...

After an abrupt about-face, an agency frets about its footprint

IF ANYONE suggested the World Bank did not take global warming seriously, its bosses would bristle: only last October, they would point out, the institution issued a “strategic framework” laying out its thinking on development and climate change. This promised more emphasis on noble things like energy efficiency and renewable power; and more bank support for “sustainable forest management, including reduced deforestation.”

Those words intrigued green campaigners, who were up in arms over a $90m loan by the bank’s private-sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), to the Bertin group, Brazil’s leading beef exporter. As the greens observed, cattle farming is widely seen as the biggest threat to the Amazon’s trees. ...

Victims of a warming world may be caught in a bureaucratic limbo unless things are done to ease—and better still, pre-empt—their travails

THE airstrip at Lokichoggio, in the scorched wastes of north Kenya, was once ground zero for food aid. During Sudan’s civil war, flights from here kept millions of people alive. The warehouses are quieter now, but NGOs keep a toehold, in case war restarts—and to deal with what pundits call the “permanent emergency” of “environmentally induced” migration.

Take the local Turkana people. Their numbers have surged in recent decades, and will double again before 2040. But as the area gets hotter and drier, it has less water, grazing and firewood. The drought cycle in northern Kenya has gone from once every eight years to every three years and may contract further. That means no recovery time for the Turkana and their livestock; the result is an increasingly frantic drift from one dry place to another. ...

New efforts to reverse centuries of abuse

IT IS high season for a sliver of sand in Portage, Indiana. A pretty visitors’ centre sells ice cream. Lake Michigan shimmers in the sun. And beside the beach is a roaring steel mill. Swimmers enter the water at their own risk.

The Great Lakes—Michigan, Huron, Erie, Ontario and Longfellow’s “shining Big-Sea-Water”, Lake Superior—comprise one-fifth of the world’s surface fresh water. They have also endured centuries of abuse. But advocates are cheerful these days. Barack Obama’s budget proposes $475m for restoration. In June he appointed a Great Lakes tsar, Cameron Davis, to begin work in July. There is much to do. ...

Officials in America and Britain report on how a changing climate could batter their countries

IF YOU want to persuade voters to make difficult choices in order to tackle climate change, it helps to make clear precisely how their own homes might be affected by shifting weather patterns. Although climate change is widely expected to do most damage in poor countries, where large and vulnerable populations are most likely to be battered and displaced in the coming decades, rich ones will be affected too. This week two governments, in America and in Britain, set forth reports detailing what changes might be in store at home.

In America, on Tuesday June 16th, a team of scientists representing different federal agencies offered some grim reading. Their report begins with a gloomy but plausible assumption that politicians will fail to agree upon mandatory caps on emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon, which are helping to warm the planet. It then sketches out different scenarios, which vary according to economic and population growth at home and abroad, and by the development of technology. Broadly, these are pessimistic. Temperatures across the United States are expected to rise, on average, within a range of 2.2-6.4ºC (4-11.5ºF) by the end of this century. ...

Spam is not only irritating, it is bad for the environment

ON JUNE 12th a judge in California referred a lawsuit against Sanford Wallace, who styles himself “the king of spam”, to the United States Attorney’s office for possible criminal proceedings. Mr Wallace is being pursued by Facebook, a social network, for allegedly gaining fraudulent access to Facebook accounts and using them to distribute unsolicited messages. He has already been ordered to pay $230m to MySpace, another social network, for using that company’s site to promote pornography and gambling. Mr Wallace filed for bankruptcy on June 11th.

Such behaviour is not only antisocial, it is also bad for the environment. According to a report from an environmental consultancy, ICF International, commissioned by McAfee, a computer-security company, some 62 trillion unsolicited e-mails were sent in 2008, using 33 terawatt hours of electricity. That is equivalent to the energy consumed by 1.5m American homes or 3.1m cars over a year. If generated by coal-fired power stations it would release 17m tonnes of carbon dioxide, some 0.2% of global emissions of this greenhouse gas. ...

Alan Garcia’s high-handed government faces a violent protest

FOR seven weeks tens of thousands of Amazonian Indians blocked roads and rivers across eastern Peru. They seized hydroelectric plants and pumping stations on oil and gas pipelines to try to force the repeal of decrees facilitating oil exploration, commercial farming and logging in parts of the jungle. Petroperu, the state oil company, had to shut a pipeline that carries 40,000 barrels of oil each day. Amid threats of energy rationing in eastern towns, the government of President Alan Garcia this month ordered armed police to clear a stretch of road and retake a pumping station near Bagua, in Peru’s northern jungle (see map).

In the ensuing clash at Curva del Diablo—or “Devil’s Curve”—on June 5th at least nine protesters and eleven police were killed. The Indians, armed with spears and machetes, went on to capture and kill a dozen more police guarding a pumping station. Their leaders claim that at least 40 Indians were killed and 60 more are missing, though these numbers have not been confirmed. ...

Brazil’s government hopes that land reform in the Amazon will slow deforestation. Greens doubt it

THE tiny village, where naked Ticuna Indians live in wooden houses raised on stilts, looks out over one of the rivers that becomes the Amazon. No place seems farther removed from the ups and downs of the world economy. But this is misleading. The Ticuna, who now have a large reservation at Novo Paraiso near Brazil’s borders with Colombia and Peru, took their first steps towards globalisation when they had the misfortune to encounter Portuguese raiders several centuries ago. Later, rubber drew the Amazon into the list of hinterlands that could be tapped if supplies were tight elsewhere, allowing growth to accelerate in much of the world from the 19th century onwards. And today new demands on the Amazon’s riches will determine the future of the forest.

About 900 miles (1,500km) downriver to the east, in Amazonas state, stands Manaus. Rubber barons built the city from the 1860s onwards. Its early residents made up for their distance from the European centres of fashion by trying to outdo Paris during the belle epoque in drinking and debauchery. Now Manaus’s Zona Franca is the workshop for most of the televisions, washing machines and other white goods sold in Brazil. Special arrangements allow firms such as Sony and LG to import parts tax-free from elsewhere in the world and assemble them there. Despite being surrounded on all sides by thick forest, Manaus hums with manufacturing. ...

A new solar-powered aircraft attempts to fly around the world with zero emissions

WHEN an airliner takes off for a transatlantic flight it needs to carry some 80 tonnes of fuel, which accounts for around one-fifth of its weight. On really long flights, fuel can account for 40% of a plane’s take-off weight, so that around 20% of the fuel is used to carry the rest of the fuel. Each tonne of fuel burned also produces 3.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide. Yet inside a hanger at a Swiss airfield is the prototype of an aircraft (illustrated above) that does not use any fuel at all. The wings of this aircraft are almost as big as those of an airliner, but they are covered in a film of solar cells that convert sunlight into electricity to drive its engines.

Solar-powered aircraft have flown before. The pioneer was Paul MacCready, whose Gossamer Penguin made the first manned flight in 1980 in California, with his then 13-year-old son at the controls. A derivative, Solar Challenger, crossed the English Channel in 1981. But nothing like HB-SIA, as the Swiss aircraft is known, has ever taken to the air. If it works as expected, another version will be built and this will take off, climb to 10,000 metres and, by storing some of the electricity generated during the day, continue flying through the night. Its pilots, Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg, plan to cross the Atlantic in it and later to fly it around the world. ...

Some odd documents from Papua New Guinea show how hard it is to save trees

THESE are critical times for trees. In some places—like Peru, where police and indigenous folk are doing battle—the future of the forests is being determined by lethal force. Guyana is seeking money from the rich world to help keep most of its land forested. In other places, eco-warriors merely have to hack their way through a thicket of arcane technicalities. One such place is Bonn, where diplomats from most countries in the world are haggling over financial incentives to keep trees intact.

War-war in Peru is more gripping than jaw-jaw in Bonn, but the latter affects the earth’s future too. The talks are working on details of an idea known as Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD): it aims to fold the saving of trees into a wider UN effort to cool the world. ...

The big two emitters try to stop finger-pointing and save the planet

THOUSANDS of officials from all over the world this week neared the end of two weeks of difficult talks in Bonn under the United Nations’ climate convention. But they were conscious that even more difficult and probably more important negotiations were under way in Beijing. America’s most senior climate-change officials were meeting their Chinese counterparts. The two countries are by far the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases. They will determine whether a worthwhile global treaty to limit emissions can be concluded as planned in Copenhagen in December.

The treaty is to replace the Kyoto protocol, which expires in 2012. Some 180 countries will take part in the negotiations, but many feel that, on this issue more than any other, China and America make up a “G2” that determines the global post-Kyoto agenda. Shortly before travelling to Beijing, America’s climate-change envoy, Todd Stern, said that, though China may not be the “alpha and omega” of the international process, it was close. His delegation included President Barack Obama’s science adviser, John Holdren, and David Sandalow, the assistant energy secretary. ...