The cash pot is being made available for schemes that ‘clean up England’s rivers and encourage local wildlife to flourish’.

Environment minister Richard Benyon said: “Rivers and lakes are a vital, and much-loved, part of the English countryside and I want to ensure they remain that way.

“The £28 million fund will help communities and charities interested in doing just that and I hope it will lead to us soon celebrating the same sort of success for other treasured wildlife, such as water voles, kingfishers and salmon.”

Community groups and charities can apply for a share of the Catchment Restoration Fund to clean up their local rivers by tackling pollution, restoring wildlife habitats and enabling fish to migrate.

The Environment Agency will be responsible for running the fund over the next three years and will ensure money is given to local groups who can make a real difference.

Major work has already taken place to improve rivers and waterways in South Yorkshire, such as the River Don in Sheffield.

The river was blighted by problems ranging from industrial pollution and fly-tipping, but fish and species of wildlife are now making a return.

Bids to the Government’s fund must be made by Wednesday, February 29.

The American Energy & Infrastructure Jobs Act (H.R. 7) would impose new timetables on the environmental review process for transportation projects and give states broader authority to exempt projects from analysis.

Republicans said reforming the National Environmental Policy Act review process could halve the time to review and construct transportation infrastructure projects.

“The average federal highway project takes 15 years from concept to completion in the U.S. because of excessive regulations,” Rep. John J. Duncan Jr. (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Highways and Transit Subcommittee, said in a statement. “This is far more than any other nation. This bill will streamline the way we approach infrastructure projects by cutting red tape and reducing federal bureaucracy, all while creating millions of jobs for hard working Americans right here in the United States.”

Environmental and transportation groups criticized the bill for imposing artificial deadlines on the environmental review process and limiting public participation and judicial oversight of decisions.

House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica (R-Fla.) introduced the five-year, $260 billion surface transportation reauthorization bill Jan. 31 (20 DEN A-12, 2/1/12).

In addition to streamlining the environmental review process for new construction projects, the bill would reauthorize federal hazardous materials safety programs through fiscal year 2016 and require regulators to conduct more analysis before issuing safety rules. (See related story in this issue.)
Bill Adds New Deadlines

The bill would require federal agencies conducting environmental reviews to make a final determination for the project under review within 30 days of the final environmental impact statement or other assessment being made available. Projects would be automatically approved if that determination were not made within the required 30 days.

Federal agencies should combine the final environmental impact statement and record of decision if the preferred alternative is being approved rather than issue them separately, according to the bill. The bill also would limit federal agencies’ abilities to consider alternatives for the project.

Deron Lovaas, transportation policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, told Bloomberg BNA Feb. 1 that the bill “hamstrings alternative analysis.”

“The whole idea of the National Environmental Policy Act is not to dictate certain outcomes but to require that state and federal bureaucrats scrutinize projects to make sure that you don’t get undue community damage,” Lovaas said.

The House bill also would require all legal challenges to the project review to be filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

David Goldberg, a spokesman for Transportation for America, told Bloomberg BNA Feb. 1 that the expedited review could limit citizen oversight and participation in the review process.

“Establishing a more predictable review time has some merit, but the thing we’re still looking at very closely is to what degree this leaves citizens out of the loop,” he said.
President Can Speed Review

The bill would include an expedited review process for any transportation infrastructure project “determined by the president to enhance the economic competitiveness of the United States.”

States would be able to nominate projects for the expedited review to the Transportation Department, which would forward the applications to the president. The president would then have 30 days to either approve or reject the project. Projects would be automatically approved if the president did not make a determination within those 30 days.

The bill also would allow states to repair any road or bridge damaged during a declared emergency and rebuilt in the same location at the same capacity without environmental review.

The bill would give states broader authority under 40 C.F.R. 1508.4 to determine which construction projects do not have a significant impact on the environment and would not require an environmental assessment or impact statement .

Lovaas said the previous transportation authorization bill created a five-state pilot program that allowed them to make their own categorical exclusions based on the sufficiency of their own state review process. To date, only California has initiated the pilot, he said.
Concerns Raised About ‘Minimal Oversight.’

Lovaas said he had concerns about the “minimal oversight” of state decisions because environmental laws can vary between states. The Republican bill would be “extremely damaging to the environment in many states because there’s a patchwork of environmental law,” he said.

Under the bill, states also would be allowed to proceed with engineering and rights-of-way acquisition while the environmental review is still under way. States would be eligible to be reimbursed for the federal portion of transportation projects only if the project were subsequently approved.

The bill also would broaden states’ ability to use funds intended to address air pollution from vehicles on new transportation capacity, including additional roadways. It would eliminate provisions in the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program administered by the Transportation Department that limit how states can apply those federal funds.

The program originally was intended to help states attain the national ambient air quality standards established by the Environmental Protection Agency by reducing the reliance on single-passenger vehicles.
Use on New Roadway Projects

Goldberg said states have typically used the funds for shuttle buses, pedestrian links to public transit, and freeway signs warning drivers of upcoming delays. He said the House bill would allow those funds to be used on new roadway projects instead.

“The impulse here is to give states as much flexibility as possible,” Goldberg said. “That’s not necessarily a bad thing except when you have a pot of funds whose purpose is to assist places in dealing with the impacts of one-passenger cars, then it doesn’t make sense to open it up to highway construction.”

Source: http://www.bna.com/

1. Build a Simple Solar Heater

A solar hot-air collector built into new construction or added to an existing building can be an easy and inexpensive heating solution. The low-cost plan in Build a Simple Solar Heater lets you turn any south wall into a source of free heat. On sunny winter days, this collector raises interior temperatures to between 60 and 75 degrees.

2. Heat Your Water with Solar

Solar water heaters are the simplest entry into renewable energy. About 15 to 20 percent of a home’s energy goes to heating the hot water you use. For information about a low-maintenance solar system, see Go Solar for Free Hot Water.

3. Install Thin-Film Solar Panels

With superefficient peel-and-stick PV sheets, solar power is better than ever. These thin panels (see photo above) can go right on your roof and help significantly with your home’s energy consumption. See Easy Solar Power for information on how thin PV sheets work and how you can install them on your home.

Of course, each of these solar options has an up-front cost—but they will pay for themselves over time with the money you save on energy bills. Plus, they all help reduce your environmental impact. Finally, solar is just plain cool! If you use any solar systems at home, please tell us about them in the comments section below.

Source: http://www.care2.com/

Developing agricultural technology is the core issue to ensure the quality and safety of agricultural products, according to this year’s No 1 document issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the State Council on Wednesday.

The central authorities regularly release a major policy document at the beginning of each year to address government priorities.

This is the ninth consecutive year that the first document has been themed on rural issues.

China will also quicken the pace of constructing water-conservation facilities, treat rivers and lakes, strengthen reservoirs, prevent geological disasters and increase the areas that have access to irrigation, the document said.

Similarly, the document said the country will push for agricultural mechanization by boosting credit support for the purchase of machinery.

It also pledged to launch key ecological projects in the country.

With 9 percent of the world’s arable land being used to feed 22 percent of the world population, China’s achievements and contributions to world food security are universally recognized.

The country’s grain output hit 571 million tons in 2011, a 4.5 percent year-on-year increase and the eighth consecutive year of growth, statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics showed.

The latest harvest exceeded the nation’s plan to boost the annual grain yield to 550 million tons by 2020.

Meanwhile, the output of all major agricultural products in China has increased in 2011, for the first time in 16 years, Minister of Agriculture Han Changfu said at the central government’s conference on rural work in December.

Analysts and senior officials said that the country must boost technological inputs into agricultural production to counter food demands of a growing population and the shrinkage of arable land, which is being lost to rapid urbanization.

“China is now leading the world in some fields of agricultural technology, such as cultivating grain seed varieties,” said Li Maosong, director of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences’ agriculture information office.

Meanwhile, the country lags behind in many other fields, compared with the United States and some European countries, including corn and vegetable production, and raising livestock and poultry, he said.

Li said the country will show strong demand for top-quality seed varieties, such as anti-drought and pest-resistant seeds, and advanced cultivation methods in the next few years to improve unit yield and the quality and safety of agricultural products.

Also, statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics showed that urban residents accounted for 51.2 percent of the population in 2011, surpassing 50 percent for the first time, meaning more rural labor was being lost, analysts said.

“Major efforts will be strengthened to provide more educational training on science and technology in the rural areas to produce professionals in the sector to facilitate production growth,” Chen Mengshan, chief economist of the Ministry of Agriculture, was quoted by Xinhua News Agency as saying on Wednesday.

The group says the world has not been heating up in the past decade and that there’s no urgent need for action to tackle global warming.

But the group’s view is being rubbished by Australian climate scientists who say action to curb carbon emissions is urgently needed.

Hayden Cooper has our report.

HAYDEN COOPER: The Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal added petrol to an already flaming debate on Friday when it printed the headline: “No need to panic about global warming”.

The article that followed was a letter signed by 16 scientists who believe the rush by governments to act is a mistake.

WILLIAM KININMONTH: Well, a number of us have been discussing this issue over many years, the fact that there is this alarmism about global warming which we believe is unjustified and so the opportunity came to put something to the Wall Street Journal which we did and we are quite happy to put my name with it.

HAYDEN COOPER: William Kininmonth is the former head of the National Climate Centre at the Bureau of Meteorology.

He’s one of the 16 voicing their dissent.

WILLIAM KININMONTH: We are certainly not against climate research. What we are suggesting is that the alarmism that is being put out about carbon dioxide is unfounded.

HAYDEN COOPER: William Kinninmonth’s opinion isn’t newly formed – he’s long been sceptical of the scientific argument on global warming.

In this letter he and his colleagues argue that carbon dioxide won’t destroy civilisation and that in the past decade the temperature of the globe in fact hasn’t been rising.

WILLIAM KININMONTH: That is certainly one of the points in the letter that over the last decade there has been no significant change in temperature of the globe.

HAYDEN COOPER: But 2010 and 2005 were the warmest years on record weren’t they?

WILLIAM KININMONTH: That depends on which sort of numbers you take. The set that was initially established by the intergovernmental panel on climate change which is from the climate research unit certainly show that 1998 was still the warmest year in their records.

HAYDEN COOPER: Is it true that 2011 was the 35th year in a row in which global temperatures were above the historical average?

WILLIAM KININMONTH: Well, the fact is we’ve had warming over the last century. There is no doubt about that and so one takes the end of that trend-line, yes, you’ll find that it is a warmer year. But that doesn’t mean to say that the trend is going to continue on forever.

TIM FLANNERY: Well, it clearly has warmed. The science is incontrovertible on that. Anyone can look at the figures and see that the world is warming and continues to warm and that is just observational data.

HAYDEN COOPER: Tim Flannery is Australia’s chief climate commissioner – the man appointed by the Government to prosecute the case for cutting pollution.

TIM FLANNERY: The essence of their argument is that if you are an elected politician, you don’t need to worry about acting on climate change and it is not surprising again to see that coming out in the middle of a Republican race when there is a chance that one of the Republicans may decide that climate change doesn’t need addressing. There has been no rethink on the science of climate change. There is broad public acceptance globally of the need for action.

You know it is only in Canada, the US and Australia that there is even a political debate really at all.

HAYDEN COOPER: As ever in this perennial dispute there’s the none too subtle barb directed at the qualifications of the opposition. This time by Tim Flannery.

TIM FLANNERY: They are not all scientists. There are some engineers, there are astronauts. It sort of a bit of mix actually as well as a lot of retired scientists in there so no, this sort of thing doesn’t really surprise me.

ELEANOR HALL: That is Australia’s chief climate commissioner, Tim Flannery ending that report by Hayden Cooper.

Natural disasters

Australia is committed to helping Fiji prepare for and respond to natural disasters. Since the January 2009 floods, Australia has provided approximately F$10 million to Fiji for disaster response and recovery. This supported the rapid distribution of emergency supplies such as tarpaulins, blankets and water containers to affected communities. It also funded essential repairs to damaged health centres and schools and supported farmers to plant new crops in the wake of Cyclone Tomas.

In Fiji, Australia is working with the Fiji National Disaster Management Office and the Fiji Council of Churches to help make local communities more resilient and better prepared for natural disasters. So far the program has helped over 140 vulnerable communities to develop their own disaster response plans and community disaster management committees. These committees help inform people of what to do when disasters strike.

The disaster response plans involve preparatory actions such as storing food and drinking water, bracing houses, moving animals to high ground, and evacuating to village halls, churches or schools in a safe location.

“I am happy that this training has come to our village,” said an elderly woman from Gunu village, Yasawa. “I am 86 years old and cannot walk. After this training I am the first to be assisted. The youth help me pack and move me to the evacuation centre. The men secure my house. I am thankful.”

Each community has tailored its disaster response plan to suit its own unique needs. For example, the plans for Yavusania settlement in Nadi and Wasavulu village in Labasa are focused on responding to floods as they are both located near major rivers. The plans for Nakoronawa, Nakaugasele, Lomanikoro and Nakaunakoro village in Kadavu focus on a tsunami early warning system.

The program also builds links between communities and the Fiji National Disaster Management Office. During recent cyclones the four villages of Nakasaleka District in Kadavu relayed information to the National Disaster Management Office on the track of and damage caused by the cyclone. This enables emergency responders to build a clearer picture of the disaster so help can reach those in need faster.

Australia always stands ready to help Fiji following a natural disaster, and we will continue to work hard with our partners to support the people of Fiji to prevent the loss of life and livelihoods resulting from natural disasters.

This issue has been very important to me, and as someone who went to Washington D.C. to protest the pipeline back in November, I believe that President Obama did the right thing both for the environment and the United States.

On Nov. 6, our goal was to surround the White House to draw attention to the issue, but since more than 12,000 people came from all over the country, we were able to surround the White House three times.

This was a very exciting and powerful protest to attend. The protest proved effective, because less than a week later President Obama sent the pipeline project back to the State Department to be reviewed. It was a step in the right direction, but the fight was not over.

Even though all leading climate scientists, including James Hanson the head climate scientist for NASA, agree that the pipeline would be a major contributor to the global climate crisis, the president is still under a lot of pressure to approve it. Unfortunately, people don’t understand that jobs and money are not the only important things involved in this discussion.

The Keystone pipeline project would run approximately 1,700 miles from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, to refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas.

It would cross the Yellowstone River, the Sand Hills in Nebraska, which is a fragile farming region, and the Ogallala Aquifer, which is one of our nation’s largest freshwater sources.

It provides 78 percent of Nebraska’s public water and 83 percent of its irrigation water. The Keystone pipeline already exists in Canada and has spilled 14 times since June 2010, according to the National Wildlife Federation. One of the biggest problems with Tar Sands Oil is that extracting it creates three to five times more greenhouse gases than regular oil.

Tar sands are not a normal source of oil because the oil is in the form of bitumen, which must be chemically treated to make it useful. The Alberta Tar Sands are located under boreal forests, which have been home to native peoples and countless species of wildlife for centuries.

To me, all of this seems like reason enough not to try to extract tar sands oil. Why do people think that any possibility of jobs is more important than degradation of our planet? How many jobs the Keystone pipeline might create is up for debate, but most of what I have read says that the jobs would be temporary and not as many as the oil industry is saying. Personally, I’d rather we protect the Earth than have a few temporary jobs that are going to cause tons of damage and go away soon.

I think that it makes more sense to create jobs in the clean energy industry. Why not look to the future instead of to the past?

Although I do not yet vote, I will continue to support President Obama for standing up to the big oil companies. At this time, in this century, we need to move forward, like a lot of other countries, and work to get away from fossil fuels and degradation of the earth.

We are capable of becoming less dependent on oil, and of creating technologies and producing electricity through renewable energies. It’s the best thing for us, for the future and for our planet.

Source: http://www.therepublic.com

I mention this because my first impression of the group’s latest record, The Stars are Indifferent to Astronomy, was, “Yep, this sounds like Nada Surf.” But it’s not the Nada Surf non-fans would be familiar with. Stars is very much on par in quality and style with the group’s other Barsuk releases. This is agreeable indie rock. It’s not too dissonant, not too clean. Its surprises are minuscule in scope, but that’s no big deal, because Nada Surf can be depended on for pleasant tunes.

The biggest little surprise of Stars is that the songs are actually kind of muscular in structure, at least compared to Lucky or The Weight is a Gift. Opening tracks “Clear Eye Clouded Mind” and “Waiting For Something” deliver a one-two punch of energetic playing and anthemic choruses. “Waiting For Something” is arguably one of the catchiest songs Nada Surf has ever written. The chorus is pretty simple–it’s more or less just the title repeated four times–but frontman/guitarist Matthew Caws has such a warm, comforting singing voice that he sells it.

There are certainly softer tracks on the record that are more classically Nada Surfy, like “When I Was Young” and “Jules and Jim.” The record tries to balance these two impulses, and while it does a decent job of waxing/waning, it never quite recaptures the energy of the first two songs. Still, tracks like “The Moon is Calling,” originally heard last year on a Record Store Day single, pack some punch.

The record’s second half picks up the pace somewhat. “Teenage Dreams” has some nice pep, “Looking Through” is the second catchiest song on the record” and “No Snow on the Mountain” packs some heft. “The Future” closes out the album with a note on getting older: “The future looks like a screen / And I cannot believe the future’s happening to me.” For a band that’s been going 20 years now, I can see the relevance in that sentiment.

Source: http://www.punknews.org/

On Saturday, Beijing’s municipal government began publishing hourly measures of what are known as PM2.5 pollutants, or pollutants that measure less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter. But already the data (in Chinese) are showing discrepancies with another measure released hourly by the U.S. embassy in Beijing, long the favored source for air-pollution data for those able to circumvent the Chinese’s government’s Internet censorship efforts.

On Monday morning around 10 a.m., Beijing said PM2.5. levels were measured at about 30 micrograms per cubic meter, which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency classifies as a “moderate” level of pollution. At roughly the same time Monday morning, the U.S. embassy measured PM2.5 levels of 66 micrograms per cubic meter, which is considered “unhealthy” by U.S. measurements.

Several reasons could help explain the discrepancy. U.S. and Chinese pollution monitoring locations are located across the city from one another. The U.S. measures PM2.5 levels from equipment at the embassy in eastern Beijing, near the heavily trafficked Third Ring Road. Meanwhile, Beijing’s government releases measurements from a monitoring site in the western Xicheng district, according to state media.

At least one environmental analyst has already begun raising questions about the data, in particular readings from Saturday that measured PM2.5 levels at an extremely low level of three micrograms per cubic meter.

“In all of 2010 and 2011, the U.S. embassy reported values at or below that level only 18 times out of over 15,000 hourly values,” said Steven Andrews, an environmental consultant who studies Beijing’s pollution data, according to the Associated Press. “PM2.5 concentrations vary by area so a direct comparison between sites isn’t possible, but the numbers being reported during some hours seem surprisingly low.”

Beijing has long worried about discrepancies between its data and U.S. pollution data raising suspicion among the Chinese public, and cables released by WikiLeaks have revealed at least one testy conversations between the embassy and Chinese officials, who lamented the U.S. data could confuse Chinese citizens.

State-run media have celebrated Beijing’s new data release as a sign of government openness and responsiveness to citizen demands. Nonetheless, the reliability of the Chinese data remains a question. Local and national officials have historically been accused of manipulating data on everything from food stockpiles to the country’s economic health.

The Chinese government had previously published PM10 pollution levels — that is, pollutants measuring between 2.5 and 10 micrometers in diameters. However, they didn’t previously release data for smaller PM2.5 pollutants, which are smaller and seen by some experts as more harmful to human health.

China hasn’t yet released targets for average annual PM2.5 levels, though the state-run Xinhua news agency in an article on Saturday said the the national standard could be set at 35 micrograms per cubic meter on average per year, citing hearings at the environment ministry from earlier this month.

Strong winds during the weekend blew off much of last week’s especially thick smog in Beijing, leaving behind a relatively rare stretch of consecutive blue sky days to welcome the new PM2.5 readings. It remains to be seen how the Chinese and U.S. data will compare when pollution levels pick up again — something that seems likely to happen before too long.

Both the U.S. Embassy and the Beijing monitoring station showed a massive spike in PM2.5 levels around midnight on Sunday. While it’s not entirely clear what caused the spike, Chinese Internet users speculated it could have something to do with city-wide launching of fireworks to ring in the Lunar New Year.

Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/

In 2011 the farm sector was only able to post a growth of 2.34 percent, below the full-year target of 3.5 percent due to a weak fourth-quarter performance. In the last quarter of the year, the sector saw growth go down by 2.11 percent on the back of a contraction of 8.72 percent, significantly lower than economist expectations.

Agriculture Secretary Proceso J. Alcala said, however, that 2012 will be “blessed with better weather” which will allow the palay subsector to see its production grow to around 18.46 million metric tons (MMT). Given that palay accounts for 15 percent of agriculture growth and crops account for 50 percent of farm output, he said this will be able to buoy the performance of the farm sector this year.

“Our palay target for 2012 is 18.46 MMT. Sa total forecast po ng total crops and fisheries ay nag-ta-target kami ng 4 percent to 5 percent,” Alcala said in a press briefing on Tuesday.

“Rice and corn output will be the main drivers of growth this year. The production growth of cassava is also good. These are the reasons why we are expecting higher production output this year,” he said.

University of Asia and the Pacific (UA&P) Center for Food and Agribusiness (CFA) Executive Director Rolando T. Dy said this projection may be achievable given the early release and higher agriculture budget of P61.7 billion for 2012.

Dy said it is crucial for the DA to have a budget that will not only be sufficient but released ahead of time to be able to begin irrigation rehabilitation and reconstruction projects.

Alcala said undertaking irrigation projects are part of the priorities of the DA this year along with pursuing more credit-facility programs that will be more accessible and affordable for farmers.

“For 2012, I am projecting a growth of 3 percent to 4 percent because I incorporated the implications of possible climate disturbances. Kung wala ’yong mga disturbances na ito, the DA target may be achievable,” Dy said.

In 2011, the main driver of farm growth was the crops subsector which posted a growth of 4.82 percent. This was buoyed by the 5.78-percent full-year growth in palay and 9.32-percent growth in corn.

Agriculture Assistant Secretary and Bureau of Agriculture Statistics (BAS) Director Romeo Recide said the farm sector benefited from good weather, particularly in the first half of 2011. This was able to boost palay production to around 16.68 MMT in 2011.

However, the main drag in agriculture growth was fisheries which only posted a contraction of 4.1 percent in 2011. Recide said this was largely due to the conservation efforts of the Philippines.

The government imposed a ban on sardine fishing and followed the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission ban on tuna fishing.

In December, the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources enforced a three-month ban on sardine fishing following findings that the stocks of Indian sardines or tamban in Zamboanga del Norte are declining.

Data from the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics (BAS) showed that the volume of unloading of Indian sardines in the Zamboanga Peninsula was down by 11,658.16 MT to 31,284.51 MT from 42,942.67 MT in July to September this year.

The ban on tuna fishing in certain pockets of the high seas in the Pacific Ocean to protect the remaining population of the yellow-fin and big-eye tuna took effect on January 1.

The ban has already affected more than 100,000 Filipino families who depend on tuna fishing for their livelihood. Commercial fishing production in the Philippines, according to the BAS, was down by 4.97 percent in January to June.

Source: http://businessmirror.com.ph