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Coal power is becoming uninsurable

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.

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Update: bolsonaro behaviour has got so bad that 67 British firms and 70 American firms are complaining about it

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.

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Hundreds of koalas have died in forest fires as they burn their natural habitat but they are not threatened with imminent extinction

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).

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Have you seen the YouTube adverts put out by the Brazilian government? – Brazil by Brasil

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.

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Iran has convicted 8 wildlife conservationist as spies

Iran is an Islamic country in Asia and the people are not given much freedom, as they follow a strict version of Islam. 

Wld Iranian Cheetah

In some respects this is meant that the wildlife in Iran has done reasonably well since the 1979 Revolution. Much of this country is desert but the ecosystem has been significantly depleted over the last couple of centuries. Into the 19th century Asiatic Lions still roamed parts of Iran.

Continue reading “Iran has convicted 8 wildlife conservationist as spies”
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Antique dealers have failed in an attempt to overturn a total ban on ivory trading, antique or not

The British government introduced a law which banned the sale of Ivory whether new or antique, as you can imagine this this is not liked by antique dealers as it makes it very hard if not impossible to sell any item that has ivory in it.

Often expensive old pianos had ivory keys
Continue reading “Antique dealers have failed in an attempt to overturn a total ban on ivory trading, antique or not”
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Do we want to oceans to operate as a carbon sink? Then stop overexploitation

Through a number of different processes oceans can be a significant carbon sink. An increase in the carbon content of water does acidify it so this is not something we are interested in, but in healthy seas there is a great deal of plankton and that plankton does absorb carbon dioxide. It is furthermore believed that some of this carbon, locked away buy plankton, may actually make it to the ocean floor to be locked away long term at least in part. Indeed it is thought that carbon dioxide concentrations would be at least 50% higher wear it not for this part of the carbon cycle.

Continue reading “Do we want to oceans to operate as a carbon sink? Then stop overexploitation”
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