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Marco Werman: There’s a saying among journalists who’ve covered the environment that unlike most beats, environmental news doesn’t break, it oozes. Well, that oozing scenario has been broken in each of the last two years when massive environmental disasters riveted the world’s attention for months. 2010′s Gulf of Mexico oil spill and 2011′s Fukushima nuclear power plant crisis are just a few examples. No one can say of course whether that trend will continue in 2012, but The World’s environment editor, Peter Thomson, is willing to make some predictions about the world ahead and he joins us now. Peter, what do you see on the horizon for this year?

Peter Thomson: Well, Marco, the most significant thing I see is that oozing phenomenon starting to change and environment stories emerging more and more as breaking news. In particular I think that’s gonna happen with climate change. For years climate change has been thought of as kind of that classic environment story in that it was unfolding only over the course of decades and even centuries as we slowly altered the chemistry of the atmosphere. But really in just the last couple of years climate change has suddenly started to become a breaking news story.

Werman: Well, how so, give us a couple of examples.

Thomson: The most obvious example of the change is extreme weather. The world saw a rash of extreme weather events in 2010. Then there were even more in 2011. Just last month there was that terrible tropical storm that killed maybe a thousand people in the Philippines. A month before that there was the flooding that inundated cities and factories in Thailand for weeks. On the other end of the spectrum there were killer droughts in the horn of Africa, in northern China, even here at home in Texas. A spokesman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration here in the US said recently that in many ways 2011 rewrote the record books for extreme weather events, and these kinds of things of course affect the lives of millions of people around the world.

Werman: Right, but haven’t scientists been telling us for years that we have to be very careful to distinguish between weather and climate, that you can’t blame any particular weather event on climate change.

Thomson: Well, you’re right. Not long ago most climate scientists were saying that and many of them still are, that we could expect to see more severe weather events in a warming world, but you couldn’t link any particular extreme weather event to climate change. But more and more scientists in the field are now starting to say that they’re seeing the imprint of climate change on weather, that greater amounts of heat and moisture that are building up in the atmosphere are changing the whole context in which weather happens and making extreme events more likely. Another big change is that this is happening much sooner and much more quickly than most experts predicted even just a few years ago. So back to what you expect for 2012, nobody can say for sure of course, I mean there’s still a huge amount of short term variability in the climate system, but I think it’s likely that we’re gonna see more extreme weather and that it will come at a higher and higher cost in lives and to the global economy.

Werman: What else might we see on the environment front?

Thomson: Well, still on climate for a minute, there are a couple of big events coming up this year that could have a big impact in the policy area. One will take place this summer in Australia when the country’s new carbon tax goes into effect. Essentially, the tax is a penalty on greenhouse gas pollution that’s supposed to encourage efficiency and new cleaner technology. There was a long and incredibly bitter fight over that and opponents in Australia argued that it will cripple the country’s economy by making energy more expensive. So we’ll have to see starting this summer whether they’re right. It’s also gonna be especially interesting from our perspective here in the US because in many ways Australia’s economy is quite similar to ours. Then of course here in the US we have the fall election and that’s going to have a big impact on our own climate policies. President Obama has disappointed many climate activists, but he’s also taken some pretty significant steps to cut emissions. And if he loses in November or even if Republicans just increase their numbers in Congress, we’re almost certain to see everything the Obama administration has done on the climate front chipped away at or even rolled back altogether.

Werman: And Peter, what do you see in 2012 in terms of countering the climate change with advances in energy technology?

Thomson: Well, it’s interesting. There’s two extremely interesting and contradictory trends on that. One the one hand, on the fossil fuel side there’s been this big rush to develop more and more so called unconventional sources of petroleum; those are the things like the tar sands or the oil sands in Alberta, deep water offshore oil in places like Brazil and our own Gulf of Mexico, and the shale gas that we’ve been hearing a bout under big parts of the US, in Europe and other places. There’s kind of a big global rush for these resources right now, but they can come with a much bigger environmental impact than even conventional sources of petroleum and there are big debates on how and even whether to go after them. And we’re no doubt gonna see a lot more of those in the coming year and beyond. On the other hand, renewable energy is really starting to take off. Prices are dropping for solar and wind. Countries around the world are trying to ween themselves off dependency on conventional sources. So in 2012 we should look at Germany and Japan in particular I think for interesting developments since both of those countries are moving toward a future with a lot less fossil fuel and nuclear power.

Werman: The World’s environment editor, Peter Thomson, thanks very much.

Thomson: Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

The UN climate change conference is in Durban, South Africa, from 28 November to 9 December 2011. (Photo: Cien)

International climate change negotiators are back at it his week in Durban, South Africa. Negotiators are scrambling to make significant progress in a process that seems to have fallen far behind the urgency of the the problem.

Anchor Marco Werman gets an update from the BBC’s environment correspondent, Richard Black.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman, this is The World, a coproduction of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston. International climate change negotiators are back at it this week in Durban, South Africa. Negotiators are scrambling to make significant progress in a process that seems to have fallen far behind the urgency of the problem. Just this week there’s a new report out confirming that global emissions of carbon dioxide jumped by the largest amount ever last year. Scientists warn that the rapid growth in greenhouse gas emissions is putting the earth on track to dangerous warming in the next few decades. But a global agreement to cut those emissions still seems a dim hope. The BBC’s environment correspondent, Richard Black, joins us from the UN climate change conference in Durban. It’s not news to the delegates there, Richard, that the earth’s surface continues to warm up and that greenhouse gas pollution is likely the biggest culprit. I’m wondering though how much of a jolt this new analysis gives the proceedings there in Durban to actually break the gridlock and reach an agreement on cutting emissions.

Richard Black: Well, you’re absolutely right, it certainly isn’t news and it’s worth remembering that virtually all of the governments here are also fully signed up to the intergovernmental panel on climate change, which is something that’s been sounding the alarm on this since 1997. So basically, we had the car crash in Copenhagen a couple of years ago when all those massive expectations of a big global deal just fell off the table with a resounding crash. So part of what this is about is trying to implement some of the much smaller bits that were agreed in principle last year at the summit in Mexico, and then look at what’s possible in the years ahead.

Werman: So what are the key sticking points right now? Does it still come down to the same kind of place we’ve been for the last few years, the inability of the US and China, which are by far the largest greenhouse polluters, to commit to substantial cuts in their emissions?

Black: Yeah, it’s interesting. You’ve got lots of these big countries that have subtly different positions, so there’s no doubt, for example, that the US is now being joined by Canada. Canada sees itself, it wants to parallel the US as closely as it can, so both of them are unwilling to do anything looking up to 2020. China has got its own system, a five year plan. And then we have India, which over the last couple of years has been rather conciliatory, but this year has a new environment minister who’s being very hard line in saying that as a major developing country they shouldn’t really have to do very much. You’ve got the small island states and some of the least developed countries that are very worried about climate impacts, and they’re pushing for a lot of progress as soon as possible. And they’re largely backed by the European Union, which also wants to get cracking on talks for a new deal as soon as possible. And as you can see, Marco, there are very different visions of what the future ought to hold.

Werman: Now, the goal ultimately is an agreement on greenhouse gas emissions, but you’re saying the conference participants are kind of going to focus on smaller goals. Give us an example or two of those smaller goals and how that might lead the conference ultimately to a big agreement.

Black: Okay, so sure, so the one in which there’s probably most likelihood of actually finalizing something here is what’s called technology transfer. In the United Nations climate convention it’s acknowledged that developed countries should help poorer countries to develop cleanly. So one of the ways of doing this obviously is to transfer clean technology from rich countries where [inaudible 3:15] has been developed into the poorer countries. But there are issues there for example, over intellectual property. So how do you get an agreement there which satisfies everyone and you can actually start doing something on the ground? So that’s the kind of smaller agreement that may well be finalized here.

Werman: But you know, the real thing is to kind of get back to the ideas of the Kyoto Protocol, and that protocol expires next year. It’s the only truly global treaty right now on greenhouse gases. What happens then?

Black: Well, that’s a very good question and this is one of the things that’s brought urgency to the talks in the last couple of years. The protocol itself doesn’t expire. What expires are the commitments that a number of developed countries have made under it to reduce the greenhouse gas emission. So there’s a little concern around, particularly in developing countries, that if the EU and the other countries inside the Kyoto Protocol don’t make new pledges inside that protocol which kick in pretty soon, is the protocol a shell with no meaningful content even though it continues to exist? That’s the concern.

Werman: So if the Kyoto Protocol does become a shell as you say, and there is no agreement coming out of Durban, I mean it looks like the results in Durban could potentially be pretty dismal. I mean what is the bare minimum you expect to come out of this round of talks?

Black: Anything is possible and when you analyze what negotiators have been putting into the public domain, obviously they don’t give away everything at this stage. They probably don’t give away everything until the final night. But it could be a complete car crash. Equally, you could emerge with all these technical things from last year being tied up and you could end up with agreement of how to go forward, another try if you like, in reaching a global treaty. Anything across that spectrum is possible at the moment.

Werman: We’ll be checking back in through the week at the UN Climate Change Conference in Durban. The BBC’s Richard Black speaking with us from Durban, thanks so much.

Black: My pleasure.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

If you were to stand on the shore of this inland sea, you’d be at 1400 feet below sea level.

And this body of water is salty – nearly 10 times saltier than ocean water, so it’s sometimes called the Salt Sea.

Scientific divers had to carry special gears. The salty environment is toxic for humans and the divers had to wear full-face masks. They also had to carry huge amounts of lead to lower their buoyancy and to dive in this high density liquid. (Source: Christian Lott, Hydra Institute, Elba)

The high concentration of salt and minerals like magnesium make good ingredients in cosmetics, but the environment is very harsh. There’s no fish anywhere …Not even water lilies can survive in this sea.

But a team of divers was surprised to discover fresh water springs welling up from the bottom of this sea….

Then they found a diversity of microbial plants that seem to thrive in this extreme environments.

So can you name this inland see near Israel and Jordon?

We’ll talk with one of the marine scientists — when we reveal the answer here.

The answer to today’s Geo Quiz is the Dead Sea. It’s one of world’s saltiest bodies of water and until recently was believed to be too harsh to sustain any marine life. Marine biologist Danny Ionescu of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology tells anchor Marco Werman about his recent research revealing abundant microbial life and fresh water springs at the bottom of the Dead Sea.

Artist`s view of the springs system. (Source: Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology)

Video

Fishermen took advantage of the chaos to plunder the spawning grounds of the Atlantic bluefin tuna, off the Libyan coast.

Anchor Marco Werman speaks with the BBC’s environment correspondent, Richard Black.

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Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World, a coproduction of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston. Tuna may not be on the menu for much longer. Several species of tuna are classified as endangered, threatened or near threatened. The main factor driving the species dangerously close to extinction is over fishing. An international conference known as ICCAT is debating the issue today in Istanbul, and participants will hear about another contributing factor to the reduced tuna stocks this year, the conflict in Libya. Seems some tuna fisherman took advantage of the chaos there to illegally catch spawning tuna in Libyan waters. The BBC environment correspondent Richard Black is following the story.

Richard Black: The exact events off the Libyan coast aren’t entirely clear and perhaps they will become clear during the ICCAT meeting. But essentially there shouldn’t really have been any fishing for bluefin off the Libyan coast. All of the big tuna boats have to carry these beacons if you like, they’re called VMS systems, and they basically tell, they send out an electronic bleep every six hours saying hi, I’m here. And there’s a map of this which has been released by ICCAT, and that shows there was quite a lot of ship activity off the Libyan coast. So, you’ve got two possibilities, either some of the Libyan registered vessels were doing the fishing, which they shouldn’t have been because they weren’t complying, or someone else was doing the fishing there, which they certainly shouldn’t have been doing.

Werman: Right, so who was doing that fishing? In fact, a lot of Libyan boats were not trolling those waters off the coast during the war.

Black: That’s right, that’s what environmental groups tell us. They sort of maintain watches in the main tuna fishing ports, and they say the Libyan registered fleets weren’t there. Now, ICCAT I’m told will have that information to identify which vessels were there, but so far that information isn’t in the public domain, so we can’t say for sure who it was. There are strands of evidence leading towards Italy. There was a remarkably frank letter which was sent to environmental groups by a chap who has long experience in the tuna fishery. He’s worked in the industry for well, a couple of decades I think, judging by the terminology in his letter. And he sort of points the finger at a number of countries over the years, but Italy, specifically.

Werman: If a country like Italy is involved in this how might they be investigated, let alone prosecuted or punished?

Black: Well, one of the problems with this whole thing is that most of the inspection is done by the national authorities. So you have for the most part, you have for example, Italian authorities looking at Italian fishermen, and French authorities looking at French fishermen. And that’s been a very, very cozy relationship, there’s no doubt. A lot of these ports are actually quite small and you know, if the policemen went to school with the fishermen, you know, how do you think they’re gonna regulate? Not very well has been the answer coming back. So, basically, I think the European commission will take a very strong lead. They have a relatively new inspectorate to look at fishery abuses. And the commissioner in charge of fisheries for the European Union is very determined to try and stamp out this kind of thing. So I think her unit will definitely be looking very hard.

Werman: And, Richard, as far as Libya itself, there’s a new government there, but it is pretty weak. Is there any hope that the new government in Italy will be able to enforce their own fishing regulations any time soon? I mean dealing for 40 years with human rights and other issues like that, has there even been a consciousness in Libya of animals under threat of extinction?

Black: Yeah, I mean that’s a very interesting question. And I think the same situation probably occurs along that north African coast in other countries as well. Libya was relatively well developed. It had quite a strong presence in the waters mainly for defense purposes of course. Would it now have the capacity to regulate? Well, if you’re relying on sort of patrol boats and things, maybe not, but then all the boats as we said earlier, all the boats have the electronic systems, these electronic beacons, so it should be possible with a bit of international effort I think. And nowadays you know, satellites can be used as well. So I think the tools probably are there to do this internationally, provided everyone really wants to.

Werman: Richard Black, the BBC’s environment correspondent. Thanks very much for speaking with us.

Black: My pleasure.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Elena Gonzalez -- a geneticist at the Natural History Museum in Madrid -- is finding ways to tell different populations of fish apart. (Photo: FishPopTrace)

Inspector Felicísimo Perez Fraile makes sure that nothing is being sold here that shouldn’t be, like undersized fish or endangered species. When a fish comes in all chopped up with no head, scales or fins, it can be hard to know what he’s looking at, but he can confirm what kind of fish it is by sending a sample off to the lab.

But is there any way to tell where the fish comes from – which sea? He shakes his head. For now, he says, that’s impossible.

It’s an important question because certain species are overfished in some places and sustainably caught in others. It’s hard for regulators to protect endangered populations when labels can be faked and the fish look the same.

So, in 2008, the European Union launched a program called FishPopTrace, which looks to science for an answer.

The 15 FishPopTrace labs are spread across Europe. One of them is just on the other side of town, at the Complutense University of Madrid.

The spots on this image are fish proteins visualized using a laboratory technique. (Photo: Elena Gonzalez)

Elena Gonzalez, a geneticist who did her PhD research at the university, has extracted proteins from the livers, brains, muscles and hearts of four commercial fish species found in European waters: hake, cod, sole and herring.

Gonzalez shows me the results of her research on a computer screen. A dark square is filled with glowing lights.

“It’s like stars in the sky,” she explains, describing the image. “It’s full of spots of different colors – green and yellow and red.”

Those spots represent fish proteins, visualized using a laboratory technique. The proteins come from the brains of two different hake – one from the Bay of Biscay, to the north of Spain, and one from the Mediterranean, to the south. A red or green spot means that one fish brain has more of a particular protein than the other.

So with just a glance, it’s possible to see that these two hake, although they belong to the same species, have different amounts of proteins depending on where they live, depending on which population they belong to.

These tools “are now able to identify the origin of a given fish,” says Complutense University biologist José Bautista.

Other labs in the FishPopTrace program developed additional forensic techniques to tell fish populations apart. Some used very small differences in DNA. Others looked at the chemistry and shape of ear bones.

The result is an array of techniques that can distinguish one population of fish from another – sustainably harvested fish from illegally caught fish.

Jann Martinsohn, a scientist with the European Commission’s Maritime Affairs Unit, says the research phase of FishPopTrace, which ended this summer, was just the first step.

“What we really aimed at is to develop tools which can readily be taken up to fight and support the fight against illegal fishing, which has a rather significant dimension worldwide,” he says.

Martinson says the next step is to develop strict guidelines for laboratories, so the techniques can be used in criminal investigations. He hopes that by integrating science and enforcement, it will be possible to reduce the illegal fishing of endangered populations of fish.

Lars Olave Lie, manager of the Lie Group Fishing Company in Norway, says he supports this forensic approach to ensuring that all fishermen follow the rules.

“You can lie about the paper label on the package. That can be changed,” he says. “But you can’t lie about the genetic testing.”

Lie’s family has been fishing the waters off Norway for 120 years. He says he’s in favor of whatever can be done to keep the fishery healthy, so his family can stay in the business for the next 120 years.

This city is the capital of the north-central state that bears the same name.

The city was founded by the British in the early 20th century.

Both Muslims and Christians coexist there.

Though there have been serious religious tensions, especially after the implementation of Sharia law in 2001.

There are some serious environmental issues there as well.

Because drinking tap water is not safe in Nigeria, people consume a lot of bottled water and that creates *a lot* of trash.

Making bricks for the unusual buildings (Photo: Sam Olukoya/BBC)

In fact, they’re building homes a few miles outside the Nigerian city we’re looking for.

What’s its name?

The answer is Kaduna, in northern Nigeria.

And just outside of Kaduna, you’ll find the village of Yelwa.

That village is now the site of Nigeria’s first-ever house built from recycled plastic bottles.

It’s a one bedroom set-up with all the comforts of home.

It required 8,000 bottles, and built in the round style of traditional Northern Nigerian houses.

The BBC’s Sam Olukoya saw it for himself.

Nigeria house made of plastic bottles (Photo: Sam Olukoya/BBC)

The $3.6 billion Chinese-backed Myitsone Dam would harness the flow of Burma’s major waterway, the Irrawaddy River.

Opponents of the project, including pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, said it would displace thousands of people and damage the environment.

Anchor Marco Werman speaks with Tin Htar Swe of the BBC’s Burmese service about what is behind this unusual move by the Burmese government.

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Marco Werman: A very different kind of energy project is in the news today. In Burma, the government of the country also known as Myanmar announced it was halting construction of a major hydroelectric dam. The Chinese-backed dam would harness the flow of Burma’ s major waterway, the Irrawaddy River. Opponents of the project, including pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, said it would displace thousands of people and damage the environment. Tin Htar Swe is with the BBC’ s Burmese Service, and the Burmese government isn’t exactly known for backing down from decisions Tin Htar Swe, yet this time it has, with the country’s President saying, “We have to respect the will of the people as our government is elected by the people.” What is going on here?

Tin Htar Swe: The government is a new government. The elections were held 6 months ago and this is the first time that the government is responding to the concerns shared by the public including Aung San Suu Kyi.

Werman: So a big change of heart. And it has to be clarified that this is a new, as you said, new civilian government in Burma. How vocal and how widespread was the opposition to the dam?

Swe: It was unprecedented. It was started off by the Kachin people who are directly affected by the project and then gradually it spread to other people, the people in exile, even people who are not interested in politics. There are academics; there are scholars; there are social activists and also environmentalists.

Werman: How far along was the construction project on this dam?

Swe: The project started a few years ago, so they are stopping in the middle of the construction. One of the reasons that the construction has been halted is that it is the area belonging to Kachin people. The Kachin rebel army is controlling the supply lines, supply routes to the dam. So construction material cannot be delivered to the construction site. So there is an issue there now.

Werman: So that sounds like a very important factor, perhaps, in the President’s decision to stop construction on the dam project?

Swe: The government has to try and balance – not to upset the Chinese and also not to stage another military operation on the Kachin rebels. If they stage another military operation, then a number of Kachin villagers will flee in to China. This is something the Chinese government are very particular about – stability along the border.

Werman: What will the Chinese do now? They have invested, as you say, a lot in this dam project. Do they just pack up their gear and go home?

Swe: This is one of the many projects. There are 6 dams’ projects that the Burmese government is in agreement with the Chinese. So this is only one of the projects [laughs].

Werman: Right.

Swe: But the other projects are much smaller projects, of course.

Werman: I would imagine that a lot of the opposition to the dam had to do with the fact that it’s on the Irrawaddy River. I mean, that river seems to have almost mythic meaning for the people of Burma. Tell us why that is.

Swe: Irrawaddy is like Mississippi to Americans. It is very important for Burmese people. This is a massive river. It is beautiful. And also, a lot of livelihood is along the river. A lot of poems are written about Irrawaddy River. A lot of fictions and movies are about Irrawaddy. So, Irrawaddy is a part of every Burmese people’s life.

Werman: Tin Htar Swe with the BBC’ s Burmese Service, thanks so much for speaking with us.

Swe: Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

In the agricultural belt of southeastern Australia, an area called the Murray-Darling Basin, farmers and ranchers are up in arms about a government plan to dramatically cut their water use. The plan comes after a 12-year drought and decades of river diversions took a huge toll on the environment.

But head almost a thousand miles to the north and it’s a very different story. In rural Queensland, farmers never had much access to water. And many seem happy to keep it that way.

Cattle rancher Angus Emmott, 48, has lived in the interior of northeast Australia his whole life. His closest neighbor is some 10 miles away. I asked him what he does if he needs to borrow some milk or sugar. His answer: “Well, we milk our own cow.”

It’s not just the solitude that makes this life challenging. The climate isn’t exactly cooperative either.

(Map: Wilderness Society)

“We get an average of 12 inches of rain a year, but that’s a bit of a misnomer, calling it an average, because some years we get as low as one inch,” said Emmott. “Other years, we just had 40 inches. You do get an average in the long run, I guess, but it’s very, very irregular.”

Creeks and rivers do run through this area. But in dry years, they’re channels of dust. And scientists say the dry years could become even more severe with climate change.

Emmott and other ranchers could build dams and store water for the lean years; that’s what they do in the rich agricultural areas 1,000 miles to the south. And that would make life a heckuva a lot easier. But Emmott doesn’t want to do that.

“These rivers out here, well the rivers across northern Australia, are in relatively good condition. And because these rivers are in great shape, we have the opportunity to actually be a little smart how we develop this country,” said Emmott. “We can actually make sure that we don’t damage the attributes to these rivers that make them so important.”

(Photo: Angus Emmott)

“It’s a pretty simple equation in the Australian Outback: the limiting factor on growth is almost always water,” said wildlife biologist Barry Traill with the Pew Environment Group. He took me on a drive through the Outback and explained how this area gets its scarce water. It’s a boom and bust cycle. Ranchers and nature rely on floods that originate 500 miles north in tropical Australia.

“The floods will come through and they’ll keep going for 500 or 800 miles south of us, and they’ll go into country, which has had, in many cases, no rain, no effective rain, for years,” said Traill. “You get these lush green flood plains, several kilometers wide, iridescent green floods plains, going thru these harsh, red sand dune desert. It’s an extraordinary contrast.”

Traill has been working with ranchers like Angus Emmott to protect this system and prevent the damming of these rivers. A coalition of ranchers and conservationists got a law passed by the State of Queensland in 2005 to permanently safeguard these waterways. But each river has to qualify on a registry first, one by one, to get protection.

Conservationists know they’re racing against the clock. According to government projections, Australia’s population could grow by more than 50 percent by mid-century.

Barry Traill (Photo: Jason Margolis)

“Ten years ago we got a taste of what could happen here,” said Traill. “There was a proposal to put in a very large cotton irrigation farm, but that was, fortunately, I think, very strongly opposed by local people.”

Traill says large-scale irrigation could’ve destroyed the delicate ecosystem here. That’s why it’s so important to get the rivers protected soon.

But not everybody here is happy about more regulation.

“It costs you more to actually get the paperwork done than it does to do the job,” said rancher Sam Coxon. His family has been grazing sheep in the interior of Queensland since his great-great grandfather walked 1200 miles here from southern Australia (Victoria) with his herd of sheep in 1887.

Coxon looks every bit the part of outback rancher, his cowboy hat pulled low over his blistered red skin. Coxon said he knows how to care for his land, and that includes needing to irrigate crops. “These small areas of irrigation, they’re to prevent more damage to this environment by weeds. We are about the environment. Without a good environment, we haven’t got a living,” said Coxon.

Coxon’s existing irrigation rights won’t be affected by any new regulations. And he can still buy more water on the free market. Still, he argued that if the river near him is protected, they’re essentially being legislated into forever remaining a dusty outpost. “Look, I mean, it’s the way the world is going. We’re becoming a nanny state,” said Coxon.

Sam Coxon (Photo: Jason Margolis)

“Regularly we get people from around the area who will all come down here and have a barbeque and sit around, watch the sunset and catch up with each other. We haven’t got the roar of traffic in the background. I don’t know, there’s just something about being out in the real bush,” said Emmott as he surveyed the scene with a contented smile.

But the ‘real bush’ as Emmott knows it is threatened. As climate patterns shift and Australia’s population grows, that ever-so precious resource – water – will undoubtedly become even more coveted.

UPDATE: The Queensland government announced the permanent protection of three rivers in western Queensland in December, 2011. Environmental groups say this will protect 10 million acres.

Prospectors in Israel say hundreds of feet below the ground lies shale rock that can be converted into billions of barrels of oil. But environmentalists say it’s a disaster waiting to happen.

“This is the distinct smell I’m talking about when I talk about oil shale.”

So says Texan oil man, Scott Nguyen, as he sniffs a handful of rock fragments – not back in Houston where he used to work for Shell – but in the lush Valley of Elah in central Israel, about 50km (30 miles) from Jerusalem.

Mr Nguyen wants to prove that oil and gas can be extracted cleanly from Israel’s underground shale, using a technology that heats the earth to more than 300C.

The project could be lucrative. The World Energy Council estimates Israel is sitting on enough shale to produce around four billion barrels of oil, enough at today’s usage to keep the country in oil for more than 40 years.

Mr Nguyen claims there is much more. That’s why he and his colleagues at Israel Energy Initiatives, based in Jerusalem, are lugging rigs around the valley, carrying out prospective drilling.

Shale has been exploited in small quantities in Israel before, but only in a surface-mining operation which generated electricity for local use.

An Historic Quest

The eager search for home-grown energy in Israel is nothing new.

In recent years, big natural gas deposits were discovered off the coast, but the country still imports much of its gas from its neighbour to the south, Egypt. That supply is precarious. This year it was interrupted by a string of attacks on gas pipelines running through the Sinai desert. And concerns remain about future relations with Cairo, after the fall of Hosni Mubarak – an early victim of the Arab Spring.

In terms of oil, Israel imports nearly all it uses – about 100 million barrels a year – mainly from Russia and the former Soviet republics. Those imports were curbed in 2006, during the war with Hezbollah, prompting the Wall Street Journal to say Israel was “perilously close to running out of fuel”.

But despite this hunger for locally produced energy, support for Nguyen and his team is not universal. Some local residents, environmentalists and politicians, are harshly critical.

Back in the US, which has vast shale deposits, drilling was halted in Colorado because the so-called “fracking” method of pumping chemicals into the earth to produce the oil, raised concerns about possible effects on drinking water.

Area Licensed To Israel Energy Initiatives For Drilling

Similar issues are being debated in Israel, where Rachel Jacobson is active in a local committee opposed to Mr Nguyen’s project.* “It’s really one big experiment,” she says, “a foreign company saying we want to make you wealthy. What you are really doing is trying to pull a fast one on us.”

Jacobson’s concern is, in part, because the drilling area is also the site of a vital and politically sensitive water aquifer shared by both Israel and Palestinian areas of the West Bank.

Mr Nguyen and his team try to calm these fears. In town hall meetings, company representatives tell residents that an impermeable layer separates the shale from the aquifer below. The method of extracting the oil, by heating up the shale, won’t have any impact on the aquifer, the company insists.

That doesn’t mollify area resident, Meirav Oren. “The company will come in and give really honorable statements like, well, if anything goes wrong we will stop. No-one is asking how will you stop.”

Experts seem to disagree on the potential dangers to water supplies of the extraction process. “It sounds scary heating this rock up like this” says John Corben, a senior adviser to the International Energy Agency, “but effects on layers close by are usually not large.”

But Mihkel Harm from the World Energy Council says, “the process is hard to control and it might pose a risk for groundwater”.

Mr Nguyen’s company claims Israel may turn out to have oil deposits comparable to Saudi Arabia, which sits on an estimated 260 billion barrels. Corben says it may not be a fair comparison. He says in Saudi Arabia “oil is actually oil” whereas in Israel a lot of money needs to be spent heating the rock and recovering the oil. And there’s a long way to go before the company proves its technology will work, and before it gets all the necessary government permits.

Mr Nguyen’s forecast for commercial oil production is 2018 or later. “Still, ” says Mr Corben “if it is even 4 or 5 billion barrels, that would be an awful lot of oil for a country the size of Israel”.

Additional reporting by Rob Hugh-Jones

*A previous version of this report incorrectly suggested Rachel Jacobson started the Save Adullam group. Instead, Jacobson is active in the group. We regret the error.

by Ashley Ahearn

Imagine yourself for a moment on the slopes of Washington’s Mt. Rainier, near Puget Sound, one of the highest peaks in the western United States. “We are on the hike to Comet Falls in Mount Rainier national park. We’re looking at a number of cascades that are rushing down a rock canyon and we’re sitting over a wood trail bridge” says Tom Uniack who doesn’t have to imagine it.

As conservation director of the Washington Wilderness Coalition he comes here often. Mt. Rainier National Park is one of the natural jewels of the northwest. And it seems utterly untouched by the changes that have rippled across the US in the years since 9/11. But a bill now pending in Congress could change that.

HR1505, as the bill is called, would allow the Department of Homeland Security to build roads, transmission lines, and security installations on any federally owned land within 100 miles of the US coast or border.

Tom Uniak says that includes national Forests, wilderness areas and National Parks like this one. “The bill is written in a way that all these things, potentially, if seen as part of the national interest or national security, could apply and laws could be exempted.”

Altogether, the bill would allow DHS to override 36 environmental and other laws on these federal lands in the interest of border security, including such bedrock laws as the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act.

The idea gives some environmentalists night sweats. But supporters say it just makes sense.

Representative Rob Bishop is the Utah Republican who introduced HR1505: “Wilderness designation in no way should trump border security.” Bishop says current law allows federal land managers to “bully” the US border patrol on public lands. “They can do what they need to do on private property, it’s only on public property that they’re restricted and that is ridiculous. That’s simply asinine.”

US-Canada Border Crossing North of Eureka, MT (Photo: Raymond Hitchcock/Flickr)

“To my belief it’s because 80 percent of the Arizona border with Mexico is federal property, over half of that is wilderness designation, Endangered Species habitat, conservation habitat where the border patrol is limited to the kind of access they have and what they can do,” says Bishop

But opponents of HR1505 say the bill would give unprecedented authority to a single federal agency to ignore environmental laws. Jane Danowitz, of the Pew Environmental Trust in Washington, DC, says there’s a lot more at stake than just the Arizona desert or Mt. Rainier. A huge amount of public land would fall under the bill’s scope.

“We’re talking about some of the nation’s most popular national parks and beaches. Glacier National Park, the Florida everglades, beaches along Cape Cod, the great lakes and the California coastline.” Danowitz says the bill is overkill.

“After 9/11 national security for all the right reasons jumped to the top of America’s priorities but the sweeping waiver of our bedrock environmental laws has little to do with accomplishing that goal.”

What it does have to do with, Danowitz asserts, is a rising anti-environmental movement in Congress. “There’s going to be a lot of things happening this fall in Congress that are under the radar. There are more than 70 provisions that would undo longstanding protections for clean air, clean water, wilderness, endangered species.”

Regardless of the intentions of its sponsors, it’s not just environmentalists who oppose this bill. The very agency that supporters say will benefit the most from HR1505 – Customs and Border Protection – doesn’t want the power it would be given.

When asked about a testimony in July in which the Customs and Border Protection* said it opposes 1505, Congressman Bishop replied: “I will tell you right now privately, when I talk to people who are current Border Patrol personnel as well as those who are retired Border Patrol, they have a different story than this current administration has.”

Along with Representative Bishop, HR1505 has 48 co-sponsors in the House, all Republicans. The bill, which is officially titled the National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act, will begin working its way through the House early this fall.

Ashley Ahearn reports for EarthFix, a public media project that explores the environment of the Pacific Northwest.

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MARCO WERMAN: Hi, I’m Marco Werman, this is The World. The origin of life on Earth is a mystery that’s captivated people for thousands of years. Scientists and theologians still debate how life began, but the answer to where and when it began might be a little clearer today. A team of Australian and British researchers say they’ve identified the oldest fossils ever found, almost 3.5 billion years old. These creatures, if that’s what they were, didn’t have bones or leaves, but what they did have was microscopic structures that the researchers say look and acted a lot like some of today’s bacteria. Here with more on the story is The World’s environment editor, Peter Thompson. Peter, what do these researchers actually claim to have found and where did they find it?

PETER THOMPSON: Well, they actually haven’t found anything new. What they have done is they’ve used new technologies to take a closer look at a set of intriguing microscopic dots that were found years ago in a remote part of Australia. Scientists generally agree that the rock formations there are roughly 3.4 billion years old. Now, these researchers say they found three clear lines of evidence that the tiny structures in the rock are biological in origin. That means they’re the remnants of living creatures. If they’re right, those could be the oldest ever found.

WERMAN: Right, so that would be good. What’s the evidence that the fossils are biological in origin?

THOMPSON: Well, they say one is just their size and shape. The researchers say the dots have cell-like structures that look like much more recent fossil bacteria. The second is that they’re clustered in groups as bacteria tend to do, and those clusters appear in places where you’d expect to find bacteria. But the researchers say the most important sign that these things were once alive is that they have chemical tell-tale signs of biological activity. They say they found crystals of a mineral called pyrite, which is a byproduct of the metabolism of sulfur, and that’s what many scientists think some of the earliest life forms lived on.

WERMAN: So we’re looking way back in time here, 3.5 billion years ago, and I would imagine that this has been a very controversial area of science. What are other scientists saying about these findings? Are these researchers on to something?

THOMPSON: The report describing what these fossils were and how they lived just came out yesterday, and it being August, it seems there hasn’t been a lot of opportunity for others to read it and respond. It was published in the journal, Nature Geoscience, which is a very well-respected journal, but interestingly, the editors there were not willing to accept the claim that these are the oldest known fossils. They asked the authors to cut that out of the article, but the claim has been made by at least one of the authors through his home base, which is the University of Oxford in the UK. That same author has been involved in a very public debate with other researchers who previously claim some slightly older formations in another part of Australia were actually the oldest direct evidence of life. In fact, some researchers say there’s even older indirect evidence of life in Greenland in some rocks there that are at least 3.75 billion years old. So there are competing claims, and we’re looking into a very, very, very deep history of Earth, so this is almost certain not to be the last word, but it still could be a very significant finding.

WERMAN: So if the claim that this is the oldest fossil ever, why would this discovery be so important?

THOMPSON: Nearly all life on Earth, today anyway, needs free oxygen to survive, but it seems from lots of other evidence that the earliest life on Earth evolved before there was much oxygen, if any, to be had. The question has always been how did those earliest organisms survive, and this could help answer that question. These things, if they were in fact organisms, lived on sulfur. Also, if it’s proven that early life here ate sulfur instead of oxygen, some believe that it could raise the likelihood of primitive life outside of Earth. Researchers have found a number of places where there’s little oxygen but lots of kinds of conditions like those found in the very early days of life’s history.

WERMAN: The World’s Peter Thompson, thanks a lot.

THOMPSON: Thank you, Marco.

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(Graphic courtesy: Australian Bureau of Meterology)

By Phil Mercer

An authoritative new Australian government report was meant to bring an end to years of fractious and, at times, menacing debate over climate change and ease the way for approval of the new tax on big carbon polluters. But in a country that emits more greenhouse gas pollution per person than almost any other, it seems that the issue remains as polarizing as ever.

Like the U.S., Australia is home to influential naysayers who argue that the impact of greenhouse gas emissions on the global climate is negligible. Among their ranks are farmers and energy companies, some academics and right-wing politicians, as well as influential radio hosts who use selective bits of scientific data to cast doubt on the scientific consensus on climate change.

An avalanche of scientific reports over the years has repeatedly warned that humans are largely responsible for climate change, and that if left unchecked, Australia will be hit hard. With the debate still raging, the Australian government’s Climate Commission hoped to finally settle the issue with its most recent scientific report, The Critical Decade—Climate Science, Risks and Responses.

Released last month, the document warned that time was running out to limit costly impacts from climate change. Its authors blamed sections of the Australian media for confusing its audience and creating a fruitless, phoney debate, by pandering to the skeptics.

Chief climate commissioner Tim Flannery said the report was written for the small minority of Australians who don’t already agree that man-made climate change must be addressed. Among other things, it forecasts more severe floods and tropical storms, as well as threats to Australia’s heavily-populated coastline from rising sea levels.

But the report has hardly cooled the debate. In recent weeks, Climate scientists have received deaths threats. And on the streets of Sydney, Australia’s largest city, opinions on a recent day seemed as mixed as ever.

“I think it is urgent,” one man said. “I think we should do everything possible to ameliorate man’s influence on the environment.”

Another passer-by acknowledged that the climate is changing, but that’s where the agreement ended—humans are definitely not responsible, she said. “If you want me to say it is changing because of carbon and all that stuff, I’d have to say no sorry, no go there.”

(Graphic courtesy: Australian Bureau of Meteorology)

Along with scientists, the government has also enlisted some of Australia’s leading figures to garner public support for the move. Its supposed environmental and economic benefits have been praised in a TV advert featuring the Australian actress Cate Blanchett alongside ordinary Australians, calling for their countrymen to “say yes to making big companies pay when they pollute… yes to better health for our kids… and finally doing something about climate change.”

But Blanchett’s support has only drawn ridicule from Australia’s conservatives. Opposition leader Tony Abbott has questioned the veracity of climate science, and he recently made hay in Parliament by criticising celebrities like Blanchett who live in “eco mansions” and seem to think their voices should be heard “ahead of the voice of the ordinary working people of this country.”

Abbott and others in the opposition say the climate issue is all about jobs, and that a carbon tax will put thousands of Australians out of work. For its part, the Labor-led coalition government said the proposal will actually benefit the country’s economy while reducing the risk to hundreds of billions of dollars of property.

The government had hoped to settle on the final details of a carbon tax by the end of June, but gruelling negotiations are dragging on as support for the plan seems to be falling.

Meanwhile, the battle for hearts and minds rages on. With critics apparently not persuaded by appeals to science and economics, a group of Australian climate scientists recently resorted to hip-hop, making an irreverent rap video defending their work and poking fun at right-wing politicians and skeptics.

The video begins with TV clips of various climate skeptics each proclaiming, “I’m not a climate scientist,” which gives way to a chorus of young men and women in glasses and white lab coats proclaiming “Yo! We’re climate scientists, and there’s no denying this! Climate change is real!”

To a throbbing hip-hop beat, the song goes on to rhyme “what we speak is true” with “our work is peer reviewed.”

If the video doesn’t win over sceptical Australians, perhaps nothing will.

The claim highlighted public fears in South Korea about pollution caused by US military forces stationed there.
There’s an old covered market in the small city Waegwan, about 135 miles south of Seoul, where the base is located. You can buy fruits and vegetables all grown on local farms.

One of the market’s vendors, 54-year-old Ms. Ba, helps her customers pick through the piles of watermelons, tomatoes and pears. She said the most famous fruit from the region is chamae, a type of small yellow melon.

But ever since news about possible Agent Orange contamination came out in May, she said not many people are buying them.

“Customers don’t want to eat chamae because they know they come from here,” Ba said. “Sales are about half of what they were before.”

But 42-year-old Seok Seong-Bong doesn’t seem too worried. He was leaving the market carrying bags of fruits and vegetables.

“I don’t believe the farms where these are grown have been polluted, even if there is contamination on the Camp Carroll base, Seok said. “I don’t think the quality of the produce here has been affected at all.”

Seok said he thinks the Korean media has over exaggerated the health risks posed to locals here.

But the South Korean government is taking the news seriously. The Defense Ministry said it will investigate dozens of former US military facilities to check for toxic defoliants in the soil. And groundwater samples have already been taken near the DMZ, where Agent Orange was used back in the sixties.

Environmental contamination caused by the United States Forces Korea, USFK, is nothing new, said activist Jung In-chul of Korea Green United.

“In the past 20 years we’ve seen 47 cases of environmental problems near US bases,” Jung said. “The most serious incident was in 2000 when they dumped formaldehyde into the Han River in Seoul.”

The US military’s Yongsan Garrison, where that incident took place, is one of 26 American camps slated for return to South Korea by 2018.

Environmentalists want those facilities handed back in their natural state and want the US to cover all the clean-up costs.
But according to the US-Republic of Korea Status of Forces Agreement, or SOFA, the treaty that governs how the military operates here, the US is not obliged to do either.

Activist Jung In-chul wants the SOFA re-negotiated.

“SOFA only allows the US military to determine what constitutes a serious threat to human health. The South Korean government has no say and is given no estimate of what the clean-up costs of those bases will be, and for those reasons this agreement is unfair to Korea,” Jung said.

Scott Snyder, director of the Center for US-Korea Policy at the Asia Foundation in Washington said no status of forces agreement is perfect.

But trying to re-negotiate this one over a single issue, regardless of what that issue is, would lead many other nations to push for their own alterations.

And, Snyder said in the case of Korea, it’s not the SOFA that is the main problem, it’s the US military’s own policies.

“The US military has set its own global standard for what constitutes acceptable management of environmental issues and that standard today falls below standards set by Korean law,” he said.

What also irks some South Koreans these days is that they don’t see the United States as protecting them from North Korea anymore.

Shin Chang Hoon is director of International Law and Conflict Resolution at the Asan Institute in Seoul. He said Koreans are much more concerned with quality of life issues today.

“I think people’s interests have shifted from security to environmental welfare,” he said. “So sometimes, environmental issues and welfare issues may affect political relations (with the US).”

Shin added, if the US wants to keep good political relations with South Korea, Washington should make some sort of gesture to the Korean public whether or not the current investigation finds that Agent Orange was buried at the base.
But outside Camp Carroll, it seems protestors have already made up their minds.

Banners call on the US to tell the truth and compensate the citizens for the damage they’ve caused.

“This is no different than working in a start-up in Silicon Valley,” said Ani Vallabhaneni, a member of a multi-disciplinary team from MIT that is heading to Kenya and launching the company “Sanergy” – a contraction of sanitation and energy. “Initially, yes, the salaries aren’t market rate. But you take what you need to live, right? So, in terms of student loans, rent, food and beer.”

Vallabhaneni and his team developed a business plan for turning a public health crisis into an economic opportunity. Some 2.6 billion people in the world lack basic sanitation, according to the World Health Organization, and the MIT students think they can help change that.

Some pretty important people agree: The team won the MIT 100k Entrepreneurship Business Plan Contest, a highly prestigious annual competition that brings together students from business, engineering, and architecture.

Vallabhaneni said the idea for a company was hatched when he and fellow MIT students studied sanitation conditions in places like Kenya. In parts of Nairobi, for instance, many people defecate in plastic bags, then throw the bags on the street. Others pay 6 cents to use makeshift bathrooms.

“Typically they’re just holes in the ground with plastic sheeting around,” Vallabhaneni said. “What that shows you in terms of the fact that they’re paying to use unhygienic pit toilets is that there’s a big value for privacy and dignity.”

The Sanergy team thinks people will pay that same 6 cents to use Sanergy toilets, essentially modified porta potties. They’re far from glamorous, but a huge step up from current conditions.

It will cost Sanergy about $200 to build each toilet. They’ll then turn around and sell it to a Nairobi resident for $400. At 6 cents a visit, Sanergy projects the new small business owner – essentially a franchisee – can make back his or her investment in about four months.

Then What?

But that’s just the start of the business model.

“You build a toilet and then what? It fills up, and then what? Right? There’s no way to actually treat and dispose of the waste,” said Vallabhaneni “You actually need to build out the entire sanitation value chain to effectively tackle this problem.”

It’s that phrase—“the sanitation value chain”—that perhaps sums up the inspiration behind the new company. Where others see a problem, the students behind Sanergy see a resource.

“The Sanergy employees each day would collect the waste from each toilet and bring it to a central location,” explained Linsday Stradley, another member of the Sanergy Team and a recent graduate from the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Sanergy Overview from Ani Vallabhaneni on Vimeo.

The company will charge the franchisee, $6.25 a month to take the waste to a processing facility.

“Which then leads to the third part, which is conversion,” said Stradley. “So converting that waste into electricity and fertilizer that we can sell and generate the revenue for the business as a whole.”

And this is where the company believes there’s real money to be made.

Part of the waste can be converted into biogas – essentially methane – which can then be burned to generate electricity, a practice that’s currently done in parts of Europe. Some of the waste can also be converted into fertilizer. Both are badly needed resources in this part of the world.

There’s no great technological breakthrough in any of this. Instead, it was the combination of a solid business plan with solutions to numerous development problems at once that impressed the MIT judges, people who know a thing or two about what makes for a successful start-up. The contest has helped launch more than 150 companies, since the competition began in 1989, now worth some $16 billion dollars collectively.

But this is only the second time a company with a true social mission was chosen as the winner.

“We didn’t give the prize because these guys are doing something great for the world, or better for the world, than the other guys,” said Tim Rowe, a judge this year. He founded the Cambridge Innovation Center, a business incubator, across the street from MIT.

“That wasn’t our challenge as judges. Our challenge was to look at each of these as a stand-alone business and say: ‘What has the biggest chance of significant success?’ The fact that they are making money at this is what makes it likely to succeed,” said Rowe.

The Market

Rule number one in business: make money.

Conquering a problem that governments and charities have failed to solve won’t be easy. But Rowe believes that the market can stand up where other solutions have failed.

“It’s not like the old-fashioned, ‘Hey we’re going to try and give wheat to starving people in Africa.’ That works this year, but then what about next year? It doesn’t make the system work,” said Rowe.

The MIT students get this.

“One of the key things about doing development through a market-based solution vs. an aid-based solution is that we respond to the market. So if the consumers are not purchasing our product, they’re not using our product, we change. Because at the end of the day, if we don’t have profits, we don’t have a business,” said Vallabhaneni

And the students have already conquered business rule number two: Get money to make money. They have $100,000, courtesy of MIT, to get their project going.

Vallabhaneni and Stradley say they hope the innovation prize will prime the pump for other investor funding for their start-up.

For now, their plan is to work on building up their sanitation business in Kenya for the next 12 to 18 months. If it works, they hope to expand Sanergy throughout sub-Saharan Africa and India.