One of the ingredients used to create electric devices batteries, is cobalt. Cobalt is something that is often mined in central Africa, and there is a significant issue with child labour. However, this is a stupid argument against electric cars.
The electric car companies have been concerned about this, and so have reduced the amount they use.
However, a far more significant use of cobalt, is to remove the sulphur from petrol and diesel! The fossil fuel companies are arguing you should use electric cars because they use a little cobalt (this doesn’t need refilling, it isn’t used up), but at the same time are using vast amounts of cobalt to remove the sulphur from their exhausts- because it is bad to breathe in.
What is more ridiculous is that this process of removing sulphur uses up the cobalt, which it’s why the fossil fuel companies need so much. So far from saving cobalt, fossil fuels consume lots more and require a constant supply .
Over the last couple of decades, the UK had gradually reduced the amount of co2 emissions. Unfortunately, over the last couple of years the number of people driving large suv cars, which use far more fossil fuel has increased dramatically.
This recent increase in fossil fuel suv use, has increased co2 emissions so much, as to eradicate the gains of the last 2 decades. If the UK is to meet its carbon reduction targets, the government must be paying more attention, and we must start increasing taxes on fossil fuel SUVs so that they are not a good option for most people, making the electric alternatives for economically viable.
Drought hit animals too, and in this instance a Drought in Zimbabwe has hit hwange national park so hard that the animals have started to die in large numbers.
While the number of tourists that come to Zimbabwe have fallen dramatically since Mugabe started doing his more destructive policies, these fall in tourists has started to reverse again. Furthermore, with the economy gradually on its way to recovery people can afford to buy food and thus the pressure on wild areas from poaching has decreased significantly.
The translocation is not insignificant, plans to move 600 elephant 2 prides of lions a pack of wild dogs, 50 buffalo 40 giraffe and 2000 Impala.
In other parts of Africa water is pumped into these areas to refill the watering holes. It is unclear whether this was impossible in this case or merely prohibitively expensive- though the cost of moving this many animals will be significant and does not solve the water problem permanently so so a longer-term solution must be found.
Zimbabwe is calling for the relaxation of rules about utilising animals (in ways other than photographic tourism) , and while this would be capable of giving the Zimbabwean government the money needed to protect these animals given the way they have behaved in recent years the international community cannot be sure that the Zimbabwean government will will behave responsibly towards their are flora and fauna.
It is certainly true that looking after animals like elephants that can hurt humans ( in recent years as much as 200 people have died in human animal conflict) is not cheap, however before the disastrous policies of Mugabe the animals of Zimbabwe bought in a large amount of money for it’s people. Returning to this situation can allow the animals to thrive alongside a higher income for people of the country.
Zimbabwe moving 30 young elephants to China, more to follow
Zimbabwe is also under pressure for sending roughly 30 young elephants to China deal in a did with a country. Supposedly this has to be done for the health of the animals as hwang national park where they come from is suffering from a horrific drought that has killed many elephants. However undercover camera work has already shown these young elephants in concrete and metal enclosures having their will broken, flowers to be more easy to control the circuses and zoos in China. Unfortunately it appears that despite Mugabe having left power in Zimbabwe the current government of Zimbabwe still looks on the wildlife as simply a commodity to be traded away and not say something to be preserved for the future. Tourists should look very carefully before being prepared to spend money on safari in Zimbabwe. In total 90 elephants have been moved to China and Dubai in return for 2.7 million dollars.
We seem to be playing wack-a-mole when it comes to feedstock for farmed animals. In most of the world, livestock can graze for perhaps ¾ of the year. However, in countries with seasons, often in the winter the animals are in barns and are fed.
Often, this feeding fattens up the animal faster than grazing and so in many places is used all year round. However, from a nutrients point of view, this is highly inefficient and it’s far better for humans to simply eat the crop (the land needed to raise feed stock cattle could feed far more people if they simply ate the crop of food). In other places, this feed is made from meat.
In recent years, this foodstock has started to be made from fish, caught off the coast of south Africa.
This, however its not proving good for the local food chain. The majority of these fish are naturally eaten by African penguins, but with these being fished out, they are catching less fish, and having to swim further. As you can imagine, this is significantly affecting the penguin population, having significantly reduced the number of chicks that are raised significantly.
Without rapid action, we could see the eradication of many African penguin colonies. If the fishing continues long-term, it may well guarantee a slow decline to extinction. It is ironic as for many farmers, they switched to fish based feed, to avoid damaging places like the Amazon, which is otherwise cut down to grow the feed stock for cattle.
Humans are aging co2 and other warming gases to the atmosphere at an increasing rate through our activities.
Much of these warming gases come from travel, though in the long-term this will be significantly reduced, by electrification.
Other activities appear harder to reduce emissions. One such area is farming. There are all sorts of issues in farming, but as far as emissions are concerned this issue, is methane, which comes from the animals (essentially cows breaking wind).
All sorts of solutions have been suggested, including fitting cows with a device to store the gases for use later (usually burnt for heating).
However, a recent study has suggested a novel solution. They found by adding a small amount of seaweed (around 2% of volume) into the cattle feed, can reduce the gas creation in their stomach by as much as 70%.
This would be a relatively cheap solution, that can cut farming emissions dramatically, and potentially adds an industry for coastal communities as well. It is also likely far simpler and cheaper than farmers trying to collect the gas for future use.
Mc Donald’s has made a big issue out of the fact that they are no longer buying beef from amazonia. I fully approve of this move, but it appears that they are now importing large quantities of soy grown in the Amazon, and still requiring deforestation.
Huge monoculture of soy, are as damaging (possibly more) than cattle ranching, as ranches often retain small pockets of forest and individual trees, so while most of the wildlife is lost, with soy plantation virtually all its lost.
I am sure mc Donald’s understands that British people have an issue with deforestation, not with beef ranching. Better choices must be made. We must all make noise and complain about this underhand behaviour- and force them to improve their behaviour, if this doesn’t work, boycotting their restaurants might be the only way to stop ir.
Coal projects be then power plants or coal mines, are large projects often employing hundreds of people.
As such, the amount of money required to finance the set-up of these things is very big. This means that generally the organisation carrying out the project is required to borrow the money.
All very normal, this type of deal has been going on for centuries. However there’s an issue, the insurer has to work out the odds of you not being able to fulfill your obligations – most common case people have come across is insurance that you have had to buy when you have taken out a mortgage, that will pay off the mortgage in various circumstances such as death or serious illness.
However it is now a scientific fact that one of the highest contributors to the current climate crisis is the burning of coal, and as such the risk of these projects being halted in their tracks or being banned are high. When the odds of an insurer having to pay out increase they have to increase their prices and the market simply cannot cope with that.
As such many coal insurers have simply stopped offering the service. They started in Europe, but now some of the biggest insurance companies in America have started refusing business as well ( including Chubb and axis capital). In all so far 35 insurers have pulled out of the market or severely restricted what they will insure, and between them these insurance companies look after 8.9 trillion dollars worth of assets (roughly 37% of global markets) roughly a 50% increase in a year.
Only Lloyds in Europe will still insure and it is thought that within two or three years it will be hard if not impossible to get insurance for this sorts of projects. It should be noted that while Lloyds is still currently insuring companies, it holds no investments in fossil fuel Industries itself, having sold off the few it had left in 2018. It is thought that Asian insurers will continue to support these projects for a while but it is unlikely that they alone will be able to to give enough support to keep this dirty industry going for long.
Without insurance many projects simply will not happen. There may be some countries in the west where the government steps in to be the insurer of last resort, however it is clear that coal is in the last throes of being used by humans how to make electricity.
Perhaps market forces will Accelerate the move away from fossil fuels after all.
67 British firms have written to bolsonaro to complain about what he’s doing in the Amazon rainforest. Some of these firms are big name companies such as Asda and Tesco’s, well as the UK’s largest asset manager. Separately 70 American firms have signed a similar letter ( this list includes Microsoft and Google)
The letters talk about the world’s concern over his destruction of the Amazon rainforest, talk about various agreements including the soy moratorium from 10 years ago.
Whether these letters have any impact will be interesting to see. However from companies point of view it would seem that the only way to ramp up pressure on Brazil behind on this point is to start boycotting their products. These companies are in theory capable, in most instances, to stop buying products from Brazil and instead get them elsewhere. As such customers must keep up the pressure on these companies, so that if Bolsonaro continues without changing course- the companies feel they must move suppliers from within Brazilian borders. Just a few of these companies doing this publicly, may well force the Brazilian government to change direction.
Whether these companies customers care enough to force them to take this extreme action will be something we will find out in the next year.
Koalas as a species, are highly popular. Not found in many zoos a lot of people go to Australia to see them. Perhaps down to the character Binky bill, and the books written about him, koalas are one of the species that almost everyone knows about even though the majority of people haven’t seen them. In the UK only found and in Edinburgh Zoo and Longleat Safari Park, ( with both these arrivals relatively recent) zoo goers are not used to seeing koalas.
Wildlife species only found in Australia are threatened by several factors. The first is the fact that Australia is increasing the clearing their habitats- as in Africa, forest living species cannot survive in the wild when their habitat has been cleared, and unfortunately in Australia large parts of their land are being cleared. While on occasion that has been pledges to replant Forest elsewhere in Australia, generally the firm has either failed to live up to its promises or has not replaced it with like the like- often the new forests are fast growing species that do not support the wildlife of the forest they destroyed.
Australia is one of the countries that is being hit first by global warming with parts of the Continent becoming largely uninhabitable. The increase in temperature is also drying out the forest which is meaning that some of the forest not being cut down are dying anyway.
Over the last decade also Australia has had some politicians who have been prominent climate change deniers, and thus far they seem to be uninterested in doing the things that are required to protect their own way of life.
In this latest fire, hundreds of koalas have been burnt to death, unfortunately the area was actually a highly successful breeding ground and had very high densities (remember that koalas are herbivores and therefore can live at densities of hundreds per square mile).
However sensationalist claims that koalas functionally extinct after these fires is totally false. They are highly endangered with their habitats disappearing at an astounding rate, but be functionally extinct they need to be very few members of the Species left and we are not there yet (functional extinction essentially says without human intervention the species will disappear). There are arguments as to how many koalas are left, but it’s estimated that New South Wales has between 15,000 and 30,000 remaining.
Koala numbers declined by about 40% between 1990 and 2010, so the theory is without a change in the government’s attitude very soon the Koala will be totally extinct in the wild. Isolated cases of reforestation need to be increased and and Forest corridors between blocks would allow the population to rebound naturally (this adds resilience to farmland as well as the wild areas around).
I was quite a startled by what they felt they could put in to their advert and felt the need therefore to write a response. I cannot find any statistics to tell me how many people have watched this video but for some reason I have been shown it many times over the last few days (it is easy to find on YouTube).
It is very like any advert for wild places that many countries will put out a different times. It talks about it’s forests, clean rivers and it’s wildlife. Late in the video with specifically lists the advantages of doing business with Brazil and the first of these is that it is ‘environmentally aware and sustainable”.
The current president Bolsorano has promised to do away with all this, he is granting amnesty to people who have illegally cleared land has given the title deeds for that land to those people, and is in every other way undoing what protections Brazil has for its natural world including destroying non-governmental and government bodies that fight for the protection of the forest.
Indeed one of his first moves was to merge Forestry with farming under his government. Given that these two directly compete for land and that the Predators living in the forests are killed off so they wont predate domestic animals placed nearby, this does not work well.
Do not be hoodwinked!
I almost feel that the only way to hit Brazil hard enough off is to boycott the country. It is unlikely that we will be able to have a big enough impact, however regular called the lungs of the world, Brazil rain forests are of incredible importance for all of us. It should also be noted that while Bolsonaro came to power talking about improving the living standards of everyone he has also been very clear who he includes in everyone. His Brazil is for the Descendants of Europeans, all other people do not matter.
Indeed one of his first moves is to attempt to remove the rights for all indigenous Forest people of Brazil. Apart from the incredible damage that will be done TO these peoples who have often lived in the forests for millennia, the removal of these people will allow the land to be deforested and wildlife destroyed.
We must stand up and make it clear that we will not stay quiet and watch the Brazilian rain forest be destroyed. Bolsonaro models himself after Trump, but in his country attempt to stay in power against democracy are likely to be far easier. The opposition in Brazil must know that they are supported, if the president is not kicked out of office at the very latest at the end of his first term it is likely there will be little Brazilian rain forest left ( and 70 to 80% of the amazonian rain forest is contained within in the Brazilian countries border).
Seeing a Jaguar deep in the Brazilian rain forest is one of the dreams for many wildlife enthusiasts. It also has the potential to add billions to the Brazilian economy, and due to the reliance on wild places this money will go to parts of the country that has got little else. This is aside from the benefits it gives the economy, by controlling the environment and causing rain. I for one I want the Jaguar to survive in the forests of South America, helping to protect one of the last great ecosystems in the world.
