Tauranga a reminder of Environmental Sensitivity

11 October, Tauranga, New Zealand.

One medium size contain ship + one small reef = "The Worst Environmental Disaster in New Zealand's History".

For a quick look at the amount of oil that has esaped, check out this nice graphical comparison from Greenpeace:

Rena-oil-spill/Oil-spill-volumes

It is obviously not so much the amount of oil that has excaped, about where it went.... some our most sceenic and treasured costal areas in Bay of Plenty and Corramandel. The estimated 2 million litres of oil has travelled far in rough conditions and a month the clean up is far from over. Much critisism has been handed to Maritime New Zealand at their slow speed to respond, missing clear weather and then being prevented from action by heavy seas. The victim of this slow response is the bird, costal and marine life, with thousands of aminals dead.

This is a clear call that we need environmental protection and capacity to deal the effects from environmental disasters like this. Resillience comes from planning, management and action. The only thing preventing this disaster from being a 500 year scar on our beautiful costal land now is the actions of DOC, Maritime New Zealand and the hundred of volunteers. 

Anatomy of the Australia Carbon Tax

Hats off to Australia for surviving the politics and finishing with a robust progressive looking carbon management strategy. For a good solid overview of changes this means for the Australian economy and carbon footprint, check this blog published by Carbon Monitor.  

Capital gained from a tax is being feed back into industries at risk, low income families and clean energy initiatives. Now why did New Zealand not think of that???

CarbonForest 2011

What a week, just got back from Carbon Forest 2011 where EnviroManage presented CO2Forest to 300+ people for the first time. The conference was in Auckland over 2 days and attracted delegates from all over the world, mostly talking about the forestry perspective of the NZ Emission Trading Scheme, but also touching on voluntary forestry carbon credit schemes (REDD, VCS, etc.) and a few other non-compliance related topics. All the talks were related to the role forests will play in the carbon constrained future. It was clear that New Zealand has had a long history of sustainable forest management and is in a prime position to be key player in exporting standards and technolologies in this area for other nations.

EnviroManage was proud to be a sponsor and speaker at this event, the first of its kind in the southern hemisphere, and possibly the world(?).  Our presentation on CO2Forest (600kB) was an overview of our carbon forest solution that provides a common software platform for implementing not just NZ ETS but other emerging voluntary standards, with the aim to help reduce compliance costs and create new carbon forest opportunities.  

A summary of some of the key observations from the event:

1) that the NZ ETS compliance market is crowded with advisors, banks and traders thinking this is another commodity they can exploit.

2) that NZ is a nation largely covered in plantation forest but only capable of offsetting about 15% of our annual transport and agriculture emissions. Post 1990 plantation forest represents about 3% of the total NZ carbon stock and is the primary source of credits for the NZ ETS. Easy 'free' money as viewed by the big forestry companies. 

3) that the NZ ETS is very successful in creating credits for the government (8.3 million units) with little effect on the nations GHG emissions (dropped 3% since 2008 due to the slowdown of the economy).

4) the price of NZ ETS is likely to remain depressed for some time. Reason is that as supply (forestry = 8.3 million NZU) must sell in NZ and currently outstrips demand which is smaller in size (at 5.3 Million NZU) and can shop for credits offshore in any Kyoto compliance market. 

5) the ETS forestry market has peaked (with about 100 offsetters and 200 forestry suppliers) with the next big ticket items being the growth voluntary carbon forest market (including indigenous forests owned by Maori) and a merger of the Australian and NZ ETS in 2015. 

Bill Gates at TED - Innovating to Zero

If you have not already seen it, then Bill Gates on how the world can get to zero emissions is a TED worth viewing. While usually known for his work in humanities, the Gates foundation main concern is Climate Change, having now overtaken other factor as the greatest risk to people's wellbeing:  

"Energy and climate are more important to the poorest people in the world than anything else. The climate getting worst, means in many areas crops wont grow. Too much rain, not enough rain. Things will change in ways that their fragile environment simply cannot support"

Gates revisits the Human Induced Cliamte Change equation, identifying that energy is the only real factor we should be concentrating on. In summary:

CO2 = P * S * E * C

The amount of human induced carbon into the atmosphere can be considered as a product of Number of People * Number of Services per person * Amount of Energy needed per Service * Carbon per unit of Energy. Needless to say we can't do much about P, S or E without considerable human suffering, however the C is in our control. Transforming our energy generation is therefore key to the future stabiliy of our planet. 

It does ignore the emissions from agriculture, NZ largest single source of methane greenhouse gas, but this is effectively very small (<1%) of world wide emissions. Overall the approach does make sense, but relying on this 'new' source of nuclear energy that is >100 times more efficient than fossil fuel appears to be a long shot. It should not discount all the efforts people and economies are taking now, although perhaps marginal by comparison. Here is hoping at least one of the technologies he mentions does take off...

Collection points of imbalance

On the balance of things you could be forgiven for thinking that the state of Planet Earth is pretty good. We appear to be happily supporting some 6,973,506,710 people every day, although this number is increasing by the second... check out worldMeters! Already it has climbed over 300 people while typing this line. 

Planet Earth appears resilient, infinite and stable. We take, we mine, we pollute and still the planet just bounces back. Burn a patch of land and something grows in its place. It is like a natural equilibrium. Except that it is not a equilibrium like we may think. If we burn a piece of land and don't grow anything back, instead over-fertilize it or level it with a carpark, that little bit of natural balance is lost. It does not take a hard look to spot some of the obvious collection points of imbalance.  Here are some of the bigger examples I am aware of that appear to have no immediate solution:

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch! A collection of plastic particles collecting in the ocean, currently over twice as large as Texas and growing...

Water quality and availability is continuing to deteriorate at an alarming rate, with an estimated 2.8 billion people facing freshwater “stress” or “scarcity”.

...and the elephant in the room: increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases causing unpredictable and potentially catastrophic climate change. 

Even in "absolutely pure" New Zealand we are not immune, with some of the most polluted waters in the western world and one of the highest rates of carbon emissions per capita. Climate change is well on the way, with our warmest May on record and making one of the warmest winters on record. I am sure people at our Queenstown winter festival will be looking for answers, there is not ANY snow. As a result, many farmers around the country are seeing fruit trees flowering out of season for the first time.

As the imbalances caused by human activity build up, the pressure on resources increases causing further, deeper and longer lasting impacts. Efforts by individuals and business to restore the balance to the wider environment appear to be our only real hope to change the tide, to release the pressure on Planet Earth and restore some form of natural balance.

We might never be able to fix all the collection points, but we can stop them from causing too much stress on our future generations. Here at EnviroManage we commit to assist Environmentally and Socially aware businesses with the tools and services to help ease the pressure and bring some needed balance back into business.  

Join me as we work together to make a difference. To help our future generations enjoy a life like we have enjoyed. To ensure that plants, animals, people AND business can co-exist in a natural world. 

Welcome to EnviroManage and thank you for reading my first blog. 

Hugh