CDCA e A Sud alla COP30 a Belém

Posted by salvatore on 10:33 am in News | Commenti disabilitati su

[posted by Adam Vaughan on The Guardian, January 7, 2018] One of Britain’s top fracking firms has been accused of misleading the public over its intent to explore for shale gas in a protected area of ancient woodland in Sherwood Forest. Ineos, a UK-based petrochemicals firm, has said publicly it would exclude sensitive areas of the legendary home of Robin Hood from its seismic surveys. However, documents released under freedom of information rules reveal the company privately later sought and won permission from authorities to survey those areas, which involves laying small explosive charges underground. Guy Shrubsole, a campaigner at Friends of the Earth, the group that obtained the documents, said: “It’s clear that Ineos will stop at nothing to explore for shale gas, even in Sherwood Forest, home of Robin Hood and one of our most cherished woodlands. “They have misled everyone, promising publicly to spare the most ecologically sensitive parts of Sherwood Forest from their intrusive seismic surveys – while negotiating behind closed doors to press ahead with them.” Ineos is one of the four main players exploring for oil and gas trapped below ground in shale rock across the country. The firm has taken a robust and sometimes controversial approach to exploration, winning and defending an injunction against anti-fracking campaigners, bypassing tardy councils and appealing to authorities to force the National Trust to allow it access to their land. In planning documents submitted to Nottinghamshire county council in May, Ineos said it would not undertake a seismic survey in a part of the forest known as a site of special scientific interest (SSSI), one of 4,000 of the most important nature sites in England. “Ineos made a commercial decision to exclude all such designated areas from the survey. The Sherwood Forest NNR, Birklands and Bilhaugh SAC, Birklands and Bilhaugh SSSI and Birklands West and Ollerton Corner SSSI (all located in Nottinghamshire) were entirely removed from the survey area,” the company said. But just over a month later, the company sought a licence agreement with the Forestry Commission that included maps showing parts of the Birklands SSSI would be within its survey areas. Seismic surveys are used to understand the geology below the forest, and see if shale gas could be recovered. They involve the use of small explosive charges buried in holes to create seismic waves, which are monitored by recording equipment known as geophones. As part of the licence, Ineos has agreed it is: “not to drive vehicles, set any charges, explosives or combustible equipment within 50m of any conservation site, badger set or other sensitive location (including ancient or veteran trees).” The licence was subsequently agreed by the Forestry Commission on 5 July and signed-off by environment secretary Michael Gove. The commission made the decision but the rubber-stamping by Gove may be seen as sitting awkwardly with his series of pro-environment plans, such as tackling plastic waste. Ineos said despite the license agreement seeking to survey the Birklands SSSI, it would not be going ahead with a survey there. The company said its submission to the council took precedence over the Forestry Commission document. A spokesperson said: “Ineos has clearly set out its plans for the East Midlands seismic survey which clearly state it will not survey inside SSSI designated areas. This is true for all SSSI sites including Birklands. “Surveying will...

Dopo gli Ogm ci nutriranno i big data

Posted by salvatore on 4:49 pm in Notizie | Commenti disabilitati su Dopo gli Ogm ci nutriranno i big data

[di Vandana Shiva su Comune-info] In materia di cibo e agricoltura, il futuro può prendere due strade opposte. Una porta a un pianeta morto: spargimento di veleni e diffusione di monocolture chimiche; indebitamento per l’acquisto di sementi e fitofarmaci, causa di suicidi di massa fra gli agricoltori; bambini che muoiono per mancanza di cibo; aumento delle malattie croniche e dei decessi dovuti alle carenze nutrizionali e alle sostanze avvelenate vendute come cibo; devastazione climatica che mina le condizioni stesse della vita sulla Terra. La seconda strada è quella del rinnovamento del pianeta grazie all’agroecologia, al ripristino della biodiversità, al rispetto del suolo, dell’acqua e delle piccole unità agricole, affinché tutti nel mondo possano avere accesso a un’alimentazione sana. La prima strada è quella industriale, ed è stata tracciata dal cartello dei veleni. Dopo le due guerre mondiali, le compagnie trasformarono le loro armi chimiche in sostanze agrochimiche, come pesticidi e fertilizzanti. E convinsero il mondo che senza questi veleni non era possibile ottenere raccolti e produrre cibo. Nel 1990 ci dicevano che gli Ogm avrebbero annullato tutti i limiti imposti dall’ambiente, permettendo la crescita di cibo dovunque, compresi i deserti e le discariche di materiali tossici. Oggi ci sono solo due applicazioni degli Ogm: la resistenza agli erbicidi e le colture Bt. La prima applicazione è stata decantata come metodo per il controllo delle erbe infestanti – in realtà ne ha create di super resistenti; quanto alle colture Bt, si supponeva che sarebbero riuscite a tenere a bada i parassiti, quando in realtà ne hanno sviluppati di super-resistenti. L’ultima grande notizia è che i «big data» ci nutriranno. Monsanto parla di «agricoltura digitale» basata sui «big data» e sull’«intelligenza artificiale». Prefigura anche un’agricoltura senza agricoltori. Non sorprende che l’epidemia di suicidi fra i contadini indiani e in generale la crisi degli agricoltori in tutto il mondo non abbiano suscitato le dovute risposte da parte dei governi: questi ultimi sono così tenacemente e ciecamente intenti a costruire il prossimo tratto dell’autostrada verso la morte da ignorare l’intelligenza dei semi viventi, delle piante, degli organismi del suolo, dei batteri del nostro intestino, dei contadini e delle montagne di esperienza e saggezza costruite nei millenni. I piccoli contadini producono il 70 per cento del cibo globale usando il 30 per cento delle risorse totali destinate all’agricoltura. L’agricoltura industriale invece usa il 70 per cento delle risorse, generando il 40 per cento delle emissioni di gas serra, per produrre il 30 per cento soltanto del cibo che mangiamo. Climate Corporation, la più grande compagnia al mondo per i dati sul clima, e Solum Inc., la più grande compagnia al mondo per i dati sul suolo, sono oggi di proprietà di Monsanto. Queste due compagnie vendono solo dati. Ma i dati non sono conoscenza. Sono solo un’altra merce destinata a rendere l’agricoltore ancora più dipendente. Non possiamo affrontare i cambiamenti climatici e le loro reali ed effettive conseguenze senza riconoscere il ruolo centrale del sistema alimentare industrializzato e globalizzato, che genera fino al 40 per cento delle emissioni di gas climalteranti a causa dei seguenti fattori: deforestazione, allevamenti intensivi, imballaggi per alimentari in plastica e alluminio, trasporti su lunghe distanze e spreco di cibo. Non possiamo risolvere i cambiamenti climatici senza l’agricoltura ecologica e su piccola scala, basata sulla biodiversità, sui semi viventi, sui suoli vitali e sui sistemi alimentari locali, riducendo al minimo i...

Posted by salvatore on 10:22 am in News | Commenti disabilitati su

[posted by Megan Darby on Climate Home News, January 4, 2018] The Norwegian government can continue to award oil exploration licences in the Arctic, Oslo district court ruled on Thursday, in a defeat for environmentalists. Judges rejected the argument by Greenpeace and Nature and Youth that expanding oil production is incompatible with the country’s climate change obligations. Norway is only responsible for the greenhouse gas emissions within its borders, not those caused by burning exported oil and gas, according to the verdict. Truls Gulowsen, head of Greenpeace Nordic, expressed disappointment in the outcome. “It is terribly sad that the court did not take into account the global perspective of climate change,” he said, as reported by Norwegian publication NRK. The green groups were ordered to pay the state’s legal costs of 580,000 kroner ($94,000). They have not decided whether to appeal, according to Gulowsen.   This decision in Norwegian #climatechange case #PeopleVsArcticOil is a step backward. The courts should not buy into the political gamble of “our/their #emissions” and protect the public from dangerous activities disrupting the #climate if there’s sufficient interest involved. https://t.co/LTqXxC1Tka — Sam Varvastian (@SamVarvastian) January 4, 2018   The suit was a test case for the keep-it-in-the-ground movement, which calls for constraints on fossil fuel production to tackle climate change. Analysts calculate at least two thirds of proven coal, oil and gas reserves cannot be used if global warming is to be held below 2C – the internationally agreed goal. But the Paris Agreement focuses on cutting emissions, giving no explicit guidance on which fossil fuels may be exploited within those limits. Norway has one of the most ambitious national carbon-cutting targets in the world and is ahead of the curve in promoting clean technology like electric vehicles. At the same time, its energy exports have a substantial carbon footprint abroad. While the Oslo judgment does not prohibit Arctic oil exploration, it is increasingly contentious politically, becoming a major theme in the 2017 general election campaign. There are also signs of industry interest waning, following weak initial results. Only 11 companies applied for drilling rights in the Barents Sea in the latest licensing round, down from 26 in the previous offering. Shell was the sole supermajor to bid. Depressed oil prices since a 2014 peak make the economics of operating in tough environments like the frozen north more challenging. Norway’s $1 trillion sovereign wealth fund last year proposed to ditch oil and gas stocks to limit its exposure to price...

Posted by salvatore on 10:28 am in News | Commenti disabilitati su

[posted by Holly Watt on The Guardian, December 21, 2017] Hinkley Point, on the Somerset coast, is the biggest building site in Europe. Here, on 430 acres of muddy fields scattered with towering cranes and bright yellow diggers, the first new nuclear power station in the UK since 1995 is slowly taking shape. When it is finally completed, Hinkley Point C will be the most expensive power station in the world. But to reach that stage, it will need to overcome an extraordinary tangle of financial, political and technical difficulties. The project was first proposed almost four decades ago, and its progress has been glacial, having faced relentless opposition from politicians, academics and economists every step of the way. Some critics of the project have questioned whether Hinkley Point C’s nuclear reactor will even work. It is a new and controversial design, which has been dogged by construction problems and has yet to start functioning anywhere in the world. Some experts believe it could actually prove impossible to build. “It’s three times over cost and three times over time where it’s been built in Finland and France,” says Paul Dorfman, from the UCL Energy Institute. “This is a failed and failing reactor.” Others have pointed to the cost. At present, the estimated total bill for Hinkley Point C is £20.3bn, more than twice the London Olympics. To pay for it, the British government has entered into a complex financial agreement with Électricité de France (EDF), the energy giant that is 83% owned by the French government, and China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN), a state-run Chinese energy company. Under this contract, British electricity consumers will pay billions over a 35-year period. According to Gérard Magnin, a former EDF director, the French company sees Hinkley as “a way to make the British fund the renaissance of nuclear in France”. He added: “We cannot be sure that in 2060 or 2065, British pensioners, who are currently at school, will not still be paying for the advancement of the nuclear industry in France.” Many British observers agree that the deal is ludicrously favourable to EDF – “a dreadful deal, laughable” says Prof Steve Thomas, who works on energy policy at the University of Greenwich. But even insiders at EDF aren’t entirely happy with it. In the months before the EDF board finally signed off the deal in autumn 2016, the finance director resigned, along with Magnin. “The Hinkley Point project remains very risky,” Magnin told me. He is particularly concerned about EDF’s ability to complete the project before the current deadline of 2025. “Why have we reached this point?” asked Magnin. “It is the construction of a house of cards.” Not everyone has lost faith in the project. When John Hutton was business secretary in 2008, he announced that the government would encourage the “safe and affordable” development of nuclear reactors. Back then, he insisted the plants would be completed “well before 2020”, and wouldn’t receive a penny in subsidies from the British government. Today, despite those earlier promises having been broken, Hutton still lobbies for nuclear: “We’re not just creating power stations,” he told me. “We are making history.” But the irony of Hinkley Point C is that by the time it eventually starts working, it may have become obsolete. Nuclear power is facing existential problems around the world, as...

Laghi invasi da microplastiche, Como e Maggiore i peggiori

Posted by salvatore on 8:04 am in Notizie | Commenti disabilitati su Laghi invasi da microplastiche, Como e Maggiore i peggiori

[su Ansa] Goletta-Enea, fino a 560mila microparticelle per metro quadrato. Invasione di microplastiche nei laghi italiani, con quelli di Como e Maggiore che hanno mostrato picchi di oltre 500mila particelle per chilometro quadrato. A dirlo sono i risultati di un campionamento ad hoc sulle microparticelle con dimensione inferiore ai 5 millimetri, compiuto dalla campagna itinerante Goletta dei Laghi 2017 di Legambiente, realizzato per il secondo anno consecutivo, in collaborazione con Enea. (Qui la mappa interattiva sull’inquinamento di mare e fiumi in Italia) Sono stati sei i bacini monitorati: Iseo, Maggiore, Garda, Trasimeno, e per la prima volta Como e Bracciano, per un totale di quasi 50 chilometri. Nei laghi di Como e Maggiore è stata trovata la maggiore quantità di microparticelle: nel primo c’era una densità media di 157mila particelle per chilometro quadrato nella parte settentrionale, e un picco di oltre 500mila nel secondo transetto collocato più a nord, in corrispondenza del restringimento tra Dervio (Lecco) e Santa Maria Rezzonico (Como). Il lago Maggiore ha mostrato una densità media di 123mila particelle per chilometro quadrato, con un picco di oltre 560mila particelle in corrispondenza della foce del fiume Tresa, tra Luino e Germignaga (Varese), sul quale insiste il depuratore, spiega l’ong. Non se la passano bene neanche i laghi di Bracciano e di Iseo. Il primo, fortemente colpito quest’estate dalla siccità e dell’eccessiva captazione che hanno creato condizioni ambientali critiche, nei dieci transetti campionati dai tecnici di Goletta dei Laghi ha presentato una media di 117mila particelle per chilometro quadrato; il secondo, quello di Iseo, una media 63 mila particelle. Valori medi più bassi, invece – conclude Legambiente – per il lago di Garda con quasi 10mila particelle per chilometro quadrato e per il Trasimeno con 7.914 particelle su chilometro quadrato. (Pubblicato il...

Posted by salvatore on 10:12 am in News | Commenti disabilitati su

[posted by Kim Martineau on The Guardian, December 21, 2017] New research predicts that migrants applying for asylum in the European Union will nearly triple over the average of the last 15 years by 2100 if carbon emissions continue on their current path. The study suggests that cutting emissions could partially stem the tide, but even under an optimistic scenario, Europe could see asylum applications rise by at least a quarter. The study appears today in the journal Science. “Europe is already conflicted about how many refugees to admit,” said the study’s senior author, Wolfram Schlenker, an economist at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) and a professor at the university’s Earth Institute. “Though poorer countries in hotter regions are most vulnerable to climate change, our findings highlight the extent to which countries are interlinked, and Europe will see increasing numbers of desperate people fleeing their home countries.” Schlenker and study coauthor Anouch Missirian, a Ph.D. candidate at SIPA, compared asylum applications to the EU filed from 103 countries between 2000 and 2014, with temperature variations in the applicants’ home countries. They found that the more temperatures over each country’s agricultural region deviated from 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit) during its growing season, the more likely people were to seek refuge abroad. Crops grow best at an average temperature of 20 degrees C, and so not surprisingly, hotter than normal temperatures increased asylum applications in hotter places, such as Iraq and Pakistan, and lowered them in colder places such as Serbia and Peru. Combining the asylum-application data with projections of future warming, the researchers found that an increase of average global temperatures of 1.8 °C — an optimistic scenario in which carbon emissions flatten globally in the next few decades and then decline — would increase applications by 28 percent by 2100, translating into 98,000 extra applications to the EU each year. If carbon emissions continue on their current trajectory, with global temperatures rising by 2.6 C to 4.8°C by 2100, applications could increase by 188 percent, leading to an extra 660,000 applications filed each year. Under the landmark climate deal struck in Paris in 2015, most of the world’s nations agreed to cut carbon emissions to limit warming by 2100 to 2°C above pre-industrial levels. President Trump’s recent decision to withdraw the United States, the world’s second largest carbon emitter, from the accord now jeopardizes that goal. In a further setback to reducing U.S. carbon emissions, the U.S Environmental Protection Agency has proposed lowering the U.S. government’s “social cost” of carbon, or the estimated cost of sea-level rise, lower crop yields, and other climate-change related economic damages, from $42 per ton by 2020 to a low of $1 per ton. The EPA partly arrived at the lower figure by excluding the cost of U.S. emissions on other countries, yet as the study shows, effects in developing countries have clear spillovers on developed countries. “In the end, a failure to plan adequately for climate change by taking the full cost of carbon dioxide emissions into account will prove far more costly,” said Missirian, a fourth-year sustainable development major. The research adds to a growing body of evidence that weather shocks can destabilize societies, stoke conflict and force people to flee their home countries. In a widely-cited...

Troppi antibiotici? Male per noi, male per i fiumi

Posted by salvatore on 12:31 am in Notizie | Commenti disabilitati su Troppi antibiotici? Male per noi, male per i fiumi

[di Giovanni Ortolani su La Stampa] Ogni volta che prendiamo un antibiotico, una minima parte del farmaco va a finire nell’ambiente. I rischi per la nostra salute e per la natura sono però gravi: una concentrazione di soli pochi micro-grammi per litro in uno dei nostri fiumi provoca effetti anche seri. Ogni volta che prendiamo un antibiotico, una minima parte del farmaco va a finire nell’ambiente. I rischi per la nostra salute e per la natura sono però gravi, in quanto ne utilizziamo troppi e anche una concentrazione di soli pochi micro-grammi per litro in uno dei nostri fiumi provoca effetti sull’ambiente. “Ovviamente non li possiamo bandire perché sono farmaci fondamentali per la cura delle infezioni” dice a La Stampa Paola Grenni, ricercatrice dell’Istituto di Ricerca Sulle Acque del Consiglio nazionale delle Ricerche – “però,” sottolinea, “bisogna utilizzarli solo se prescritti dal medico, poiché se non necessari, la loro incidenza sull’ambiente neppure è giustificata da motivi di salute”. Grenni è fra gli autori di una pubblicazione che ha raccolto e analizzato la letteratura scientifica su questo tema e che è stata recentemente premiata agli Elsevier Atlas Award, un riconoscimento dato agli studi scientifici che trattano di argomenti con un impatto significativo a livello mondiale. Gli antibiotici sono stati scoperti casualmente nel 1928, quando Alexander Fleming studiò la capacità della muffa Penicillium notatum di inibire lo sviluppo di numerose specie di batteri. I suoi studi servirono alla realizzazione del primo farmaco antibiotico, ovvero la penicillina, che arrivò negli ospedali negli anni ‘40. I ricercatori hanno poi sintetizzato numerosi altri antibiotici che hanno contribuito a diminuire la mortalità causata da malattie infettive batteriche, come la polmonite o la tubercolosi, e a ridurre le complicanze di infezioni legate a ferite e interventi chirurgici. Ma quando una persona o un animale ingeriscono un antibiotico, non tutto il farmaco viene assorbito dal corpo. Una parte non viene infatti metabolizzata e viene eliminata attraverso le urine e le feci, che prima raggiungono le acque di scarico, quindi gli impianti di trattamento e depurazione e infine i fiumi. “Anche a basse concentrazioni, gli antibiotici nell’ambiente possono far sviluppare ai batteri una resistenza che si può trasmettere fra i diversi batteri” spiega Grenni. “Se questa resistenza raggiunge anche batteri patogeni, il problema diventa importante perché poi il farmaco non ha più effetto su tali batteri che appunto sono divenuti resistenti allo stesso” continua sottolineando che negli ultimi anni si sta facendo uno sforzo per sintetizzare e mettere sul mercato nuovi antibiotici in grado di prendere il posto di quelli che stanno diventando meno efficaci. L’antibiotico-resistenza è la capacità di un batterio di modificare il proprio patrimonio genetico per non soccombere sotto l’azione di un farmaco antibiotico. Secondo la World Health Organization (WHO) questa è oggi una delle minacce globali più gravi per la salute, la sicurezza alimentare e lo sviluppo. Solamente la tubercolosi antibiotico-resistente uccide già 250.000 persone all’anno, mentre numerose altre malattie, come la polmonite e le infezioni del tratto urinario, stanno sviluppando una resistenza sempre maggiore. L’altra minaccia, continua Grenni, è quella per il nostro ambiente. Gli antibiotici infatti influenzano batteri e funghi non patogeni e naturalmente presenti nell’ambiente, le cosiddette comunità microbiche naturali, che giocano un ruolo chiave nei cicli biochimici fondamentali dei processi ecologici e che influiscono sulla fertilità del suolo e la...

Posted by salvatore on 10:06 am in News | Commenti disabilitati su

[posted on The Guardian, December 20th, 2017] France’s parliament has passed into law a ban on producing oil and gas by 2040, a largely symbolic gesture as the country is 99% dependent on hydrocarbon imports. In Tuesday’s vote by show of hands, only the rightwing Republicans party opposed, while leftwing lawmakers abstained. No new permits will be granted to extract fossil fuels and no existing licences will be renewed beyond 2040, when all production in mainland France and its overseas territories will stop. Socialist lawmaker Delphine Batho said she hoped the ban would be “contagious”, inspiring bigger producers to follow suit. France extracts the equivalent of about 815,000 tonnes of oil per year – an amount produced in a few hours by Saudi Arabia. But centrist president Emmanuel Macron has said he wants France to take the lead as a major world economy switching away from fossil fuels – and the nuclear industry – into renewable sources. His government plans to stop the sale of diesel and petrol engine cars by 2040 as well. Above all the ban will affect companies prospecting for oil in the French territory of Guyana in South America, while also banning the extraction of shale gas by any means – its extraction by fracking was banned in 2011....

Posted by salvatore on 10:06 am in News | Commenti disabilitati su

[posted by Samudra Gupta Kashyap on The Indian Express, November 27th, 2017] Police on Monday here resorted to lathi-charge, tear-gas and firing of rubber bullets to disperse several hundred protestors in order to carry out an eviction drive in the Amchang Wildlife Sanctuary that shares boundary with Guwahati city, and demolised over 400 houses illegally constructed inside it. The eviction drive, which was carried out following a Gauhati High Court order, involved over 1,500 police personnel and about 300 demolition labourers, apart from a dozen elephants, a few bulldozers, with the encroachers initially trying to prevent the authorities from entering a number of villages that were illegally established inside the sanctuary. A few police and forest personnel were injured when encroachers pelted stones to stop the operation. An eviction order was issued by the Gauhati High Court while disposing off a suo moto PIL registered in 2013 on the basis of a letter written by Early Birds, a Guwahato-based environment protection group giving details of how the sanctuary was rapidly shrining because of failure of the authorities to protect it from systematic encroachment. An official estimate has put the number of encroachers at about 2,000. Over 10 sq km of the 78.64-sq km Amchang Wildlife Sanctuary is currently under encroachment, with the encroachers setting up about a dozen villages by cutting down valuable trees and shrubs that provide shelter and food to several species of wildlife. Amchang is home to 44 species of mammals and 250 avian species, besides varied numbers of reptiles and amphibians. “The government has launched the eviction drive in line with a Gauhati High Court order. Encroachment has not only led to destruction of valuable forests, but also triggerred off serious human-elephant conflict across the state. Amchang is only one example,” state forest and environment minister Pramila Rani Brahma said here on Monday. The sanctuary would be freed of encraochers within November 30, she said. The mammal list of Amchang includes elephant, Chinese pangolin, flying fox, slow loris, Assamese macaque, rhesus macaque, capped langur, hoolock gibbon, jungle cat, leopard cat, leopard, wild pig, sambar , barking deer, gaur and porcupine among others. Likewise, some of the commonly sighted birds include Lesser adjutant, Greater adjutant, white-backed vulture, slender-billed vulture, khaleej pheasant, green imperial pigeon, and lesser pied...

Sicilians take aim at oil ‘monster’ they blame for children’s birth defects

Posted by salvatore on 10:19 am in News | Commenti disabilitati su Sicilians take aim at oil ‘monster’ they blame for children’s birth defects