本帖最后由 Donna.# 于 2009-11-15 14:51 编辑
Seeds of discontent
Oct 22nd 2009 | DES MOINES, IOWA
From The Economist print edition
America’s farmers threaten to block （阻碍）climate legislation
Illustration by David Simonds
AUTUMN is always a busy time in America’s farm belt. This autumn, however, it is particularly so. In early November farmers’ organisations across America’s states will receive packages of materials, such as cards and stickers(小貼紙), to wage an assault against climate-change legislation. Their goal is not to amend a bill, but kill it.
As the Senate considers carbon reducing laws, farm lobbyists（说客） have grown increasingly demanding. Tom Vilsack, Barack Obama’s agriculture secretary, insists that the benefits of a climate-change bill will outweigh the costs of expensive fuel and fertiliser. Farmers are not so sure. The House vision of the bill, a 1,200-page whopper(弥天大谎)passed in June, was loaded with concessions to appease farm-state politicians. Now farm lobbyists may win even more handouts(缴交讲义)in the Senate, or even ensure a bill fails. Because there are two senators for every state, rural states are over-represented in the Senate and farmers intend to take full advantage.
Mr Vilsack, who hails from Iowa, argues that legislation will do much for America’s farmers. Failing to reduce emissions could be disastrous, as warmer temperatures unleash(释放)floods and pestilence(瘟疫). But a bill also offers the opportunity for new farm revenue. Windmills would rise from grain fields. Farmers could sell carbon offsets, with dairy producers, for example, installing methane(甲烷) digesters.
Energy costs would, of course, rise. In an effort to mitigate（减轻） this, Collin Peterson, the chairman of the House agriculture committee, packed the House bill with perks. The Agriculture Department (USDA), not the Environmental Protection Agency, would oversee (监督)the agricultural offset programme. Rural electric co-operatives would be given more free allowances. Farmers would receive credit not just for new activities that reduce emissions, but for those already adopted, such as reduced tillage（耕作）.
The Senate bill, presented in late September by Barbara Boxer and John Kerry, gives much less to agriculture. However, the proposal is a mere 821 pages long. The Senate agriculture committee is one of several likely to offer hefty（大幅）additions. Roger Johnson, the president of the 250,000-member National Farmers Union (NFU), favours unlimited domestic offsets (the House bill caps them at 1 billion tonnes) and more allowances for agriculture. Such changes, Mr Johnson argues, would create “significant income opportunities while doing the right thing environmentally”.
However the American Farm Bureau, whose members include huge producers as well as small, remains opposed to any bill. It argues that higher fuel and fertiliser costs would put American farmers at a competitive disadvantage. And fruit and vegetable growers would not benefit from an offset （抵消）programme. In its new campaign, the Farm Bureau urges members to send not just cards to politicians, but personally deliver their bureau caps, signed with the demand, “Don’t Cap Our Future”.
This fury arouses consternation in some corners. The House bill already overindulges agriculture, argues Craig Cox of the Environmental Working Group, a research and advocacy organisation. Furthermore, a USDA study of the House bill found that annual net farm income would decline by only 0.9% in the short term (2012-18), though it would fall 3.5% in the medium term (2027-33) and 7.2% in the long term (2042-48). And the USDA did not account for new demand for biofuels or likely changes in production practices. Mr Johnson of the nfu remains confident that the climate bill will be a boon. “People who say this is a huge cost increase and it’s going to put ag out of business—that’s just not so.”
Mr Vilsack thinks that a cap-and-trade(限额交易)system will eventually win over wary (警惕)farmers. “There’s a history of scepticism,” he explains. Farmers were reluctant to use mechanised farm equipment. They were reluctant to use hybrid（杂种） seeds. They now embrace both. In a few years, Mr Vilsack says, farmers may recognise the many benefits of a climate law, too. Assuming, that is, that one ever gets passed.这种类比的论证思路值得学习，精妙无误的类比！
Endangered species
Red alert
Nov 3rd 2009
From Economist.com
The number of species in danger of extinction
MORE than a third of the 47,677 species of plant and animal surveyed this year by the International Union for Conservation of Nature were found to be at risk. The IUCN's latest “Red List” includes 17,291 species in some degree of danger. This is an increase from 2008, although since more species are examined each year, more are found to be endangered. A further 875 species are considered extinct including 66 that are extinct in the wild. Habitat loss or a change in land use are frequently to blame. One of the six species categorised this year as being extinct in the wild is the Kihansi Spray Toad, which was last seen in its natural habitat in Tanzania in 2004. Nearly a third of all amphibians assessed by the IUCN are under threat, though that pales（相形见绌）by comparison with the three-quarters of plant species found to be in danger.
Tricks of the trade
Nov 2nd 2009
From Economist.com
Can the world stop governments from paying for the over-exploitation（过度开发） of fish?
OVERFISHING erodes（侵蚀） future prosperity by destroying today a resource that could yield benefits indefinitely.（无限期地，不确定地） Yet it is subsidised by billions of taxpayer dollars, euros and yen. Now a new chance to halt this insanity（疯狂） has emerged in the unlikely form of climate-change negotiations.
Landlubbers hand pots of money to fishermen. Rashid Sumaila, a researcher at the University of British Columbia, estimates that in 2003 (the most recent year for which data are available), the world’s fishing subsidies were $25 billion-30 billion. The value of fish landed in the same year was $82 billion. Furthermore, Dr Sumaila reckons（推算） that $16 billion of the subsidies either promote overcapacity by helping fishermen buy new or bigger boats or encourage overfishing by subsidising fuel.
AFP
In theory, this problem could be sorted out by the World Trade Organisation (WTO). But the issue has languished（冷落） over the years and the current Doha round of trade negotiations remains moribund. （垂死）Oceana, an environmental pressure group, argues that the subsidy of fisheries should now be “decoupled” from the Doha round.
Victor do Prado, deputy chief of staff at the WTO, thinks the chances of that happening are slim. “Fisheries is part of the overall Doha mandate,” he says. “As long as this issue is treated within the WTO it is difficult to decouple it from the rest of the round dossiers. What would countries like Japan and Korea be gaining by decoupling?” In other words, a global deal on fisheries subsidies is unlikely because countries such as China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Spain—all of which have large fishing fleets—do not want to cut subsidies.
Moreover, Mr do Prado argues that his organisation is the only one that could broker a deal. “The advantage of negotiating within the WTO is that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed,” he says. “Trade-offs in one area may mean that some countries will give in on another area. And if you don’t discuss fisheries subsidies within WTO where else are you going to do it?”
Yet the global fate of fisheries does not entirely hang on a stalled trade agreement. That is because, in the run-up to the United Nations Climate Change Conference taking place next month in Copenhagen, fuel subsidies are on the political agenda. Fisheries account for 1.2% of global oil consumption and emit more than 130m tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. That makes the industry similar in scale to the Netherlands, the 18th-most prolific oil-consuming country. On September 25th leaders of the G20 group of countries said they would phase out（逐步淘汰）
fossil-fuel subsidies in the “medium term”. So unless the world’s fishing fleets covert to biofuels, there may be some hope for dealing with the subsidy of overfishing. As for fleet overcapacity, that would appear to remain within the remit of the WTO. Efforts to address it should be redoubled. That is because, in subsidising unsustainable practices, governments are promoting a licensed form of theft by one generation from the next. The recent banking crisis has so far swallowed about $3 trillion dollars and caused great outrage. Over the past decade, fishing subsidies have cost $250 billion. If there were only a twelfth of the outcry（强烈抗议）, your correspondent suspects that the practice would be halted. For peat's（泥炭） sake, stop Nov 5th 2009 | BARCELONA
From The Economist print edition The world’s wetlands are big sources of greenhouse gases BOGS（沼泽）, mires（泥泞）, marshes（沼泽）, swamps（沼泽）, fens （沼泽）and quagmires（沼泽）—whatever they are called, and wherever they are found, peaty wetlands emit about 1.3 billion tonnes of CO2 a year as a result of human activity that drains（枯竭） them and thus exposes them to the oxidative（氧化） effect of the atmosphere. Nor does this figure include the effect of fire on dried-up bogs. That can double the amount of CO2 released in a year, in those places it affects. That, at least, is the conclusion of a report published by Wetlands International, a lobby group, at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting being held in Barcelona this week. Hans Joosten of the University of Greifswald, in Germany, who is one of the report’s authors, said that although drained peat occupies a mere 0.3% of the world’s land surface, it is responsible, in total, for 6% of man-made CO2 emissions. The report also apportions（分发） blame. Top of the list, by a long way, is Indonesia—which emits 500m tonnes of CO2 a year, not including the consequences of fire. But richer countries are guilty, too. The next culprit （罪魁祸首）is Russia, followed by China, America and Finland (see chart). The report’s findings, raising the profile of peat, contrast with the conclusions of a paper on deforestation published this week in Nature Geoscience. This suggests the volume of emissions caused by cutting down trees may not be as great as is generally believed. The conventional figure is that tree-felling causes 20% of man-made CO2 emissions. Guido van der Werf of the Free University of Amsterdam, who wrote the paper, reckons the figure is closer to 12%. There is probably some double-counting in the two sets of figures, because many peat bogs are found in forests, and are thus drained as those forests are cleared. Nevertheless, the coincident publication of these studies suggests a change of emphasis may be needed, and that efforts should be made to preserve not just forests, but also bogs. One approach might be to encourage uses of marshland that do not desiccate（失水）the peat—for example, growing moisture-loving rubber trees rather than oil palms（棕榈油）, which need dry soils. Another might be to pay for the “reletting” of abandoned land. Controlling fires is also important. Indeed, a recent report for the Indonesian government by McKinsey, a consultancy, suggests that a combination of avoiding the further deforestation of non-converted marshes, better water management, reletting dried peat and fire control might reduce the amount of CO2 emitted from the country’s peatlands by 900m tonnes a year out of a total—fire-damage and all—of 1.5 billion tonnes. Wetlands enthusiasts are thus calling for the climate-change convention that will, with luck, be agreed in Copenhagen next month to include financial incentives either to avoid the drainage of marshes in the first place or to rewet（再润湿）them. Such incentives are not, at present, proposed. Time is short and negotiators are currently trying to shrink the text of the agreement, not add to it. Should the politicians fail, however, it would leave a door open for the private sector. Many individuals and companies choose to ameliorate(改善) their CO2 emissions on a voluntary basis, using so-called carbon offsets. The leading provider of standards for such offsets, the Voluntary Carbon Standard, based in Washington, DC, is, even now, considering new rules to bring peatland reletting and conservation projects within its ambit.（范围） |
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