BioDiversity

It’s been quite awhile since we have posted. Found this article on http://earth-policy.org. It is a great article. Whoever the next President of the United States maybe they should really listen to Mr. Lester R. Brown.

Lester R. Brown

The world is now facing a climate-driven shrinkage of river-based irrigation water supplies. Mountain glaciers in the Himalayas and on the Tibet-Qinghai Plateau are melting and could soon deprive the major rivers of India and China of the ice melt needed to sustain them during the dry season. In the Ganges, the Yellow, and the Yangtze river basins, where irrigated agriculture depends heavily on rivers, this loss of dry-season flow will shrink harvests.

The world has never faced such a predictably massive threat to food production as that posed by the melting mountain glaciers of Asia. China and India are the world’s leading producers of both wheat and rice—humanity’s food staples. China’s wheat harvest is nearly double that of the United States, which ranks third after India. With rice, these two countries are far and away the leading producers, together accounting for over half of the world harvest.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports that Himalayan glaciers are receding rapidly and that many could melt entirely by 2035. If the giant Gangotri Glacier that supplies 70 percent of the Ganges flow during the dry season disappears, the Ganges could become a seasonal river, flowing during the rainy season but not during the summer dry season when irrigation water needs are greatest.

Yao Tandong, a leading Chinese glaciologist, reports that the glaciers on the Tibet-Qinghai Plateau in western China are now melting at an accelerating rate. He believes that two thirds of these glaciers could be gone by 2060, greatly reducing the dry-season flow of the Yellow and Yangtze rivers. Like the Ganges, the Yellow River, which flows through the arid northern part of China, could become seasonal. If this melting of glaciers continues, Yao says, “[it] will eventually lead to an ecological catastrophe.”

Even as India and China face these future disruptions in river flows, overpumping is depleting the underground water resources that both countries also use for irrigation. For example, water tables are falling everywhere under the North China Plain, the country’s principal grain-producing region. When an aquifer is depleted, the rate of pumping is necessarily reduced to the rate of recharge. In India, water tables are falling and wells are going dry in almost every state.

On top of this already grim shrinkage of underground water resources, losing the river water used for irrigation could lead to politically unmanageable food shortages. The Ganges River, for example, which is the largest source of surface water irrigation in India, is a leading source of water for the 407 million people living in the Gangetic Basin.

In China, both the Yellow and Yangtze rivers depend heavily on ice melt for their dry-season flow. The Yellow River basin is home to 147 million people whose fate is closely tied to the river because of low rainfall in the basin. The Yangtze is China’s leading source of surface irrigation water, helping to produce half or more of China’s 130-million-ton rice harvest. It also meets many of the other water needs of the watershed’s 368 million people. (See data.)

The population in either the Yangtze or Gangetic river basin is larger than that of any country other than China or India. And the ongoing shrinkage of underground water supplies and the prospective shrinkage of river water supplies are occurring against a startling demographic backdrop: by 2050 India is projected to add 490 million people and China 80 million.

In a world where grain prices have recently climbed to record highs, with no relief in sight, any disruption of the wheat or rice harvests due to water shortages in these two leading grain producers will greatly affect not only people living there but consumers everywhere. In both of these countries, food prices will likely rise and grain consumption per person can be expected to fall. In India, where just over 40 percent of all children under five years of age are underweight and undernourished, hunger will intensify and child mortality will likely climb.

For China, a country already struggling to contain food price inflation, there may well be spreading social unrest as food supplies tighten. Food security in China is a highly sensitive issue. Anyone in China who is 50 years of age or older is a survivor of the Great Famine of 1959–61, when, according to official figures, 30 million Chinese starved to death. This is also why Beijing has worked so hard in recent decades to try and maintain grain self-sufficiency.

As food shortages unfold, China will try to hold down domestic food prices by using its massive dollar holdings to import grain, most of it from the United States, the world’s leading grain exporter. Even now, China, which a decade or so ago was essentially self-sufficient in soybeans, is importing 70 percent of its supply, helping drive world soybean prices to an all-time high. As irrigation water supplies shrink, Chinese consumers will be competing with Americans for the U.S. grain harvest. India, too, may try to import large quantities of grain, although it may lack the economic resources to do so, especially if grain prices keep climbing. Many Indians will be forced to tighten their belts further, including those who have no notches left.

The glaciologists have given us a clear sense of how fast glaciers are shrinking. The challenge now is to translate their findings into national energy policies designed to save the glaciers. At issue is not just the future of mountain glaciers, but the future of world grain harvests.

The alternative to this civilization-threatening scenario is to abandon business-as-usual energy policies and move to cut carbon emissions 80 percent—not by 2050 as many political leaders suggest, because that will be too late, but by 2020, as outlined in Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization. The first step is to ban new coal-fired power plants, a move that is fast gaining momentum in the United States.

Ironically, the two countries that are planning to build most of the new coal-fired power plants, China and India, are precisely the ones whose food security is most massively threatened by the carbon emitted from burning coal. It is now in their interest to try and save their mountain glaciers by shifting energy investment from coal-fired power plants into energy efficiency and into wind farms, solar thermal power plants, and geothermal power plants. China, for example, can double its current electrical generating capacity from wind alone.

We know from studying earlier civilizations that declined and collapsed that it was often shrinking harvests that were responsible. For the Sumerians, it was rising salt concentrations in the soil that lowered wheat and barley yields and brought down this remarkable early civilization. For the Mayans, it was soil erosion following deforestation that undermined their agriculture and set the stage for their demise. For our twenty-first century civilization, it is rising atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations and the associated rise in temperature that threatens future harvests.

At issue is whether we can mobilize to lower atmospheric CO2 concentrations before higher temperatures melt the mountain glaciers that feed the major rivers of Asia and elsewhere, and before shrinking harvests lead to an unraveling of our civilization. The good news is that we have the energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies to dramatically reduce CO2 concentrations if we choose to do so.

Copyright © 2008 Earth Policy Institute

URGENT: Ask Your Representative to Cosponsor HR 2720, the “Healthy Food Bill”: Ask Your Representative to Cosponsor HR 2720, the “Healthy Food Bill”: Call and e-mail your representative and ask him or her to cosponsor HR 2720 (FARM 21), which will help farmers producing healthy foods and provide money for healthy nutrition programs. How to help > *HR 2720 could be voted on as soon as the week of July 23.*

Update on Section 123 of the Farm Bill: Section 123 has been removed from the Farm Bill. Section 123 would have weakened food safety and animal welfare policies by prohibiting hundreds of state and local laws that provide greater protections than federal laws. Thanks to everyone who called and e-mailed their representative about this issue!

*Look up your state and federal elected officials. If you want to contact your elected officials through our action alerts, our computer system will automatically fill in their names and contact information.*

This information was taken from www.pcrm.org
Founded in 1985, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) is a nonprofit organization that promotes preventive medicine, conducts clinical research, and encourages higher standards for ethics and effectiveness in research.

Found this article on Yahoo at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070714/ap_on_sc/lobster_researcher
To learn more go to The Lobster Conservancy: http://www.lobsters.org

By CLARKE CANFIELD, Associated Press Writer Sat Jul 14, 1:59 PM ET

HARPSWELL, Maine - The tide is dead low as Diane Cowan lifts seaweed-covered rocks at dawn’s first light, something she’s done for more than a decade as a way to monitor Maine’s most valuable fishery.
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Here at Lowell Cove, the number of juvenile lobsters has increased fourfold in recent years, indicating plentiful crustaceans for years to come.

At the same time, however, the water temperature in this picturesque inlet has risen fast — raising concerns. The lobsters, she fears, could begin dying off if the temperature keeps going up.

“It’s gone up 10 degrees between 1993 and now,” Cowan says as she puts small lobsters — some as tiny as a fingernail — in plastic tubs. “If it does that again, they’re gone. They’re cooked.”

Cowan, 46, is a scientist who has made lobsters her life’s calling. Every month for the past 15 years, she’s counted and catalogued juveniles the hard way — by hand — as part of a census conducted by volunteers from Massachusetts to far eastern Maine.

She puts up with subzero temperatures, ferocious winds, ruthless insects and feisty lobsters that like to pinch. If low tide comes in darkness, she works with a lamp strapped to her head.

Some say she’s obsessed. You’ll get no argument from her.

“I think of these lobsters kind of as my children,” she says.

The result is the most comprehensive data around for juvenile lobsters and the nurseries where they live. There are other scientists who survey juvenile lobsters, but nobody has the information she does, said Andy Solow of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Mass. Cowan’s data give an idea of where lobsters stick around when they first land on the bottom, where they grow up and where they’re captured.

“Her dedication is unbelievable,” Solow said.

Cowan was inspired to start her lobster survey when she and a friend were putting in a kayak on the inlet and she noticed two young boys flipping over rocks for fun in search of little lobsters.

That’s when she realized the cove was a lobster nursery, full of juveniles that would feed the future lobster supply for Maine’s 6,000 lobstermen. A few months later, she had students from Bates College, where she was teaching, surveying the area.

In time, Cowan formed a nonprofit called The Lobster Conservancy, through which she set up and trained a network of volunteers who survey juvenile lobsters from April through November at other spots in New England. She shares her data with local, state and federal officials as well as lobstermen in an effort to better understand the prehistoric creatures.

“Lobbie!” she cries out on a recent morning as she locates a tiny lobster under a rock. Over a two-hour period, she locates more than two dozen juvenile lobsters, or “lobbies,” in the intertidal zone where they find shelter under rocks.

Speaking loud for a tape recorder in her pocket, she describes the surrounding habitat, with its mussels, barnacles, seaweed, worms, crabs and fish. She makes observations about the lobster’s claws, gender, antennae, color, length and hardness of shell.

She later surgically implants tiny magnetized “tags” in each lobster that can be recognized by a specialized metal detector if she captures the same lobster later. She has tagged more than 15,000 lobsters over the years.

For now the lobster population appears strong in the Gulf of Maine, North America’s lobster breadbasket. The lobster abundance has gone up at 22 of Cowan’s 25 survey sites in recent years.

Those findings are important in a region where lobster contributes to the livelihoods of thousands of people and feeds summer tourists. In Maine, the 2005 lobster catch was more than 67 million pounds valued at $311 million.

But Cowan is concerned about global warming, which she thinks contributed to the lobster falloff in southern New England in the late 1990s. Other theories list factors that include overfishing, disease, pollutants and predators.

If the ocean continues to warm up, Cowan thinks it could affect the lobster ecosystem as a whole — lobsters will move east and north in search of colder waters, grow faster and reproduce at a younger age. That, she says, could spell trouble.

“I think global warming is real and I think it’s had a detrimental effect on lobsters south of Cape Cod,” she said. “And it could do the same in Maine.”

Lobstermen put a lot of stock into what Cowan has to say, said Bob Waddle, a former fisherman who owns Quahog Lobster Co. in Harpswell. They know of her dedication and value her data, which can be used to predict future catches.

“They call her Dr. Lobster,” Waddle said.

In fact, Cowan holds a doctorate in marine biology from Boston University. Some call her the Jane Goodall of lobsters, comparing her work to Goodall’s decades of work with chimpanzees.

Cowan’s known since the ninth grade that she wanted to study lobsters. She wears clothes with lobsters on them, and a silver lobster dangles from a chain around her neck. Her vanity license plate reads “Lobbie.” She lives alone on an island with her dog, Bear, and hauls research lobster traps from a canoe.

Get her talking about lobsters and she’ll tell you about coming across blue, yellow and bright orange varieties or how she once found eight juveniles under a single rock. She says half of all lobsters in the wild are “left-clawed” and half are “right-clawed,” and that the biggest lobster on record is 45 pounds and would be taller than she is if stood on end.

But even with all that, she is more impressed with how little is known about them.

“We are so ignorant about lobsters,” she says. “That’s what amazes me, is how much is not known.”

Even after 15 years of looking under rocks, Cowan’s passion and curiosity still burn bright. Her enthusiasm can be contagious,

Cowan regularly speaks to the Legislature’s Marine Resources Committee and brings live lobsters to give lawmakers a better understanding of the animals.

“When a lot of scientists talk, it’s like Greek,” says state Rep. Leila Percy, co-chair of the committee. “Diane’s gift is that she can help the average citizen understand how important it is to take care of the lobster stock.”

Found this article on the website www.PCRM.org Fantastic website promoting a healthy lifestyle.

By Caroline Trapp, M.S.N., A.P.R.N., B.C.-ADM, C.D.E.

Larry Alan Stanford died of a heart attack May 21 — the very same day that a study came out revealing that Avandia, a diabetes drug he had been taking, significantly increases cardiac risk. Although the lawsuit his family just filed against the drug manufacturer will no doubt warn many others of the medication’s dangers, there’s a larger lesson to be learned from this tragedy.

As a diabetes nurse educator for the last 20 years, I can tell you that Stanford’s death may have been avoidable. And I’m not talking about a different, safer pill. Studies show that the right diet can actually be more effective than drugs at lowering high blood sugar — and these healthy eating habits don’t cause heart attacks.

Chances are you haven’t heard about this. The amazing ability of diet to treat, and sometimes even reverse, type 2 diabetes is one of those best-kept secrets I’d like to shout from the rooftops. Perhaps if the pharmaceutical companies could profit from selling healthy food, more Americans would know that simple dietary changes could save their lives.

A study recently conducted by my colleagues and underwritten by the National Institutes of Health showed that a low-fat vegan diet is more effective at lowering high blood sugars than oral medications. But before you turn the page thinking that most people can’t live without hamburgers and the like, consider this. Research participants in the vegan arm of the study actually had an easier time sticking with their diet than those following the conventional diabetes diet, recommended by the American Diabetes Association. The reason is simple: They didn’t have to count calories, cut portion sizes, or limit carbohydrate intake.

In fact, after a few weeks of sampling new recipes, even the most old-fashioned meat-and-potato guys find this diet extremely easy to follow, especially since so many of them have such great results. Many patients are able to reduce their diabetes medications and, in some cases, even eliminate them. And this diet has side effects the drug companies can only dream about. It’s great for reducing high blood pressure and high cholesterol, as well as helping with weight loss.

Of course, this dietary approach isn’t just good at reversing disease. It could help control our out-of-control health care spending as well.

Just a few days before Stanford’s family filed their lawsuit in Texas, a coalition of diabetes thought leaders presented to the Congressional Diabetes Caucus a shocking report showing that one out of every EIGHT federal health care dollars is spent on the disease. Looked at another way, in 2005, we spent nearly $80 billion more to treat people with diabetes than those without the disease.

You’d think this kind of investment would buy us a cure. Unfortunately, it hasn’t. People with diabetes certainly get lots of treatment for all that money, but for many, it’s not very effective. Many take three different pills for diabetes, plus pills for cholesterol and hypertension, yet they still go on to develop heart disease, kidney failure, loss of vision, amputations and other horrible complications. It is estimated that 75 percent of those on insulin, still the strongest drug for diabetes, do not achieve the American Diabetes Association’s target of an A1c blood test below 7 percent.

Given the type of money we’re spending on diabetes, the ineffectiveness of our current treatments, and the distressing future so many people with diabetes face, it’s time to put a bold new approach to work. A varied and balanced diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains and legumes — and free of cholesterol and fat — would make a world of difference. Especially to people like Larry Alan Stanford.

Caroline Trapp is the director of Diabetes Education and Care for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. She lives in Farmington Hills, Mich.

We at Biodiversity would like to introduce you to our friends who just-launched “green” stocks and alternative energy/technology web site. This is where you can find the information you need on socially responsible people and companies who are making a global difference and changing the way we live for the better.

www.EnergyTechStocks.com

You’ve heard of the iphone by now, who hasn’t. But have you heard of the world’s first solar power phone. We found the below article at http://green.yahoo.com/index.php?q=node/497

http://htwchina.com/htwtE/index.jsp is the link to the company that produces the solar power phones.

By Hank Green

We’ve seen the prototypes and heard the speculation for years now, but here we have it, the world’s first solar cell phone, and you can buy one right now…if you happen to live in China.

HiTech Wealth telecommunications has just begun selling the S116 and the specs are pretty impressive. However, the $510 pricetag will have you wondering why you don’t just get an iPhone. A 1.3 mpx camera, and an MP3 player are fairly standard additions to cell phones these days, but the solar panels do make this guy stand out.

The panels trickle-charge the battery in any amount of light, including indoors (or even by candlelight), and the battery life is 2.5 times longer than it would be without the panels. An hour of direct sunlight will give users 40 extra minutes of talk time.

While this first model is pretty exciting, HiTech Wealth will be releasing six more solar phones within the year and has promised 30 solar models before 2009.

Via Inhabitat and Xinhua News

This article appeared in the Charlotte Observer. Charlotte.com

THOSE WHO MAKE THEIR OWN ENVIRONMENT-FRIENDLY GAS CAN AVOID PAIN AT THE PUMP BUT NOT THE TAXES.
A price to pay for alternative fuels
BRUCE HENDERSON
bhenderson@charlotteobserver.com

Bob Teixeira re-applies a sticker touting an alternative fuel he uses in his car. He plans to fight to change fuel-tax laws that have hit his wallet.
Bob Teixeira decided it was time to take a stand against U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

So last fall the Charlotte musician and guitar instructor spent $1,200 to convert his 1981 diesel Mercedes to run on vegetable oil. He bought soybean oil in 5-gallon jugs at Costco, spending about 30 percent more than diesel would cost.

His reward, from a state that heavily promotes alternative fuels: a $1,000 fine last month for not paying motor fuel taxes.

He’s been told to expect another $1,000 fine from the federal government.

And to legally use veggie oil, state officials told him, he would have to first post a $2,500 bond.

Teixeira is one of a growing number of fuel-it-yourselfers — backyard brewers who recycle restaurant grease or make moonshine for their car tanks. They do it to save money, reduce pollution or thumb their noses at oil sheiks.

They’re also caught in a web of little-known state laws that can stifle energy independence.

State Sen. Stan Bingham, R-Davidson, is known around Raleigh for his diesel Volkswagen fueled by used soybean oil. The car sports a “Goodbye, OPEC” sign.

“If somebody was going to go to this much trouble to drive around in a car that uses soybean oil, they ought to be exempt” from state taxes, he said.

The N.C. Department of Revenue, which fined Teixeira, has asked legislators to waive the $2,500 bond for small fuel users. The department also told Teixeira, after the Observer asked about his case this week, that it will compromise on his fine.

But officials say they’ll keep pursuing taxes on all fuels used in highway vehicles. With its 29.9-cent a gallon gas tax, the state collects $1.2 billion each year to pay for road construction.

“With the high cost of fuel right now, the department does recognize that a lot of people are looking for relief,” said Reggie Little, assistant director of the motor fuel taxes division. “We’re not here to hurt the small guy, we’re just trying to make sure that the playing field is level.”

Use promoted, little regulation

State policies firmly endorse alternative fuels.In 2005 legislators directed state agencies to replace 20 percent of their annual petroleum use with alternatives by 2010. About 6,000 of the state’s 8,500 vehicles are equipped to use ethanol. The state fleet also includes about 135 gas-electric hybrids.

Few states, however, are prepared to regulate the new fuels, says the National VegOil Board, which promotes vegetable oil fuel.

“State offices do not have the forms to appropriately and fairly deal with VegOil, nor the staff to enforce the non-existent forms,” said director Cynthia Shelton. “So either they tell people inquiring about compliance to get lost, or they make them jump through a bunch of arbitrary hoops.”

Outraged Illinois legislators this spring quickly waived that state’s $2,500 bond requirement when an elderly man was nabbed for using waste vegetable oil.

In the mountain district of state Sen. John Snow, D-Cherokee, home-brewed ethanol was once known as moonshine. But a couple of constituents who made it for fuel have been fined for the same tax violation that got Teixeira in trouble.

Snow has introduced several bills to promote biodiesel, which under state law includes vegetable oil.

“One of the biggest problems in the state is a real lack of information for people who want to use alternative fuels,” said Snow’s research assistant, Jonathan Ducote. “It’s just now appearing on (regulators’) radar.”

Done in by bumper sticker

Teixeira’s story began near Lowe’s Motor Speedway on May 14. As recreational vehicles streamed in for race week, revenue investigators were checking fuel tanks of diesel RVs for illegal fuel.

The investigators quickly spotted Teixeira’s passing bumper sticker: “Powered by 100% vegetable oil.”

“It was like some twist of fate that put me there,” he said. “It was like I was asking for them to stop me.”

Teixeira says revenue officials are just doing their jobs. But he thinks it’s unfair that he was lumped with people who purposely try to avoid fuel taxes.

“Individuals who are trying to do the right thing environmentally cannot and should not continue to take this kind of financial hit,” he wrote Gov. Mike Easley.

Teixeira says he’ll pay the state fine and apply for a state fuel license. But pumping regular diesel again “broke my heart.”

“I’m ready to get myself legal,” he said, “and start using vegetable oil again.”

Alternative Fuel Vehicles*

North CarolinaDiesel 118,479

Flex fuel 121,547

(ethanol capable)

Hybrid 11,758

Total 251,784

South Carolina

Diesel 54,786

Flex fuel 68,303

Hybrid 3,264

Total 126,353

*Registered as of July 2006

SOURCE: Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers

More on Fuel Taxes

Piedmont Biofuels, a biodiesel cooperative in Pittsboro, posts links to state tax laws on its Web site: http://biofuels.coop/general

-information/taxes//. The N.C. Department of Revenue’s motor fuels tax division has a toll-free number: 877-308-9092.

HSBC Announces US$100 Million Programme to Combat Climate Change WorldWide

New environmental coalition will tackle climate change impacts for people, forests, water and cities

HSBC has created a five-year, US$100 million partnership to respond to the urgent threat of climate change worldwide with the support of The Climate Group, Earthwatch Institute, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) and WWF.

The HSBC Climate Partnership will:

help some of the world’s great cities - Hong Kong, London, Mumbai, New York and Shanghai - respond to the challenge of climate change;
create ‘climate champions’ worldwide who will undertake field research and bring back valuable knowledge and experience to their communities;
conduct the largest ever field experiment on the world’s forests to measure carbon and the effects of climate change; and
help protect some of the world’s major rivers - including the Amazon, Ganges, Thames, and Yangtze - from the impacts of climate change, benefiting the 450 million people who rely on them.
Speaking at the London news conference to launch the program, Sir David Attenborough, one of the world’s best known broadcasters and a pioneer of the nature documentary, said, “As we increase the production of greenhouse gases, we face the very real prospect of causing irreversible damage to the Earth’s more fragile eco-systems. We are not powerless if we act now, collectively and decisively. We can significantly reduce the causes of climate change and greatly improve the chances of safeguarding for future generations the spectacular diversity of life on Earth.”

HSBC Group Chairman Stephen Green said, “The HSBC Climate Partnership will achieve something profoundly important. By working with four of the world’s most respected environmental organizations and creating a ‘green taskforce’ of thousands of HSBC employees worldwide, we believe we can tackle the causes and impacts of climate change. Over the next five years HSBC will make responding to climate change central to our business operations and at the heart of the way we work with our clients across the world.”

HSBC’s US$100 million partnership - including the largest donations to each of these nonprofit organizations and the largest donation ever made by a British company - has significant program targets and offers transformational support for the environmental charities. The donation will help to deliver increased capacity, help the organizations to expand across new countries and research sites, and increase their access to more people.

Steve Howard, CEO of The Climate Group said, “Climate change is an increasingly urban issue. High summer temperatures, storms and rising sea levels will have more extreme impacts on city life. We have a short period of time left to take action. Many of the solutions lie in cities - concentrations of capital, decision makers, opinion formers and population. Through the HSBC Climate Partnership we will accelerate our program in five world cities, engaging the most influential businesses and city governments to lead a ‘coalition of the willing’ against global warming.”

Edward Wilson, U.S. CEO, Earthwatch Institute said, “Any decisions regarding the impacts of climate change need to be based on two things. First, a lasting solution has to involve objective science. Second, any solution must engage people and communities in order to promote true understanding and action. Earthwatch Institute is proud to be part of The HSBC Climate Partnership, working to develop a climate change research program in 5 key forests around the world, engaging over 300,000 staff in 82 countries and working with 600 local community members to develop lasting management strategies. This partnership serves as a great example of how you create the change needed for a more sustainable future.”

Dr Ira Rubinoff, Director of STRI and Acting Under Secretary, Smithsonian Institution said, “The Smithsonian has studied tropical forests in Panama for nearly one hundred years. We are setting up a network of new Global Earth Observatories, based on the longest-running standardized forest monitoring program, covering all the major tropical rainforest areas of the world. HSBC’s donation will enable the Smithsonian to deliver key scientific data in the hands of decision makers responsible for global carbon policy and water management.”

James Leape, Director General of WWF International said, “WWF is pleased to be continuing its collaboration with HSBC. Climate change, poor management, and waste mean that water supplies around the world are more and more stressed. The HSBC Climate Partnership will help WWF work towards better management of global water supplies, improve water security for about 450 million people, and reduce the impact of climate change on some of the world’s most important rivers, including the Amazon, Ganges, Thames, and Yangtze.”

The HSBC Climate Partnership builds upon ‘Investing in Nature’, the Group’s previous US$50 million, five-year eco-partnership which concluded in 2006. The program saw the Group partner with Botanical Gardens Conservation International, Earthwatch, and WWF, saving more than 12,000 plant species from extinction, training 200 scientists, sending 2,000 HSBC employees on conservation research projects worldwide, and protecting and better managing three of the world’s largest rivers - including part of the Yangtze River in China - benefiting some 50 million people.

Find out more:
Interview with Earthwatch’s Executive Director Nigel Winser
Earthwatch’s four priority research areas
Earthwatch’s climate change position statement
Earthwatch’s guidelines for engaging corporate partners
Background information about the HSBC Climate Partnership

FUNDING INCREASE REPRESENTS THE LARGEST BOOST IN REFUGE SYSTEM’S HISTORY

Washington D.C. — Defenders of Wildlife applauds the House Interior and Environment appropriations subcommittee and its Chairman, Congressman Norm Dicks (D-WA), for restoring funding to key programs that protect the nation’s wildlife and public lands. The FY 2008 Interior, Environment and Related Agencies appropriations bill passed by the subcommittee provides significant and critically needed increases over the president’s budget request for these programs.

“Congressman Norm Dicks has taken a giant leap toward resurrecting entire programs designed to protect our nation’s wildlife, refuges, forests, parks and other public lands after six years of starvation budgets under the Bush administration,” says Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife.

“It is encouraging to see that this subcommittee has provided the National Wildlife Refuge System with its most generous funding increase in its history,” continues Schlickeisen. “The refuge system is literally unraveling, and the $451 million proposed in the bill is exactly what the refuge system needs to stem the massive cuts in habitat protection and visitor services programs.”

The bill passed by the subcommittee provides a total increase of almost $2 billion over the president’s FY 2008 budget request, thereby rejecting the damaging cuts to many public land and wildlife conservation programs. Increases in the bill would begin to address the resource crisis facing these programs, such as the crippling loss of hundreds of agency biologists, wildlife refuge managers and other crucial staff, and cutbacks in agency services.

Specific increases (rounded to the nearest whole number) in the bill include:

* $56 million over the administration’s requested amount for the National Wildlife Refuge System–the largest increase in the refuge system’s history

* $6 million over the administration’s requested amount for protection of endangered species

* $148 million over the administration’s requested amount for the Land and Water Conservation Fund

* $6 million over the administration’s requested amount for grants to conserve endangered species around the globe

* $16 million over the administration’s requested amount for State and Tribal Wildlife Grants

* $19 million over the administration’s requested amount for the Forest Service’s wildlife and fish habitat program.

Also included in the bill is language that would cap the amount of money that could be spent on the Bureau of Land Management’s oil and gas programs and language outlining how resource management funds could be spent. This is all in an effort to ensure that funds allocated for land and wildlife conservation are used for these programs.

“The damage to key land and wildlife programs did not happen overnight and it will not be reversed in one bill. But Chairman Dicks’ bill makes a substantial down payment to help us rebuild our deteriorating public land and wildlife agencies,” says Schlickeisen. “We look forward to working with the chairman and the subcommittee in the coming years to restore these programs that are so vital to maintaining our unique and magnificent natural heritage.”

Defenders of Wildlife is recognized as one of the nation’s most progressive advocates for wildlife and its habitat. With more than 500,000 members and supporters, Defenders of Wildlife is an effective leader on endangered species issues.

FAIRFIELD, Conn.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–GE today reaffirmed that “green is green,” reporting that revenues from its portfolio of energy efficient and environmentally advantageous products and services surged past $12 billion in 2006, up 20% from 2005, while the order backlog rose to $50 billion.

“These extraordinary revenues and orders are the initial payoff from directly aligning our product portfolio with our customers’ needs and evolving trends, while ‘doubling-down’ on investments in leading edge technology and innovation,” said GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt. “Ecomagination is growing beyond our expectations, evolving into a sales initiative unlike any other I’ve seen in 25 years at GE.”

Launched in May 2005, ecomagination is GE’s commitment to imagine and build innovative technologies that help customers address their environmental and financial needs and help GE grow. A report issued today is the second annual accounting on how the strategy is paying off for GE, its customers and its investors.

“We look to the horizon for trends that will grow at multiples of the global economy,” Immelt said. “We then build leadership positions arrayed against these trends, using our unique size and scope to drive exponential growth. Ecomagination is just one example, and GE customers and investors will increasingly benefit as revenues and orders continue to rise.”

Specifically, GE made the following progress on each of its ecomagination commitments in 2006:

1) Double its investment in clean research and development – GE invested $900 million in cleaner technology research and development in 2006, drawing closer to its $1.5 billion annual ecomagination R&D target by 2010. GE also increased the number of ecomagination-certified products 50% over the last year - from 30 to 45 products.

2) Increase revenues from ecomagination products – GE reported $12 billion in revenues from ecomagination products and services in 2006, on course to the goal of $20 billion in sales in 2010.

3) Reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and improve the energy efficiency of its operations – GE GHG emissions in 2006 from operations have been reduced by about 4% from the 2004 baseline. GHG and energy intensity have been reduced by 21% and 22% respectively compared to 2004. GE is committed to reduce its GHG emissions 1% by 2012, reduce the intensity of its GHG emissions 30% by 2008, and improve energy efficiency 30% by the end of 2012. Roughly 5,000 global projects are under way and have already generated more than 300,000 tons of GHG emissions reductions – equal to removing more than 50,000 cars from the road. Energy cost savings to the Company are roughly $70 million to date.

4) Keep the public informed – GE continues to transparently apprise the public of the Company’s progress via its ecomagination web site, advertising and engagement with customers and other stakeholders.

GE’s ecomagination report is available at www.ecomagination.com/report, where readers are encouraged to download and read the electronic edition. As an incentive, for each of the first 10,000 downloads, GE will plant one tree in the Alpine forests south of Munich, Germany (home to one of GE’s Global Research Centers). In collaboration with the German Armed Forces and the Bavarian Forestry Commission, GE’s planting will integrate into the landscape, helping strengthen the area’s critical flood protection.

As part of its commitment to keep the public informed on ecomagination, GE is encouraging feedback on the report through comments@ecomagination.com.

GE is Imagination at Work — a diversified technology, media and financial services company focused on solving some of the world’s toughest problems. With products and services ranging from aircraft engines, power generation, water processing and security technology to medical imaging, business and consumer financing and media content. GE serves customers in more than 100 countries and employs more than 300,000 people worldwide. For more information, visit the company’s Web site at www.ge.com.