Environmental Consulting Agency Bans Employees from Biking

Jacobs Babtie is an authority on sustainable transportation, bicycling, and traffic engineering projects in the UK. One of their biggest clients is Transport for London (TfL), a group whose goal is to promote bike transportation, hosting the opening races for the Tour de France last weekend. On its website, Jacobs states: “In the area of cycling, we can offer expert resources at every stage from cycle policy and promotion through to the detailed design and implementation of cycle schemes.”
In a memo posted to all employees at their 36 offices across Britain, Jacobs Babtie banned staff from riding their bikes to work due to safety issues.
The memo reads, “It’s patently obvious that if you are struck by a wayward vehicle when you are on a bicycle or motorbike you are going to be more severely affected than if you were in a car. The reason for this policy is to protect our employees from other vehicles on the road. There will be a few limited exceptions when employees will be permitted to travel by bicycle, but that would be when that mode of transport is required to undertake the job, for example, carrying out surveys along river banks and tow paths.”
The memo goes on to acknowledge that this new policy “could be construed as being at odds with our environmental policy and the requirement to be environmentally responsible”.
Many staff at the company are avid cyclists, and have been riding their bikes to work for years without incident. They believe this ban is partially due to a new company insurance policy.
This new policy has come under scrutiny by many officials, including the Green Transportation Office of the Mayor of London, who issued this statement, “It is hypocritical to offer advice on promoting cycling but at the same time ban your staff from using bikes. If Jacobs does not understand how important cycling is to TfL, we need to ask whether they are the right sort of company to work with.”
A TfL spokesman said: “We find the attitude of Jacobs bizarre and we will be urging them to rethink this decision. TfL is committed to encouraging Londoners to get on their bikes whenever and wherever possible. Our serious investment in growing cycling has seen journeys by bike on soar by 83 per cent since 2000. The number of number of cyclists killed or seriously injured has fallen by 28 per cent since the mid to late 1990s.”
Kevin Mayne, the director of the Cyclists Touring Club, said: “Banning cycling on health and safety grounds is ironic; forcing people off their bikes and into cars just reduces their fitness and increases the danger they pose to other road users. Jacobs’ policy shows a complete lack of understanding of transport risk assessment. For TfL and local authorities to pay a company which bans cycling for advice on sustainable transport is like asking the lunatics to help run the asylum.”
TfL paid Jacobs Babtie £6 million in 2006 to monitor the impact on traffic problems in urban cneters and measuring the health issues surrounding different modes of travel. This is one of the statistics they developed:

Deaths per billion km

Motorcycle 113
Walking 49
Bicycle 38
Car 2.8
Train 0.4
Bus 0.3

For the Original Article at TimesOnline

Banning the Bottle

Last night I attended the first meeting of a new landscape design group, and on my way I stopped at a supermarket to buy goodies to bring to the meeting. The woman at the checkout immediately put my one item in a plastic grocery bag, and I found myself cringing yet again over the plastic bag issue.
"I don't need a bag, thanks. I don't want to throw away the plastic." I say as nicely as I can muster.
She says to me, a little defensively, "I know what you mean. But they're great for lining small garbage cans. "
"Unfortunately, they're also great for lining the streets," I say, wishing that all cities everywhere would ban the plastic and follow San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome's lead.
I'm please to say that Newsome is at it again, and this time it's single serving bottled water.
I hear a lot lately about the folly of bottled water. I once drank Calistoga by the case, reassuring myself that I was doing the right thing by sticking with a California-based water company. Less transport, local, and staying away from a large soda manufacturing company, all the warm fuzzies. But then I read the label carefully and did a little research, and found that Calistoga is nothing more than tap water.
It turns out many of our bottled water is merely tap water with minerals and bubbles added. Did you know there is a serious water shortage in FIJI? Then where did that water come from? And San Pelligrino sparkling has the gas added.
There's all that plastic for the bottles, and questions about whether or not that PET plastic is safe for consumption. Now think of all that tap water being trucked all over the world, and the amount of energy that must take. Why not just drink water from the tap?
I know it's a hard sell for those of you who love the taste of your favorite brand, but the cons are stacking up.
Mayor Gavin Newsome has an interview in Newsweek from last week outlining his new plan to ban the bottle, and why. Love him!
And when you're finished reading that, check out another article I serendipitously received ten minutes ago from a friend on the dirty secrets of bottled water.
Newsweek and Newsome
Message in a Bottle with Fast Company .com

China Claims to have Stopped the Gobi Desert from Expanding

China has built another wall to keep out an invasion, but this time the marauder isn't wild hordes of lawless nomads, but the Gobi desert and its sea of sand. At one time Mongolia was 90% grassland, but over the centuries the sand has been slowly moving, and now covers nearly 30% of the lands there. Beijing may soon be at risk, poised just 120 miles from the edge of the desert.
This narrow strip of vegetation has been playfully referred to as The Green Wall of China, and according to Chinese officials has already stopped terrible sandstorms this year, no small feat when looking at 2001, when the storms numbered 18 for the year.

"We are pretty confident it will be effective," Hu Cun, Inner Mongolia's vice director of forestry, told some 30 journalists invited from Beijing to inspect the work ahead of World Environment Day."

But other reports say that Beijing alone has suffered from four sandstorms this year. Basically, trees have been planted along the deserts edge and grass seed has been dropped from planes onto the edges. People along the sensitive desert borders have been moved, and cattle are banned from these areas. But experts say this isn't enough. "Overpopulation and unsustainable development, has not been addressed by a narrow corridor of grass and trees."

It appears China has once again mislead the public, and this time some say its all part of an elaborate ruse to give the illusion that Beijing Olympic Games will be the greenest Olympics ever held.
"Jiang Gaoming, of the Institute of Botany at the Chinese Academy of Science, said that 60 billion yuan (7.6 billion dollars) spent on projects to control sandstorms hitting Beijing had been largely wasted."

for the original article on Seed mag
Wikepedia's Great Wall article is pretty neat

China Surpasses US in Carbon Emmissions

In case you haven't read the news lately and didn't see this on the front page of all the reports, China has surpassed the US in coal burning CO2 emissions, according to the Guardian. I won't go into the nasty details, you'll have to read the story for yourself this time.

China overtakes US as world's biggest CO2 emitter

John Vidal and David Adam
Tuesday June 19, 2007
Guardian Unlimited


Cyclists pass a factory in Yutian in China's north-west Hebei province. Photograph: Peter Parks/AFP

China has overtaken the United States as the world's biggest producer of carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas, figures released today show.

The surprising announcement will increase anxiety about China's growing role in driving man-made global warming and will pile pressure onto world politicians to agree a new global agreement on climate change that includes the booming Chinese economy. China's emissions had not been expected to overtake those from the US, formerly the world's biggest polluter, for several years, although some reports predicted it could happen as early as next year.

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But according to the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, soaring demand for coal to generate electricity and a surge in cement production have helped to push China's recorded emissions for 2006 beyond those from the US already. It says China produced 6,200m tonnes of CO2 last year, compared with 5,800m tonnes from the US. Britain produced about 600m tonnes.

Jos Olivier, a senior scientist at the government agency who compiled the figures, said: "There will still be some uncertainty about the exact numbers, but this is the best and most up to date estimate available. China relies very heavily on coal and all of the recent trends show their emissions going up very quickly." China's emissions were 2% below those of the US in 2005. Per head of population, China's pollution remains relatively low - about a quarter of that in the US and half that of the UK.

The new figures only include carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel burning and cement production. They do not include sources of other greenhouse gases, such as methane from agriculture and nitrous oxide from industrial processes. And they exclude other sources of carbon dioxide, such as from the aviation and shipping industries, as well as from deforestation, gas flaring and underground coal fires.

Dr Olivier said it was hard to find up to date and reliable estimates for such emissions, particularly from countries in the developing world. But he said including them would be unlikely to topple China from top spot. "Since China passed the US by 8% [in 2006] it will be pretty hard to compensate for that with other sources of emissions."

To work out the emissions figures, Dr Oliver used data issued by the oil company BP earlier this month on the consumption of oil, gas and coal across the world during 2006, as well as information on cement production published by the US Geological Survey. Cement production, which requires huge amounts of energy, accounts for about 4% of global CO2 production from fuel use and industrial sources. China's cement industry, which has rapidly expanded in recent years and now produces about 44% of world supply, contributes almost 9% of the country's CO2 emissions. Dr Olivier calculated carbon dioxide emissions from each country's use of oil, gas and coal using UN conversion factors. China's surge beyond the US was helped by a 1.4% fall in the latter's CO2 emissions during 2006, which analysts say is down to a slowing US economy.

The announcement comes as international negotiations to produce a new climate treaty to succeed the Kyoto protocol when it expires in 2012 are delicately poised. The US refused to ratify Kyoto partly because it made no demands on China, and one major sticking point of the new negotiations has been finding a way to include both nations, as well as other rapidly developing economies such as India and Brazil. Tony Blair believes the best approach is to develop national markets to cap and trade carbon, which could then be linked.

Earlier this month, China unveiled its first national plan on climate change after two years of preparation by 17 government ministries. Rather than setting a direct target for the reduction or avoidance of greenhouse gas emissions, it now aims to reduce energy consumption per unit of gross domestic product (GDP) by 20% by 2010 and to increase the share of renewable energy to some 10%, as well as to cover roughly 20% of the nation's land with forest.

But it stressed that technology and costs are major barriers to achieving energy efficiency in China, and that it will be hard to alter the nation's dependency on coal in the short term. What China needs, said a government spokesman, is international cooperation in helping China move toward a low-carbon economy. Chinese industries have been hesitant to embrace unproven clean coal and carbon capture technologies that are still in their infancy in developed countries.

China has overtaken the United States as the world's biggest producer of carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas, figures released today show.

The surprising announcement will increase anxiety about China's growing role in driving man-made global warming and will pile pressure onto world politicians to agree a new global agreement on climate change that includes the booming Chinese economy. China's emissions had not been expected to overtake those from the US, formerly the world's biggest polluter, for several years, although some reports predicted it could happen as early as next year."

this article was originally printed in Guardian Unlimited June19, 2007

Antibacterial Soap is a Sham

According to Scientific American, antibacterial soaps aren't just unnecessary- they're dangerous.
"Tuberculosis, food poisoning, cholera, pneumonia, strep throat and meningitis: these are just a few of the unsavory diseases caused by bacteria. Hygiene—keeping both home and body clean—is one of the best ways to curb the spread of bacterial infections..."
But are we going too far in our worry over bacteria? Yes, says SCIAM.
These days you can find antibacterial agents in cosmetics, soaps, bedding and household cleaners, and many other products. Most of these just aren't necessary, as normal washing with hot water and soap will not only bacteria, but a whole slew of microbes that can effect our health. But there's more.
With antibacterials, there is a residue left over after bacteria are killed. The most resistant bacteria are able to use this low dose to build up resistance, sort of like the flu virus builds up resistance to vaccinations by mutation. The same happens when we use these antibacterials- in fact, we are inadvertently creating 'super bugs'. The healthiest, most resistant bacteria are not killed by the products, but in fact are made stronger. These same compounds are found in over 60% of US drinking water, making the potential for serious disease more of a risk than before there were antibacterials used in the first place.
Strange but True, read the article at Scientific American

Corporations and the Hijacking of the Environmental Movement

"If you're not at the table, you're on the menu."
These days, nearly everyone agrees about one thing, Global Warming is here, and we humans are indeed the cause. So now what?
Big business got years of foot-dragging out of early studies that served to undermine scientific evidence that the planet was warming. Energy moguls such as Exxon and the American Petroleum Industry, who once funded "uncertainty" research against conventional wisdom are now calling for emissions regulations in the form of Cap and Trade. With Cap and Trade, companies must reduce their carbon emissions to certain levels (as yet to be determined), and if unable to do so, can buy rights from other companies who have met their cap and have reduced their pollution to lower levels, allowing them to sell the surplus.
Some of the big debates right now are just what levels of reductions companies face in the future, and how will the determinations be made. For example, if a company has already reduced its carbon by 10% in the last year, will they be forced to further cut emissions?
Environmentalists watching the rush are voicing fears that all this sudden "green-flag waving" is merely a new tactic for companies to protect themselves rather than saving the planet.
Critics of Cap and Trade argue that these measures would do little to reduce the actual amount of pollution, since smaller companies would be selling credits they would otherwise not produce in carbon in the first place. They argue that the only way to stop the greenhouse effect is by reducing carbon, and that means cutting pollution by more than 50%. Even setting standards lower than levels produced just ten years ago would still add to Global Warming.

full Business Week article

once again, Wikipedia has it all- Find out more about Carbon Cap and Trade

SFWater Makes Nice with Bad Pet Owners

SF Public Utilities asks us this week to clean up after our pets. Nice start, but they could say a lot more. Pet feces don't just stink- they're an ecological disaster. So far they've been linked to the sudden collapse of the once-recovering populations of sea otters off the Pacific. I have a feeling the effects are not limited to sea otters, however. When you stop to think that there are 120,000 dogs in the city of San Francisco alone, and each dog poops at least once a day, well...thats a whole lot of shit.
Don't let your efforts to improve your local environment slip by pretending not to see when Sebbie or Sage or Fido poop in the ivy. You too make a difference.
for SFWater doggie request
NWF Green Pet report
Wikipedia on Sea Otters

EPA's Committment to the Planet

“[The EPA’s] action was therefore arbitrary, capricious, or otherwise not in accordance with law.” -U.S Supreme Court
In this week's Land Online from the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), we get a pretty picture of the history of the EPA and their continued committment to protecting the environment. That's funny- I thought the EPA was created to do just that!
Surprise, Surprise. It takes states of Massachusetts, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington; the cities of the District of Columbia, Baltimore, New York City; and a dozen environmental groups to push the EPA into regulating carbon. In a 5-4 Supreme Court decision on April 2, the EPA is indeed responsible for regulating carbon as part of the Clean Air Act (CAA). Up until now they have denied any responsibility for it, claiming that it was not a part of the initial CAA so therefore they have no jurisdiction to regulate it.
But the victory for pro-environment groups was short-lived, as days later Bush undermined the court ruling by stating that no regulation can harm economic growth.
"The president still doesn't get it," responded House Speaker, Sen. Barbara Boxer.
Global warming will have a much more detrimental effect on growth than he could ever imagine.
Listen to Barbara Boxer's interview with Air America's Ecotalk
the truth will out blog report

White House hands more than 100 top environmental posts to representatives of polluting industries

Even Vanity Fair has jumped on the Green bandwagon, with May's edition sporting a big section on the topic. Writer Robert Kennedy JR points out a fact that may keep the wheels of change from getting a foothold- the bureacracy continues.
Spinning the revolving door between government and business as never before, the White House has handed more than 100 top environmental posts to representatives of polluting industries. The author provides a biographical sampler–and describes a devastating rollback of three decades of progress.

see full story