Green book review - Climate Myths: The Campaign Against Climate Science by Dr. John J. Berger

Climate change is always a fascinating story, not just the way it changes our lives, but also the way it became a public debate and the role political and economic forces played to increase the uncertainty about it. 

The latter is also the subject of the book we're reviewing this:  

Climate Myths: The Campaign Against Climate Science by Dr. John J. Berger (publisher: Northbrae Books)

What this book is about?
Climate Myths describes the fossil fuel industries’ successful two-decade-long campaign to control the public debate over global climate change―with disastrous consequences. The book reveals how fossil fuel companies manufactured controversies about climate change, obscuring its true causes and effects.  Dangerous climate change has now become a reality for which the nation is unprepared: Federal climate policy has been stalemated, legislation has been stillborn, and international climate negotiations have been stymied.

Climate Myths exposes how the fossil fuel industry’s campaign was modeled on the cigarette companies’ campaign to convince Americans that tobacco was not a health hazard, and how it operated to sow doubt about climate change through a network of prominent proxy organizations.  The book provides insights into the campaign’s origins, motives, techniques, and main actors as it tracks the industry’s ever-changing and contradictory climate myths.  

Beyond merely describing the way we got to this tragic, perilous impasse, the book carefully dissects the fossil fuel industry’s main allegations about climate change―one-by-one―in language ordinary readers can understand. 

The book includes a preface and foreword by two eminent climate scientists, Dr. Kevin Trenberth and Dr. John Harte, and an introduction by John H. Adams, winner of the 2010 Presidential Medal of Freedom.

About the author: 

Dr. John J. Berger is the author and editor of 11 books on climate, energy, and natural resources. He is a graduate of Stanford University and has a master’s in energy and natural resources from UC Berkeley and a Ph.D. in ecology from UC Davis.

Our review:

I read this book in its entirety. The actual reading and material was only 64 pages, which I really liked. I didn’t feel overwhelmed with information, which sometimes you get with the longer books. I do have very mixed thoughts about its content though. The book gives you loads of information, which you then need to try to take in and think about. It’s written in a way that most people will be able to understand and is then backed up with documentation. There are plenty of references and organizations in the index, which were very helpful. I was able to go and check out some of the issues and do research on my own which I actually enjoy. Plus with this type of issue, I believe people need to go out and do some of their own research in order to fully understand the problem. The index was a huge help and road map in being able to do just that. 

However, I found a lot of hypocrisy within its pages. I believe that we have a very real climate issue on our hands. This book, in my opinion, is part of the problem in getting people on board. For instance, in one section it states that 2,500 of the world’s leading scientist were in agreement with the climate issues. Yet, when you do a basic search of climate scientists there are well over 18,000-42,000 (give or take). So there is only a fraction of the climate scientists that actually agree on what is the cause of global warming. This is a huge problem. If the scientists can’t even agree, how do we expect the world too? I’m not even going to touch the tax section. 

There is also a section that goes on about how easy it is to make unfounded charges and raise misleading questions. It continues with how the skeptical try to make their case by going to the media and the students, on TV and on the radio and even to the online communities. Both of these examples can be said for both sides of the case. Both are able to make unfounded charges and raise misleading questions. Both sides are all over the media and on the tv and everywhere you look. My problem is that this book seems to be all about finger pointing and not the real issues, not the facts. It causes more questions instead of answering them. 

I understand this was a book on the campaign against climate science, but the blame game is not going to help. For the people already on board with the climate issues, I believe that this is a very good book and I believe will be well read. However, in my opinion, I don’t believe it will appeal to the conflicted, which is the very group climate science needs in order to make a difference. We have to appeal to them with facts and science, not with blame and finger pointing.

You can purchase the book on Amazon.com (both e-book and hardcover formats are available).

Yours,

Raz @ Eco-Libris
Plant a tree for every book you read!

Al Gore's Climate Change Reality Project - It starts today!

The one and only Al Gore is presenting today his latest climate change activism project. This one is called the Climate Reality Project: 24 Hours of climate change reality from all over the world. 

Here are more details from their website on this event that starts today:

What is 24 Hours of Reality?

24 Presenters. 24 Time Zones. 13 Languages. 1 Message. 24 Hours of Reality is a worldwide event to broadcast the reality of the climate crisis. It will consist of a new multimedia presentation created by Al Gore and delivered once per hour for 24 hours, representing every time zone around the globe. Each hour people living with the reality of climate change will connect the dots between recent extreme weather events — including floods, droughts and storms — and the manmade pollution that is changing our climate. We will offer a round-the-clock, round-the-globe snapshot of the climate crisis in real time. The deniers may have millions of dollars to spend, but we have a powerful advantage. We have reality.

When is 24 Hours of Reality?

24 Hours of Reality will be broadcast live online from September 14 to 15, over 24 hours, representing 24 time zones and 13 languages.

Where is 24 Hours of Reality?

From Tonga to Cape Verde, Mexico City to Alaska, Jakarta to London, people living with the impacts of climate change every day will tell their story. You can experience as much as you like without even leaving your home. Click here to find the location — or locations — where you would like to watch a presentation. Due to logistical considerations, three of the presentations will be broadcast remotely from New York — Tonga, the Solomon Islands and French Polynesia — but will include local footage and information. All other presentations will be filmed on location around the world.

Free desktop streaming application by Ustream

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Plant trees for your books!

Is it a REDD Christmas? not really, not yet.

Santa's red suit got me wondering if there's any kid out there who asked Santa to do something about the REDD mechanism and put life into it. I'm not sure about it, but it sure looks like REDD needs some help, even after Copenhagen, when for a minute it looked like the only shining star around.

The agreement that came out of the negotiations in Copenhagen (Copenhagen Accord) includes a reference to REDD, as follows:

"We recognize the crucial role of reducing emission from deforestation and forest degradation and the need to enhance removals of greenhouse gas emission by forests and agree on the need to provide positive incentives to such actions through the immediate establishment of a mechanism including REDD-plus, to enable the mobilization of financial resources from developed countries."

The translation of this language is that basically there's a lot of good will and understanding of the need to initiate a mechanism with financial incentives that will protect the forests, but no promises are made and no time frame is provided.

There was also a draft that went into more details about the REDD mechanism, but as mongabay.com reported, it was weakened from earlier versions. REDD-Monitor adds that this draft "includes no mention of targets for stopping deforestation. There are no commitments for long-term finance. Safeguards are weak to the point of non-existent. Leakage is not meaningfully addressed. The principle of free, prior and informed consent by indigenous people is nowhere to be seen."

And there's also some money on the table as a result of the negotiations. The US, UK, France, Japan, Australia and Norway pledged $3.5bn in Copenhagen to start REDD in the over the next three years. Still, as Carbon Positive reports, there is some doubt as to whether these promises still stand in the absence of a comprehensive climate agreement.

Are these results satisfying? well, it depends who you're speaking with. It's depressing," Kevin Conrad, executive director of the Coalition of Rainforest Nations, a group of 40 forested nations, told the Associated Press. "REDD gets punted along for another year." John O. Niles of the Tropical Forest Group also didn't like the results and told mongabay.com that "The REDD text published is a major backdown from what almost everyone thought was an advanced text on many regards."

Others, like Jeff Horowitz, founding partner of Avoided Deforestation Partners, a group pushing for U.S. leadership on REDD, were more optimistic. He told mongabay.com that "We cannot let this procedural setback diminish our resolve to create policy frameworks that addresses this immediate and scalable solution to climate change. I am certain this delay in Copenhagen will serve to fire up the US environmental community, and our private sector partners, to be more motivated than ever to see the U.S. Senate pass climate legislation that includes robust international forest protection provisions in the first quarter of 2010."

The bottom line is that even though it looked for a couple of days that the REDD issue can be finalized separately and does not have to be dependent on a general agreement, it looks like it won't work this way. I think it's a bit naive to believe that REDD has a life of its own and can be launched successfully no matter what framework is agreed upon, if at all. Strong and effective REDD mechanism is possible only as a part of a strong and effective global accord.

This is I believe one of the main lessons from Copenhagen and I hope it will drive all of us who are worried about the forests to keep pressing the politicians to agree on a meaningful global accord with a meaningful REDD mechanism in it.

More articles about REDD:

Everything you always wanted to know about forestry carbon credits - A special interview with Paulo Lopes of Carbon Clear

Is REDD going bad? Is it going to enable conversion of natural forests into industrial plantations?

The potential and risks of forest-based carbon offsets:

Part 1 - the Carbon Canopy

Part 2 - Noel Kempff and the Greenpeace report

Part 3 - How it can actually work?

Happy Holiday!
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

Everything you always wanted to know about forestry carbon credits - A special interview with Paulo Lopes of Carbon Clear

Today the U.N. Climate Change Summit (COP15) gets underway and no matter how optimistic you are about these talks, I think it's an exciting day and I hope the last day will be even more exciting!

One of the issues that will be brought up during these talks is the REDD mechanism, which is supposed to provide monetary incentives to prevent deforestation. We covered this issue several times in the last couple of month (see our 3-part series on the potential and risks of forest-based carbon credits).

Today, just in time for the Copenhagen talks, we have an interview with Paulo Lopes, a Carbon Management Consultant at Carbon Clear, who holds Msc in Environmental Technology at Imperial College London and did his thesis on forestry carbon standards. Paulo is one of the most knowledgeable persons I know on forestry based carbon credits and we thank him for the opportunity to get a better understanding of one of the most interesting issues to be discussed in Copenhagen in the next 12 days.

Hello Paulo. You did your Master's Thesis about Forestry carbon standards (“Review of Forestry Carbon Standards – Development of a tool for organizations to identify the most appropriate carbon credit") - what brought you to write about this issue?
My masters degree had a large focus on climate change policy and the carbon market. To gain a deeper understanding I decided to work with Carbon Clear as a Forest Carbon Offset Analyst and learn from their knowledge and experience.

One would think that all carbon credits are the same, but they are like any other product whereby quality influences price. While researching forestry projects to invest in, I came across a range of carbon credits coming from a multitude of different forestry standards.

This can be confusing, even for people working in the sector. As there were only a limited number of independent reviews about the standards available, I decided to do a research and comparative study of all the forestry standards that are up and running in the world. This helps to understand what makes them different from each other and most importantly which standards are validating high quality carbon credits.

What is the biggest problem we have right now with forestry carbon credits and how it can be solved?
At the moment, the biggest problem is that only tree planting projects are accepted under the Kyoto Protocol. On top of that, the rules to validate these projects are so complex that only less than 0.5% of the carbon projects are forestry ones.

In addition, deforestation accounts for almost 20% of global GHG emissions, and there is no mechanism (such as REDD – Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) to reduce it under the Kyoto Protocol. It means that no carbon finance has been invested in projects to stop deforestation.

The voluntary carbon market, which regulates outside the Kyoto Protocol, began to fill the gap for forestry carbon credits and several standards flourished to provide the rules to validate forestry projects. But we are still at a very early stage, most of the standards were only started to validate forestry projects in 2009.

The post-Kyoto agreement is the key to boosting carbon finance in forestry projects. Governments, NGOs and businesses need to work hard to include it in their negotiations. While we are waiting for governments to put their policies into practice, we as consumers and businesses need to provide carbon finance to these projects.

What's your response to the criticism on carbon offsetting and especially on forest-based offsetting schemes, such as Justin Francis of Responsible Travel who stopped using it and says "Carbon offsetting is an ingenious way to avoid genuinely reducing your carbon emissions" (Ethical travel company drops carbon offsetting, Nov 7)?
It’s remarkable that a business promoting Western Australia as its destination of the month is now encouraging its clients not to offset their emissions in an effort to protect the environment. My view is that consumers and businesses must cut their emissions but the technology is just not in place to get this to zero. As nearly all human activity results in carbon emissions, offsets provide a valuable and effective tool in reducing our unavoidable emissions.

Therefore, the question is not whether we should reduce OR offset. What we must do is to reduce AND offset. We do not have the luxury to be fussy about how we reduce the emissions. We must use every solution that is in our hands. More than 350 million tonnes of CO2e have been reduced from offsetting projects in the developing world. These reductions would not have been possible without the money coming from carbon credits.

The offsetting market has evolved significantly in the last few years and is now much more sophisticated. Once an offset project is set up, independent certifiers will visit the project and check if the project meets the criteria and if it is reducing emissions. Every year a certifier will come back to the project and verify the emissions reductions. All the process is documented and available online to anyone.

Forestry projects add complexity to the process. While planting a tree absorbs carbon emissions thus reducing GHG, if the tree dies, the tree will release most of the carbon it has absorbed during its lifetime. One of the requirements to validate a carbon credit is that it should be permanent. All the standards developed solutions to solve this problem.
There are many mechanisms to prevent this, I will only exemplify two solutions:

Another tree must be planted in order to reabsorb the carbon released.
Use a buffer zone. It means that a forestry project can only sell part of the carbon it has reduced. Let’s say, a project uses a 50% buffer zone. It means that it can only sell 50% of the carbon credits. If something happens to some of the trees, it will be able to use the carbon credits from the buffer zone.

When it comes to carbon credits, should we make a difference between conservation (REDD) and reforestation/ afforestation projects or they're just the two sides of the same coin?
REDD and reforestation/afforestation projects are developed differently. A REDD project will prevent a forest to disappear. It means that a project developer will need to find solutions to prevent that illegal logging, diseases, fires or any other risks will occur. If it does occur, the certifier will not validate the carbon credits and the project developer won’t be able to sell the carbon credits.

A reforestation/afforestation project needs another type of expertise. Trees need to be planted and a full management system must make sure that the project will run for decades. In addition, it should absorb as much carbon emissions as possible in order to produce more carbon credits. If a tree dies, the carbon released must be discounted accordingly.

Carbon credits will always have one point in common: they have reduced one tonne of carbon emissions. Then, you can find out where it is coming from, whether it be REDD or reforestation/afforestation.

Do you believe providing monetary incentives to discourage deforestation is possible on global level? can we really overcome issues such as additionality or leakage?
We have no choice at this stage. We have to work to make this possible.

We have seen that most of the policies in place do not stop deforestation. The evidence is that in the last 30 years an area equivalent to the size of Texas has been felled down in the Brazilian Amazon. This does not account for all the deforestation in Central Africa and Indonesia. Only a few countries such as Costa Rica managed to protect their tropical forests thanks to government intervention and the financial returns from the tourism industry and the resources from the forest itself.

The only way to really avoid leakage is to monitor all the forests in a country. It is actually relatively inexpensive to monitor all the forests thanks to the use of imaging satellites and aerial photography in addition to ground monitoring. Brazil is working hard to develop such a system, however poorer countries may find this difficult to implement and manage without outside help.

Will the REDD mechanism be included in the next global protocol? and if so, do you believe it can be done without badly compromising it during the process?
It is very likely that REDD will be included in the next protocol. Negotiations between countries/ industries/ NGOs always end up in compromises. From a climate change perspective, compromise is not enough. We should follow what the scientific community is telling us which is that we need to reduce the levels of carbon in the atmosphere dramatically.

The key point for the success of any cap and trade scheme is that the cap should be set in accordance to the science and not to politics. The caps are too high at the moment which makes the price of carbon too low. An increase on the price of carbon will help the world to evolve to a low carbon economy much faster. If the price of carbon is high enough you will start to see thousands of organisations protecting forests and standing in opposition against illegal logging because it makes economic sense for them to do so.

You analyzed in your research several seven voluntary standards - why do we have so many standards? is there a chance they can be merged into one or two main standards?
It is unfortunate that we have so many standards, but this is a new market and until recently nobody knew how to calculate the carbon and address all the issues surrounding forestry projects. Several organizations started to take initiative independently and provide the tools to make it happen.

The positive aspect is that the standards are competing against each other which brings innovation and lowers costs. However, this is not sustainable and nobody in the market wants to deal with so many standards, therefore it is very likely that only a few of them will survive. It’s up to the market and governments to decide which will remain.

You used 12 criteria to compare these standards - What do you think is the most important criteria among them and what criteria was found to be the biggest differentiator between the best standards and the inferior ones?
The most important criteria for any standard are:

Additionality: provide evidence that a project would not have been possible without carbon finance.

Permanence: ensure that if a tree is destroyed (fire, disease, illegal logging…), there are mechanisms to replace the carbon released.

Leakage: provide evidence that by stopping deforestation in a project, the logging activity has not been displaced to another forest.

Registry: each carbon credit must have a serial number; this means that a carbon credit is traceable back to its origin and is unique.

Transparency: when buying a carbon credit, the buyer should be able to have access to all the documentation of that carbon project (project documentation, validation report, monitoring report, stakeholder consultations, pictures…)

All the standards take into account these criteria, but only a few of them address these points properly. If I want to buy a forestry carbon credit for my personal offsets, I would buy from Voluntary Carbon Standard & CCBS or CarbonFix.

Finally, what's your advice to a business or an individual who want to minimize their environmental impact and their carbon emissions and just get more confused with all of this data - what they should do? where to start?
The first step is to take advice from experts such as reputable carbon management companies. There is a lot of misunderstanding around carbon credits/ offsets/ carbon management and a simple phone call can help to clarify these issues.

To find a good carbon management company, you should look for the ICROA logo on their website. A carbon management company can only become a member of ICROA, if it follows the code of best practice. Among many aspects, it means that a member can only provide high quality carbon credits (VCS, Gold Standard and CDM/JI) and uses the best practice methodologies to reduce carbon emissions.

Regarding minimizing the environmental impact, there is a simple rule to follow:

Measure. Reduce. Offset.

Measure: the first step is to measure your impact, determine the carbon footprint. We need to understand the problem before we can reduce emissions. Most of your emissions may come from your travel, your energy consumption or your waste for example.

Reduce: after identifying where the carbon emissions come from, we need to reduce them as much as possible by setting up a plan and objectives, looking for solutions and put them into practice.

Offset: after putting in place an emission reduction plan, you need to offset the remaining ones. We will always have an impact, no matter how green we are and we need to take action to offset that impact. On top of that, you are providing finance to people in developing countries to grow sustainably.

Thank you Paulo!

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

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*photos credit: Paulo Lopes and SHI accordingly

Looking for a good climate change book to read during the Copenhagen talks?

If you're looking for a good book to read during the the Copenhagen climate talks, Jeff Biggers has an interesting summary on Grist of his favorite climate and energy books of 2009.

As Biggers mentions, this year we saw many good books released on climate destabilization, dirty energy policies, bogus Big Coal campaigns, a vibrant anti-coal movement, and more.

Among his favorites you can find Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity, by James Hansen, Coal Country: Rising Up Against Mountaintop Removal, by Shirley Burns and Climate Cover-Up, by James Hoggan, which will be reviewed here soon.

So check it out and get yourself one of these good books to accompany you on the next 12 days, or even as an interesting holidays gift.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: check our special holidays offer!

The potential and risks of Forest-based carbon offsets: part 3 - REDD: how it can actually work?

On the first part on our series on forest-based carbon credits we talked of the potential of this concept as we saw on the example of Canopy Carbon. On the second part we discussed the risks of this mechanism following the report of Greenpeace on Noel Kempff Climate Action Project (NKCAP) in Bolivia. Today on our final article in this series we try to rap it all and find out if this option can actually work.

WWF wrote couple of days ago on their website that "failure by the world’s financial leaders to support responsible forest finance will allow rampant deforestation to continue and contribute to the disastrous effects of climate change." This logic is very clear and I definitely agree with it and think that REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) can be one of the implementations that follow this logic.

But no matter how tempting are the prospects of REDD both for the environment and the participants, there are some issues that remain a problem. A big problem. Just as a reminder, here are the main issues we need to deal with, as summarized by REDD-Monitor:

• monitoring the state of forests and the volumes of carbon either being emitted or stored;
• in preventing ‘avoided deforestation’ efforts in one location simply shifting the problem elsewhere; and
• finding ways that funding can be got to the people living in the forests – who should ultimately make the decisions about whether their forests stand or fall.

So what do we do? how we do it right? the answer I believe is a set of guiding rules that every REDD project will need to follow to be considered part of this mechanism. Now, it doesn't have to be necessary in a form of regulation - it can be a voluntary guidelines, just like the FSC or the Equator Principles. The only thing is that there should be only one benchmark - if every project will use its own set of guidelines, then it's worthless. Uniformity is a must here.

For example, Carbon Canopy will be using "the highest standards in the voluntary market will be used– the Voluntary Carbon Standard and Climate Action Reserve." Now, these two standards are great, but according to 'Review of Forestry Carbon Standards', a research of Paulo Lopes, a Carbon Management Consultant at Carbon Clear, when it comes to REDD, there are some couple of other standards that can be a good fit such as the Climate, Community & Biodiversity Standard (CCBS), Plan Vivo, or American Carbon Registry (ACR).

So what happens if another project choose to use one of these standards? it will have a similar reliability but we won't be able to effectively follow, evaluate and compare these projects. And therefore we need all projects to follow the same set of standards and rules, and it should address all the main issues, such as how to calculate the carbon savings, additionality, leakage, benefits for local communities and permanence.

And this can and should be part of the Copenhagen Conference in December. The REDD effort can succeed if it will be a global effort and hence Europe, U.S., China and other countries should unite in Copenhagen and promote one solution for all. This is the time to do it and no better place to start with than Copenhagen.

Other parts of this series:

Part 1 - the Carbon Canopy

Part 2 - Noel Kempff and the Greenpeace report

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

The potential and risks of Forest-based carbon offsets: part 2 - Noel Kempff and the Greenpeace report

On the first part of our series about forest-based carbon credits we talked about the potential of this model and presented the example of Carbon Canopy. Today we talk about the risks and the lessons we can learn from the Noel Kempff Climate Action Project (NKCAP) in Bolivia.

Noel Kempff is probably the most known project of forest offset scheme under REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation). On October 15, Greenpeace released a detailed report calling this project a "Forest Carbon Scam".

The project began more than a decade ago, in 1996, where a group of three energy companies (American Electric Power(AEP), BP-Amoco (BP), and Pacificorp) and the Nature Conservancy and Fundación Amigos de la Naturaleza (FAN) joined forces with the Bolivian government in the first large-scale experiment to curb climate change with a strategy that promised to suit their competing interests: compensating for greenhouse gas emissions by preserving forests.

Together with the Bolivian government and three energy companies, the partners terminated logging rights in 4 areas just adjacent to a pre-existing national park and incorporated the land into the national park, creating the 3.9 million acre Noel Kempff Mercado National Park. The partners also initiated a comprehensive community development program to address the problem of small scale deforestation by local communities living just outside of the park.

There was also a financial aspect to the project: In return for millions of dollars of investment for the protection of an area of rainforest from logging for 30 years, they would be allocated the carbon offsets generated by keeping the trees standing. These offsets could then be bought and sold in carbon trading systems, in order to offset some of the CO2 pollution produced by these power companies.

So far, so good. But in reality, according to the report, the model just didn't work. Here are the main claims of Greenpeace (from their website):

Since the project started in 1997 the estimated CO2 emission reductions have plummeted by more than 90 per cent, from about 55 million tonnes to "up to" 5.8 million tonnes. Had the original false estimates been used on carbon markets there could have been an INCREASE in greenhouse gas emissions. Companies could have claimed non-existent emission reductions while continuing to emit the amount supposedly offset. These serious errors in counting emissions are reason enough to avoid sub-national offsetting altogther – but as if we didn't have proof enough, here's more. The project has failed to protect against:

1. “Leakage” — the companies promised that they were effectively monitoring leakagage but in percentage terms overall deforestation rates have actually increased in Bolivia. In fact, leakage from the project could be as high as 42-60 per cent.

2. ““Additionality” — Changes in Bolivian law mean that Noel Kempff may have been protected anyway, without company involvement, and therefore any C02 savings may not be additional.

3. "Permanence" – The project is at risk from forest fires, pests, disease and political changes, all of which can undermine forest protection. This could mean that the carbon stored, and used to offset the company emissions, could still be released.

4. "Community benefits" – Industry claims the project has benefited local communities in many ways, but testimonies we captured tell a different story. "Well, the reality is that the Noel Kempff project has not delivered any benefits," says local Pastor Solís Pérez.

Now, these are serious accusations, and of course they generate a big question mark on the real value of the carbon credits from the project. The Nature Conservancy, NKCAP's main broker and one of the world's largest conservation groups, strongly disputes this notion (and so is FAN, the other organization involved in the project).

As reported on the New York Times, the Nature Conservancy doesn't dispute some of the specific figures on the report, but their interpretation. For example, the estimation of the CO2 that the project will save, which was at first about 55 million tonnes and was reduced over the years to only 5.8 million tonnes. Now, Greenpeace sees it as an indication that it's difficult if not impossible to provide an accurate calculation of the savings. The Nature Conservancy on the other hand, sees these adjustments as an indication of how much the science and on-the-ground measurements have improved over the last decade and how serious efforts are to ensure legitimate credits.

There are some lessons from this case that can more easily implemented. For example, the question whether forest-based carbon offsets should come from individual projects. As reported on the NYT, practically everyone involved in the debate agrees that countrywide programs that measure deforestation against a national baseline are better because they eliminate carbon leakage within a country's own boundaries - a fact that the NKCAP experience effectively demonstrated.

There can be some exceptions (such the ones on the House-passed climate bill, relating to small countries and states in Brazil and Indonesia to submit individual project credits into the market), but this can definitely be the guiding rule.

But that of course won't help when it comes to issues such as the reliability of the calculations of the CO2 reductions. How do you make sure you're providing a figure that is meaningful and reliable? And is the risk in making false estimations too high and therefore we should not get into this forest-based carbon offsetting concept in the first place? These are though questions and we'll try to answer them on our third and last part of the series this Sunday.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: promoting sustainable reading!

The potential and risks of Forest-based carbon offsets: part 1 - the Carbon Canopy

This week we're issuing a 3-part series that will cover one of the most interesting issues in the green market.

It's getting more and more attention (also on this blog) as a promising way to deal with global warming under the cap and trade scheme. At the same time, it is also the center of a heated debate between organizations, companies and others on its legitimacy and effectiveness.

Yes, we're talking about forest-based carbon offsets. Or in other words, enabling landowners who keep their trees standing and not cut them down, or selectively log their forests to earn carbon credits they can trade on the open market. Such a trading system does not exist yet and it's part of legislation before Congress, as well as one of the issues to be discussed on global level in Copenhagen in December.

Today we'll talk about the Carbon Canopy, which according to their website, "seeks to establish a new model to support landowners who expand protection, restoration and conservation of their forests and certify management practices to the high standards of FSC certification. The Carbon Canopy is focused initially on building a credible carbon market model for landowners in the Southern US. "

The group includes timber and paper supply companies, such as Domtar Corporation, Columbia Forest Products and Staples, as well as environmental NGOs such as the Dogwood Alliance, Rainforest Alliance, the Forest Stewardship Council and our friends at the Green Press Initiative.

The coalition starts a pilot project in South U.S. offering what they see as a win-win model: "Private landowners receive revenue for the ecological benefits their forests provide. Forest product manufacturers receive a stable supply of FSC certified wood to use in their products. In turn, large paper and wood end-users and retailers are able to offer FSC certified products to reduce their environmental impacts. And all of us, including our future generations, will benefit from forests that not only support a more stable climate but also biodiversity and watershed protection."

I like this model. It does a good use in the cap and trade mechanism and everybody wins. It also deals with a severe issue - according to the Washington Post, "ninety percent of forests in the South, which ranks as the largest paper and wood-producing region in the world, is privately owned. Some farmers in the region still clear cut their forests, or convert them to pine plantations that are fast-growing but less environmentally beneficial."

Now, there are some that question the concept like Greenpeace. Daniel Kessler, a spokesman for Greenpeace, praised on the Washington Post the idea of managing forests according to the Forest Stewardship Council's standards, but added, "We also believe that forest offsets should not be used in a compliance carbon market."

Still, I think that there's something right in providing incentives to keep trees alive. We discussed it many times in the past and we always get to the same conclusion: no matter how many flows this system has, it's the most realistic way to fight deforestation.

The Carbon Canopy explains it very clearly on their website: "Currently, forest landowners do not have access to viable roadmaps or sufficient economic incentives to help them conserve, restore and/or manage working forests to a high environmental standard. The potential of earning income from forest carbon sequestration could provide incentive for private landowners to enhance forest protection, restoration and conservation."

There are of course issues that shouldn't be ignored like the validity of carbon offsetting in general and forest-based ones specifically (how do you measure them? are they sustainable? what happens in a case of a fire where the whole forest is burned?) as well as their ability to actually reduce emissions.

The later issue is a very important one, as not matter how good you do carbon offsetting, if you eventually didn't reduce emissions then it's just not the right way. The Carbon Canopy doesn't ignore this question and I actually liked what they had to say about it:

"Carbon offsets are often criticized as serving as a crutch for polluters who prefer to buy their way out of having to implement true carbon emission reductions. Because the Carbon Canopy’s members strongly believe in the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions before and alongside of purchasing and retiring offsets to compensate for emissions that can’t be reduce, we seek to work with corporations that are committed to transparency in reporting and demonstrate real leadership in developing sustainable conservation models to significantly reduce their operational and supply chain climate impacts."

I don't know what the results of this pilot will be and neither the Carbon Canopy, but it looks like they know what they're doing, dealing openly with difficult questions and issues and moving forward to find the right model that will both save our forests, fight global warming and will be worthwhile to all sides involved.

On the second part of our series we'll discuss some of the problems that were found in another pilot of forest-based carbon offsets, this time in Bolivia.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: promoting sustainable reading!

Brazil's president will pledge in Copenhagen to reduce the pace of the Amazon's deforestation by 80%

If you're going over the news, looking for something positive about the upcoming global climate talks in Copenhagen in December, I think we got one for you.

Agence France-Presse reports that the Brazilian President Lula said on Tuesday that "he will offer to reduce the pace of deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rain forest by 80 percent by 2020 when he attends December’s global climate talks in Copenhagen."

This pledge is translating to emitting 4.8 billion fewer tons of carbon dioxide gas. This is definitely a bold pledge, but how will Brazil do it? well, Lula didn't get into details, but as we mentioned here many times (here and here for example) it will probably will involve the concept of paying landowners to keep their trees standing and not cut them down.

Lula may reveal more details only in Copenhagen but he already knows who will pay the bill - he said according to the news that "he will also demand in Copenhagen that industrialized countries pay their fair share of the costs of reducing greenhouse gases."

It makes sense of course as the burden can't fall only on Brazil's shoulders, but nevertheless it's still a complicated task. So, good news? well, it's just a pledge but it's definitely good news to see that the discussion on the implementation of the "pay landowners to keep trees standing" is moving forward and hopefully, with the help of Lula,it will move forward significantly in Copenhagen. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: promoting sustainable reading!

Paying to keep the trees in the Amazon alive - it ain't that simple as it might look like

We talked here many times about the concept of paying landowners to keep their trees standing and not cut them down.

This idea is gaining more popularity as a tool to fight climate change and a very interesting article in the New York Times presents some of the difficulties involved with the implementation of this concept, especially in Brazil.

Here are some of the issues Elisabeth Rosenthal brings up the article ("In Brazil, Paying Farmers to Let the Trees Stand"):

1. How much money is enough to keep the trees standing? The payment strategy includes direct payments to landowners to keep forests standing but with uprising demand to the alternatives, which are mainly cleared farmland to raise soy or cattle, the price can be high. Too high. For example, the article presents José Marcolini, a farmer that is offered by an environmental group $12 per acre per a year to keep it untouched, but at the same time can get for cleared farmland here up to $1,300 an acre.

2. How to avoid paying for tree plantations? as the article explains, "one proposed version of the new United Nations plan would allow plantations of trees, like palms grown for palm oil, to count as forest, even though tree plantations do not have nearly the carbon absorption potential of genuine forest and are far less diverse in plant and animal life." This is a situation that should be avoided - the programs should be solely focused on forests because of both environmental and monetary (limited resources) reasons.

3. Clearing away the trees is often the best way to declare and ensure ownership - the article mentions that "in parts of Southeast Asia, early experiments in paying landowners for preserving forest have been hampered because it is often unclear who owns, or controls, property."

4. Need to change - We have to remember that until not too long ago, developing the Amazon was the priority and the Brazilian government encouraged settlement through homesteaders’ benefits like cheap land and housing subsidies, many of which still exist today. It means that you need to change the state of mind, believes and values of the whole country to make real changes in the way the Amazon is considered and valued by the people.

As we see there are many issues to deal with and the success of such programs is still far from being a sure thing. But nevertheless for the first time there's money in forest preservation and this is going to be a game changer this way or another.


More related posts:

Will the new Climate Bill help protecting forests or become a source of income for timber companies?

How investors can save the forests? check out the Ethical Corporation Magazine

Al Gore and Wangari Maathai calls the U.N. General Assemby to support protection of forests

Merrill Lynch is investing in forest protection

How to deal with the growing deforestation in the Amazon rain forest?

Prince Charles wants to team up with Norway to save forests

Preserving forests to fight global warming

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: promoting green printing

Happy Birthday - Eco-Libris is two years old!

Last weekend when the United States celebrated Independence Day, Eco-Libris had its own birthday celebration - we have just turned two years old!

Yes, another year passed and let me tell you - it wasn't an easy one. Like many others we had to cope with difficult economy and work hard to keep our heads above the water. At the same time, we try to look at these difficulties as an opportunity to improve, innovate, develop new programs and explore more ways to pursue our mission more effectively.

Still it was a year of progress - we managed to create more partnerships, enhance our educational work, tighten our relationships with our planting partners, contribute to the discussion about green issues in the book industry and of course plant more trees!

I am proud to report that Eco-Libris balanced out so far 98,066 books, which resulted in 111,390 new trees, of which 45,525 are the result of our operations on the second year.


















Here's a reminder of some of things we did on this year, month by month:

July 2008
The UConn co-op joins Eco-Libris bookstores program

Madeline Kaplan, author of "Planet Earth Gets Well" is collaborating with Eco-Libris

Subscription option is becoming available on Eco-Libris website

August 2008
BlogHer's first book "Sleep is for the Weak" is going green with Eco-Libris

Tania Hershman, author of "The White Road and Other Stories" is collaborating with Eco-Libris

New collaboration with Bookworm Baskets, which sells book-themed gift baskets

September 2008
GreetQ, an online greeting card retailer, is collaborating with Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris is contributing to a demonstration of a green campus residence hall

A collaboration with Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing in an educational contest for kids

October 2008
New partnership with the Norwegian publisher Flux starts with a book on Arne Næss

Eco-Libris is collaborating with Dutch author Annet Struik

"The Legend of Ninja Cowboy Bear" is going green with Eco-Libris

November 2008
A new collaboration with Aaspirations Publishing, a proud green publisher

We have a monthly newsletter with special offers to our subscribers

Eco-Libris is collaborating with BookSwim in an holiday campaign

December 2008
We publish the annual assessments of our planting partners

An interview on Treehugger.com

Publishing the Green Collar Holiday Gift Guide for Book Lovers

January 2009
Collaboration with eBook publisher, Wyrdwood Publications, starts with "The Mouse in the Viking's Beard"

Publishing an interview with Greg Barber, an eco-friendly printer

Celebrating a new year with a new series - My green resolution for 2009

February 2009
Eco-Libris is available now at Hooray for Books! in Old Alexandria, Virginia

Celebrating another successful planting season of our planting partner RIPPLE Africa with photos from Malawi

We report on our blog on a green publisher that bits the recession - Chelsea Green Publishing

March 2009
The publisher and the author of "Sammy and Sue Go Green Too!" is collaborating with Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris on the cover of Awareness Magazine

New collaboration with the authors of "Green Beginnings"

April 2009
Raincoast Books and Eco-Libris are collaborating in a green campaign "Buy a book, Plant a tree"

Eco-Libris is taking part in a green reading event of the Chicago Bulls in a local school

A green campaign on Facebook

May 2009
A joint campaign with Barefoot Books in celebration of their new book 'Earth Tales'

Partnering with Pilcrow Lit Fest in Chicago

Participating in BookExpo America

June 2009
In collaboration with Greg Barber, we start a new series on our blog of weekly green printing tips

New collaboration with Kathleen Wilson, the author of the new book 'Rumer & Qix: The Race to Terra Incognita'

Bambeco, an online retailer of eco-friendly and stylish products for the home, is collaborating now with Eco-Libris

And what's next? we already work on new programs that we believe will assist us in achieving our goals - greening up the book industry and making reading more sustainable.We'll have more details soon so stay tuned!

We would also like to take this opportunity and thank everyone involved in our efforts - from the dedicated eco-conscious readers that balance out their books with us, through our business partners that take action to support the environment all the way to our wonderful planting partners that are doing such a great job in planting the trees in developing countries.

Thank you all!

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris
www.ecolibris.net

*photo is courtesy of RIPPLE Africa from the 2008/9 planting season - Makuzi Afforestation club

Will the new Climate Bill help protecting forests or become a source of income for timber companies?

The Climate bill passed in the House last Friday. It might not be only a new era in fighting climate change, but also the first time when it is worthwhile to keep trees alive instead of cutting them down.

The Huffington Post reported last Friday that trees will be part of the credits scheme that is presented in the bill, and this time it means not only reforestation projects, but also protection of existing forestlands.

The article explains the mechanism:

"Say an acre of forestland sucks up two additional metric tons of carbon after a landowner plants more trees on his land or promises to rotate the way he cuts them down so more are standing at once. If the pollution market created by the legislation is currently trading at $20 a ton, then the landowner could stand to make $40 per acre if he qualifies for the program"

The legislation, according to the article. would also extend to international forests, promising to pay some countries that agree to slow their harvesting of trees abroad. We mentioned this idea in the past (see links below) and we're definitely in favor of giving economic incentives to preserve the forests and to make it worthwhile to keep them alive, avoid logging and prevent further deforestation.

This idea was discussed in the U.N.’s Bali meeting in December last year, and though it is not approved yet, there's a good chance it will be part of the post-Kyoto protocol that will be discussed in Copenhagen in December. It also enjoys the support of many international parties, such as Prince Charles, Norway, Al Gore and Wangari Maathai.

So we should be happy as forest protection finally becomes part of the carbon market, right? well, we are but it seems that the way it was integrated in the Bill is a little bit problematic..

Well, there are of course concerns about measurement, monitoring and making sure carbon capturing is actually taking place (especially outside the U.S.), but in all these concerns are no different really from the concerns you have with every other component in the "trade" part of the cap and trade scheme under the Bill. The more significant issue here might be who is eligible to take part in it in the first place.

The article on the Huffington Post mentions that owners of large swaths of forestland, such as timber companies and large farms can benefit from it. Frank O'Donnell of the advocacy group Clean Air Watch is quoted saying "In effect, the public is going to pay polluters to plant trees. Does that really lead to a major improvement in global warming? I don't know and I'm not sure anybody knows."

The fact that the Agriculture Department, which includes the U.S. Forest Service, will oversee the domestic program and develop regulations for verifying whether a forest owner's particular tract of land is actually capturing carbon, brings up questions like will they make tree farms eligible as well and how much will they will take sustainability into account?

If eventually we'll have timber companies being paid for having single-species tree farms that have replaced highly diverse forests (you can see that in the Southeast U.S. for example), then we're very far from what the idea of forests protection was meant to achieve in the first place.

So how it can be prevented? here is just one idea - how about limiting forest protection to highly-diverse forests and/or forests that have FSC certification. I believe that these kind of restrictions can provide a better chance that this measure of forests protection will truly help fighting climate change and not just become another way for land owners to make money without making any significant impact on the environment.

What do you think? I'll be happy to hear your thoughts about it so feel free to add your comments.

More related posts:

How investors can save the forests? check out the Ethical Corporation Magazine

Al Gore and Wangari Maathai calls the U.N. General Assemby to support protection of forests

Merrill Lynch is investing in forest protection

How to deal with the growing deforestation in the Amazon rain forest?

Prince Charles wants to team up with Norway to save forests

Preserving forests to fight global warming

Yours, Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: promoting green printing

Green Options - STATE OF THE WORLD Book Series Pivotal to Understanding our Paths to Sustainability

As part of Eco-Libris' ongoing content partnership with Green Options Media, we feature a post that was originally published by John Ivanko on April 22 on Sustainablog. Today's post is about a book that can change your life and the good part is that you get a new version of it published every year.

People often ask me: “So what set you on your present course of operating a sustainable business, growing most of your own food organically, working from home, and powering your entire farm and business with renewable energy?” People ask me about that definitive moment where it became obvious that I needed to live and work a different way, a better way that didn’t involve never-ending growth, consumption, and earn-and-spend.

There was no such moment, or crisis, that transformed my life of power suits, lattes, or gotta-have-it-all-now mindset. Instead, my sustainable journey (which very much continues to this day as an evolving journey) resulted from a growing understanding about the issues facing the planet and its inhabitants, both through personal experience and by learning of these changes from other organizations or individuals.

One such organization that serves as a compass for my endeavors is the Worldwatch Institute, a nonprofit organization that produces the authoritative State of the World book series as well as numerous other books and resources to build an ecologically sustainable society that meets human needs. Each year, a new State of the World book is not only jam-packed with interdisciplinary research and analysis that a non-scientific mind (like mine) could comprehend, but organized in such a way to make it both practical and powerful for anyone searching for ways to express a vision for how to live on a planet without destroying it or exploiting its inhabitants.

Each year, the State of the World book series focuses on a particular theme which might address energy, community, food and agriculture, population, health, trade policies and natural resource use, just to name a few. For 2008, their State of the World: Innovations for a Sustainable Economy provides both a timely analysis of how our “free trade” global economy has gone astray and insights into the powerful movements afoot, including localization, a triple bottom line approach to business, microfinance, and the low-carbon economy.

“In response to the grim realities of climate change, resource depletion, collapsing ecosystems, economic vulnerability, and other converging crisis of the twenty-first century, a consensus is emerging among scientists, governments, and civil society about the need for a rapid but manageable transition to an economic system where progress is measured by improvements in well-being rather than by expansion of the scale and scope of market economic activity,” writes John Talberth in his chapter "A New Bottom Line for Progress." I only can hope that a copy of State of the World 2008 is on President Obama’s desk since it’s unlikely that Americans can consume our way out of the present financial crisis. Even if we did, Talberth argues that such consumption will not likely lead to furthering our happiness, but rather to further degradation of the planet.

State of the World is one of those books that helped me change course and better comprehend what is happening to the planet. State of the World 1992 -- which I read in preparation for my self-imposed sabbatical and exit from corporate America -- served as my launch pad for discovering what was happening to the planet and what I could do about it. Life is not a spectator sport for those who want to champion change. The State of the World books provide the global insights from leading thinkers, academics, professionals and analysts who dive into the social, environmental and governmental aspects of how our world functions, revealing ways in which we could, once again, thrive more sustainably.

The State of the World books are not End of the World books; they’re revealing and sobering at times, but they provide numerous pathways to achieve greater sustainability within our culture, society, economy and community.

Not surprisingly, their latest release, State of the World 2009: Into a Warming World, is devoted to the technological and institutional developments most likely to help humanity weather the storm of global warming. Most scientists agree that we have only a few years to reverse the rise in greenhouse gas emissions and help avoid abrupt and catastrophic climate change. As the world governmental leaders come together to negotiate a new climate agreement in Copenhagen in December 2009, State of the World: Into a Warming World can guide our understanding of how a warming planet threatens everyone and everything on Earth -- and what we could do about it.

“A sustainable world is not an impoverished world but one that is prosperous in different ways,” writes Tim Jackson in the chapter “The challenges of Sustainable Lifestyles” from the 2008 State of the World. “The challenge for the twenty-first century is to create that world.”

So, how are you creating that sustainable world?

At Inn Serendipity, my family and I are creating it with renewable energy, local food, and living below our means.