Environment

The Senate has passed legislation requiring federal environmental assessment of the impact of CSG wells

The Coalition has voted in favour of laws that will prevent Tony Abbott from implementing his stated policy of handing back environmental assessments of coal seam gas (CSG) wells to state governments.

The Senate has passed legislation adding the impact of CSG wells on water to a list of issues requiring federal environmental assessment, with the Coalition voting for it.

The Coalition's policy is to hand back environmental decision-making – including over CSG – to the states. It tried to change the legislation passed on Tuesday and then to defer the vote, but after failing on both counts, supported it.

Rob Millhouse, vice-president of policy at gas company BG Group, told Guardian Australia the legislation would definitely mean new CSG projects would have to pass two sets of environmental assessments – federal and state – and said this would "add years" to the process.

He also said it was "unprecedented" for an issue to be added as a trigger for the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Protection Act only in terms of its impact on one industry, as is the case with the CSG-only water trigger.

Independent Tony Windsor, who pushed for the CSG restrictions, and the Greens leader, Senator Christine Milne, were celebrating the added scrutiny for the CSG industry.

"Federal oversight based on independent science will help protect Australia's most productive farmland from potential damage and encourage mining companies to pursue projects with lower risk profiles," Windsor said.

Coalition resources spokesman Ian Macfarlane had said that the new law "contains nothing to prevent" the Coalition from proceeding with its stated policy intention to hand over environmental assessments to the states, including for gas wells, under strict standards set by the commonwealth.

But Millhouse said this was not the case and the Coalition attempted to amend the bill and then to prevent a vote before eventually voting in favour of it. And environmental lawyers also dispute Macfarlane's assessment.

The Greens failed in an attempt to add to the legislation a provision allowing a farmer to "lock the gate" against CSG projects – with both Labor and the Coalition voting against the amendment. Giving farmers the right of consent over projects is also Coalition policy.

"All the big parties voted against a Greens amendment to allow farmers to lock the gate. Clearly the Nationals are no longer the representatives of people in the bush," said Greens environment spokeswoman senator Larissa Waters.

The Greens also failed in an attempt to similarly "Abbott-proof" the entire EPBC Act by adding a provision to prevent the handing back to the states of any environmental decision-making.

And the cabinet did not support a push by the environment minister, Tony Burke, to add national parks as a "trigger" for federal approvals, after recent moves by state governments to allow cattle grazing and recreational shooting in parks.

With the CSG industry arguing Australia is facing a critical domestic gas shortage, Macfarlane is pressing NSW to approve more CSG wells because of a looming "gas crisis" in the state.

He has attacked the NSW government for broad restrictions that have caused a virtual investment freeze on new CSG projects and told a conference this week that NSW "better get busy. They're facing an enormous crisis. The pressure we can put on is to make sure the O'Farrell government understands that it's likely to be in power when Sydney runs out of gas," Macfarlane said in a recent speech.

The coal seam gas industry has been fighting back since escalating community concerns over the environmental impact of CSG prompted the federal government to give in to Windsor's lobbying for a water trigger. It also prompted the NSW Liberal government to impose a 2km exclusion zone around residential areas and bans on CSG wells in the Hunter Valley, which is prime agricultural land.

The Australian Conservation Foundation welcomed the passage of the CSG laws.

"Mining companies inject dangerous chemicals into aquifers to extract coal seam gas, so it is appropriate that this environmentally damaging activity be covered by our national environment law," a spokesman said.

CSG is likely to be a big issue in several NSW seats, in particular New England, where Windsor is being challenged by the high-profile Nationals candidate Barnaby Joyce.

• Australia
• Coalition

Lenore Taylor
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Wenlock Edge: This shock of blue, exploded from a scattering of plants here over a century or more, has reached a zenith

Blue as an ambulance light, the patch of bugle flowers in the wood. Once open, maybe a long-abandoned garden before trees took hold, this place becomes the dreamy point of midsummer, with its own reality surrounded by a pervading anxiety. At the entrance to the wood is a pull-in off the lane where cars stop for dog walkers, fly-tipping, canoodling. A man gets out. "A good day for a walk," he claims awkwardly, but he's wearing town shoes and his unzipped backpack is empty. Dodgy, I think.

I take odd paths through the wood used by deer and badgers until something in a sunny glade pulls me up. The body of a fox cub. It's been beasted, probably by dogs, and its legs and neck are at wrong angles. This small broken rag has the power to shock, and I wonder what its story is. I saw an adult fox with a dead lamb in this wood over a month ago and I wonder if there's a connection. I wonder if this has anything to do with the bloke at the pull-in; if the rest of this cub's family have also been slaughtered.

I leave the corpse and duck into shadows until I'm at the bugle place. This shock of blue, exploded from a scattering of plants here over a century or more, has reached a zenith. The medicinal properties of bugle are akin to, "Self-Heal whereby when you are hurt, you may heal yourself," as Culpepper the herbalist had it. Wounds, throat infections, internal bleeding and piles are ailments these wild plants were used to cure. But I wonder if the psychedelic quality of this midsummer blueness also offers another kind of healing. Can it make an unguent for the green wounds that afflict this land, the hurts we do to ourselves?

• Rural affairs
• Wild flowers
• Plants
• Biology

Paul Evans
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The Met Office held a crisis meeting today. But why do Brits turn trivial weather nuisances into dashers of hopes?

Everyone bewildered by the seemingly unprecedented weirdness of this year's summer might spare a thought for those living in 1783, who went through another kind of trial by weather. Gilbert White of Selborne's account of the events of 23 June to 20 July is a masterpiece of deadpan gothic: "The sun, at noon, looked as blank as a clouded moon, and shed a rust coloured ferruginous light on the ground … but was lurid and blood-coloured at rising and setting. All the time the heat was so intense that the butcher's meat could hardly be eaten on the day after it was killed."

White didn't know this phenomenon was caused by a volcanic eruption in Iceland, and regarded it as just an extreme example of the British weather's intrinsic capriciousness. His daily journal shows that 1783 had already been depressingly awful. Immense rains in January, deep snow into May, cold north winds throughout the spring. The year before had been just as dismal.

Sounds familiar? A browse through centuries of graphic weather description in English writing gives a different – and oddly reassuring – perspective on the soul-sapping bleakness of the past three years. Which makes me wonder if there is an undeclared motive behind the Met Office's unprecedented decision to hold a crisis meeting this week to discuss the UK's "disappointing" recent weather. We don't need any hints about the agenda: 2013 had the coolest spring for 50 years, 2012 was the wettest year "since records began", the cold winter of 2010-11 (the paralysing snowdrifts of 1979 and 1982 having, it seems, already been forgotten) is regarded as "exceptional". Jet stream shifts and Arctic ice-melt will be on the agenda, which will focus on whether we are experiencing just a short-term blip, a longer-term natural trend, or a sinister early fallout from global warming.

It will doubtless be a fascinating academic debate, but won't – indeed can't – come to any firm conclusions, given that it is concerned with such a short period. (A "trend" is defined as a consistent shift over 30 years.) Perhaps the Met Office hopes it may point a way towards better forecasting. I think the meteorological business is at last acknowledging how deeply it is involved in our cultural experience of the weather. Our national preoccupation has made the forecast part of the weather, and the forecasters have come to be regarded as oracles, not just sources of practical guidance but scapegoats when things go wrong. Sensing our heightened concerns, they may this week be undertaking a risky reading of the runes.

If so, I fear the outcome will be evasive, depressing, and miss the point of what is needed. If there is long-term change afoot in our weather, it matters not a jot to the quality of our lives whether it is part of an entirely natural cycle or a consequence of global warming. (We're way past the point where anything short of a massive programme of carbon capture could halt the latter for the next half century.) We need to learn to adapt to what is happening. This has always been especially difficult for the British.

Because we live on an island in the Atlantic storm belt, just offshore from a huge continental land mass, our meteorological lot has always been messy and erratic. We can't acclimatise, culturally or psychologically, can't reconcile ourselves to these repeated bolts from the blue. We take refuge in false memories of perpetual golden summers, and regard what, on any objective scale, would be trivial weather nuisances, as dashers of hopes and ruiners of our sense of the proper order of things.

Is it beyond the bounds of possibility that we could find ways of positively enjoying grim weather – of, in the language of cognitive behaviour therapy, "reconfiguring" it? I think there are signs we could. This week the Aldeburgh Festival has been staging Britten's opera Peter Grimes on the shoreline, where it belongs, with a stiff north-easterly blowing salt on to the lips of the audience. Next week it's Glastonbury, where rain and mud are on the cast-list of star attractions, and which has turned the wellington boot into a fashion item. Maybe we'll see a reprise of Dorothy and William Wordsworth's (early adapters) habit of going round snuggled together in a vast single topcoat.

Up here in East Anglia, on the front line of sea-level rise, the first houses on stilts are being built, reviving a common tradition of the flood-prone middle ages. If only the local farmers (already pleading for support) could get beyond their paralysed dependence on monocultures, we'd be moving in the right direction. (Any Mexican smallholder, sowing a dozen varieties of corn to cope with any contingency, would be derisory of agribusinesses' reflex of entrusting all its seeds to one genetic basket.)

Evolution itself, a long, successful negotiation with changeable climates, depends on diversity and quick-footed inventiveness. We need to get in line. At the moment it's as if, T-shirted at the umpteenth climate change rally, we've looked up and, good gracious, the weather has changed, and we'd clean forgotten our mum's advice to always take an extra layer.

• Weather
• Met Office
• Meteorology
• Climate change
• Climate change

Richard Mabey
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The green credentials of biofuel crops have been sullied in recent years. Rienk van Grondelle believes the answer to the world's clean energy needs will be super-efficient algae

Driving through the countryside in the south of France, you would probably be charmed by the vineyards and delighted at the thought of drinking fine French wine. But when Rienk van Grondelle looks at the same view, he envisages something completely different. Where farmers now grow vines or corn to feed animals, he sees a future landscape dotted with red ponds.

The ponds would teem with red algae for the production of "biofuels" – gases and vegetable oils made from organic waste that are considered a cleaner alternative to fossil fuels, because when burned they release less greenhouse gases than fossil fuels.

One day, van Grondelle speculates, ethanol and butanol will be produced not only from algae but directly from artificial leaves. "They would look pretty much like normal leaves, only you won't find them on a tree," he says. They would probably not even be green, he adds, but would perform the same task as natural plants: capturing light energy and transforming it into chemical energy.

Biofuels are considered a viable alternative to fossil fuels because they can be integrated into the present industrial and transportation system: they can be combined with conventional fuels without revolutionising our supply infrastructures. However, conventional biofuels such as palm oil and sugar cane have had substantial environmental impacts, especially in terms of land use. Forests and agricultural land all over the world have been converted to biofuel production, creating problems with loss of biodiversity and feeding local communities.

A new generation of biofuels made from engineered plants capable of more energy-efficient photosynthesis may help to solve the problem, because they would require less space to obtain the same amount of energy and if implemented at a domestic level they would save resources now used for transportation.

Van Grondelle, professor of biophysics at VU University Amsterdam, has devoted his life to that crucial moment when light hits a leaf's surface and triggers a chemical reaction to produce carbohydrates from carbon dioxide and water. "Photosynthesis is amazingly efficient: it uses very simple molecules to exploit the power of light. And this happens in an infinitesimal fraction of a second."

This is what his research, and the last 30 years of his life, have been all about. "I am trying to understand what triggers the process and how it's regulated, so we can learn lessons from nature, mimic it in a solar device and eventually improve it."

The great advantage of harvesting light through photosynthesis rather than photovoltaic technology, says van Grondelle, is that 80% of the world's energy consumption is still based on fuels. Another advantage of biofuels is that you can store them for later use, whereas the electricity generated by solar and wind power is intermittent. "That's exactly what plants do through photosynthesis: they store energy for you."

Since the 1970s, when van Grondelle joined the biophysics group in Leiden as a PhD student, the study of photosynthesis has made great progress. As a result we now have a complete picture of how energy from light is captured by chlorophyll pigments in the cells of a leaf's surface and passes through a sequence of molecules like an electric discharge. These molecules harness the energy to convert carbon dioxide and water into oxygen and chemical fuel – food.

"Now we can engineer these complexes and figure out, relying on experiments, what changes need to be done to improve their structure and make them better," says van Grondelle. "We can modify a surface enabling it to capture a wider [range] of the light's spectrum. This way, the process produces more energy."

He points out that plants and algae have evolved to produce only enough energy to live and reproduce. "For example, if you calculate the energy return on investment of a plant, say a tree, you will see that it is not very efficient." The first step to solve this efficiency problem is to study very simple organisms such as algae.

Photosynthesis in algae is a lot more efficient than that in plants, and you can more easily genetically engineer them to enhance their ability to capture light and convert it into chemical energy.

Van Grondelle admits that it remains difficult to calculate the ultimate efficiency of a photosynthesis-based power plant while research is ongoing, but the plan is to be producing ethanol and butanol at a competitive price within 10 years.

In 2010 the European Research Council provided his team with €3m of funding to investigate the role of proteins bound to chlorophyll in the efficiency of photosynthesis. The objective is an efficient way to make biofuels that could support a cleaner transportation system and replace natural gas in the domestic supply.

He doesn't claim that his research alone can save the world. "I believe the solution for the world's growing energy demand has got to be a combination of different technologies and political strategies."

But the price of meeting the rise in global energy demand may be very different urban and rural landscapes. "It might be difficult to imagine," Grondelle concedes, "but in a civilised society it is already widely accepted to use land for meat production or industrial agriculture."

Once the technology has been implemented on agricultural land, he says, it could be rolled out across the urban environment. "Every backyard may have a pond, or a tank, where algae are grown for domestic energy supply."

Lou Del Bello is a freelance journalist from Italy with a background in environmental issues. She is studying for an MA in science journalism at City University in London. Email her cleanenergy.lou@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter @loudelbello

• Energy research
• Climate change
• Biofuels
• Energy
• Renewable energy
• Climate change

Lou Del Bello
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Germany has stepped up the pressure on governments to water down limits on vehicle emissions

Senior members of the German government have warned EU member states that German automakers could scale back or scrap production plans in their countries unless they support weakened carbon emissions rules, according to diplomatic sources.

With EU governments and lawmakers aiming to finalise the rules next week, which most of the 27 member states back, Germany has stepped up the pressure on them to water down limits on vehicle emissions to protect the country's mighty car industry, particularly luxury makers such as BMW and Daimler.

The sources added that some calls warning EU member states of possible consequences have come from members of Chancellor Angela Merkel's office.

Her office declined to comment.

One EU diplomat said Berlin had reminded Lisbon of Portugal's €78bn eurozone bailout, which was heavily financed by Germany, in its bid to convince the country to drop its opposition to softer limits.

"They have tried everything at the highest level to pressure member states, in particular countries in the bailout club, to support their proposals," said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"Germany seems hell-bent on pressing its interests. Even countries that are generally pro-German feel that they are going too far."

A German government source denied that Berlin had put particular pressure on countries that have received EU financial aid, and said its aim was to protect jobs in the EU auto sector.

"Our strategy is to focus on France, Britain and Italy as the big car producing countries, and on the countries which have important supply industries," the source said.

"They should all be together in this fight. We should not drive jobs out of Europe at a moment of high unemployment."

Germany's position is backed by a handful of central European countries with domestic auto production, but France, Britain and Italy are opposed, EU sources say.

The proposal from the European commission, the EU's executive, would set a goal of 95n of carbon dioxide per kilometre (g/km) as an average for all new vehicles sold in Europe from 2020.

Each manufacturer is assigned an individual target to take account of the nature of their fleet and their record of past cuts.

But making less-polluting cars is costly and restricts profit margins, which is why major German manufacturers want to delay the stricter rules.

The legal changes demanded by Berlin would allow luxury makers to continue selling more powerful – and profitable – models in Europe after 2020, when the new EU emission limits will take effect.

Under the plan, carmakers would be allowed to carry over credits to pollute that were accrued before the new rules kick in.

Known as supercredits, these permits are earned if manufacturers make some very low-emissions vehicles, such as electric cars, which German firms are making to meet a separate national target.

The problem is that if they manage to hold on to a glut of supercredits, they can carry on making higher emissions models, and emissions levels will fail to meet the 2020 95 g/km target.

An internal European commission document, seen by Reuters, on the latest German proposal says its plan "could result in a net increase in greenhouse gas emissions, increased oil and fuel use and reduced energy security."

Germany and its carmakers say the flexibility they want is essential for spurring innovation, but critics say the changes amount to major loopholes in the rules.

An EU source said the German proposal would delay achievement of the 95 g/km target until 2023 for those carmakers who made use of the accrued credits.

No-one from BMW was immediately available for comment. A spokesman for Daimler denied the company had played any part in any threats, direct or indirect, made to EU member states.

In the past, the car industry has exaggerated the difficulty of EU targets, environmentalists say, and they need to innovate to find ways to cut emissions to stay ahead of a global trend.

The United States has agreed fuel efficiency standards, though they lag Europe, while China, where smog has stirred social unrest, is increasingly aware of the implications of vehicle emissions for air pollution.

In 2008, after dire predictions of factory closures and mass job losses, the European Union agreed a limit of 130 g/km to be phased in between 2012 and 2015.

Average emissions were already down to 132.2 g/km in 2012, the EU's European Environment Agency said, meaning the target is on course to be met early, prompting accusations that the industry cried wolf in order to weaken the rules.

Germany as a whole is at the upper end of the EU emissions range, with emissions of 147 g/km in 2011, according to the non-profit International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT).

At the lower end are nations including the Netherlands, which has given tax breaks for fuel-efficient vehicles, and Denmark, which has led a wider push for energy efficiency.

• Carbon emissions
• Climate change
• Automotive industry
• Germany
• Europe
• European Union

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Project promises abundant energy for Ethiopia, but potential crop failures, power cuts and political tumult for Egypt

Since long before the Pyramids towered above the rich soil of this riverside town, Egyptians have given thanks to the muddy waters of the Nile. "Plants, animals, humans," said Ibrahim Abdel Aziz, a 45-year-old farmer, "we all come from this river." Trace the Nile about 2,250km upstream and there's a rising colossus that threatens to upset a millennia-old balance. There, in the Ethiopian highlands, one of the world's largest dams is taking shape. For Ethiopia, the dam promises abundant energy and an escape from a seemingly permanent spot in the lowest rungs of the world's human development index. But for Egypt, the consequences could be dire: a nationwide water shortage in as little as two years that causes crop failures, power cuts and instability resonating far beyond even the tumult of the recent past.

For a country facing daily domestic crises in the aftermath of its 2011 revolution, the dam is a foreign threat Egypt can ill afford. And that may be the point. Analysts say Ethiopia is seizing on Egypt's distraction and relative fragility to plunge ahead with plans that have long been on the drawing board but have always been thwarted by Egyptian resistance.

To Egyptians accustomed to thinking of their country as a powerhouse of the Arab world, the idea of bowing to a historically weaker African rival has been a sobering reminder of their nation's diminished clout. It has also been an early test for the year-old government of President Mohamed Morsi – one that critics say he has badly mishandled.

"Now the options are very few," said Talaat Mosallam, a retired major general in Egypt's army. Diplomacy is the first, but Egypt's leverage is "at rock bottom", he said, and if talks fail, Egyptian military commanders may decide that "it is better to die in battle than to die in thirst".

Indeed, the prospect of a water war has become a regular feature of Egyptian newscasts and front pages in recent weeks, ever since Ethiopia announced that it was diverting the river's course immediately after a meeting between Ethiopian prime minister Hailemariam Desalegn and Morsi in late May.

The announcement, which marked a milestone in the dam's progress, was seen in Egypt as a humiliating slap and an indication that Ethiopia has no intention to negotiate over the dam's construction.

Morsi responded last week by convening an emergency meeting of leaders from across Egypt's political spectrum, a move that backfired wildly when the presidency decided to broadcast the session live on television without telling most of the participants.

Thinking that they were conspiring in secret, the politicians hatched plans to arm Ethiopian rebels, launch a whispering campaign about Egypt's military might and send fighter jets to knock out the dam with one swift shot.

Morsi has not been so explicit, but he warned in a speech last Monday night that "all options are open" in protecting the river, which accounts for 95% of Egypt's water needs. The country, he told a crowd of cheering supporters, is ready to sacrifice blood to ensure that "not one drop" of the Nile is lost.

In an interview with Ethiopian state media last Tuesday, Hailemariam dismissed that as warmongering meant to distract from Egypt's domestic issues.

"I don't think they will take that option unless they go mad," he said. The same day, the Ethiopian foreign ministry said in a statement that the nation "will not even for a second" stop the dam's construction.

The standoff reflects the critical importance of controlling the region's water resources at a time of rapidly rising populations. Egypt and Ethiopia each have more than 80 million people, double the population that existed just 30 years ago. By 2050, the combined population of the two countries is expected to rise by 100 million, even as climate change could reduce the supply of water.

Nonetheless, Ethiopia has said repeatedly that the Grand Renaissance Dam won't cause a problem for Egypt. Ethiopian officials say the dam will be used to generate electricity, not to irrigate fields, meaning that all the water will eventually make its way downstream to Egypt.

Those officials see the dam as a chance to make right a colonial-era wrong that has preserved most of the Nile's water for Egypt while leaving little benefit for upstream countries.

Egypt may be the gift of the Nile, as the Greek historian Herodotus once remarked, but the Nile is not Egypt's alone. Eleven countries share the basin of the world's longest river, which winds through much of east Africa before emptying into the Mediterranean in northern Egypt.

Ethiopia has won the majority of those countries to its side with the promise of electricity exports for a region that desperately needs new sources of energy. It has even offered to sell some of the dam's 6,000 MW to Egypt.

Far from being soothed by Ethiopia's promises, however, Egyptians have become increasingly panicked. And with good reason, according to Mohamed Nasr Allam, a former water minister of Egypt.

Allam said that if Ethiopia goes ahead with its plans to build the dam on the Blue Nile – which accounts for the majority of the Nile's flow after converging with the White Nile in Sudan – Egypt could lose a quarter of its water.

"It will be a disaster for Egypt," Allam said. "Large areas of the country will be simply taken out of production."

Experts see the greatest peril for Egypt when Ethiopia fills the massive reservoir behind its dam, a process that could begin in 2015 and last as long as six years. Even afterwards, however, the creation of the dam will mean that Egypt no longer has direct control over its primary water source, a troubling prospect for a country that receives negligible rainfall and is considered the world's largest oasis.

Allam said Egypt should try to persuade Ethiopia to lower the 168-metre height of the dam, which would mitigate the effect. Ultimately, he said, international powers, including the United States, may be called in to help mediate.

The US state department has said that Egypt and Ethiopia, both American allies, should resolve the dispute through dialogue. But that dialogue would come at a time when Ethiopia's influence in the region appears to be rising and Egypt's is waning.

Hani Raslan, who heads the Nile Basin studies department at Cairo's al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, said it is no coincidence that Ethiopia announced plans to massively expand the dam and forge ahead with its construction just weeks after Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was ousted in early 2011.

"Ethiopia has aspirations to be a regional power at Egypt's expense," Raslan said. "It is taking advantage of the instability after the revolution, especially now that there's a weak Muslim Brotherhood president with no experience whatsoever who is not in sync with the institutions of the state."

That's a common sentiment on the streets of Egypt, and on the Nile, where fishermen, farmers and boat operators remember the country's pre-revolutionary history with a heavy dose of nostalgia.

"When Mubarak was running the country, we didn't hear about electric outages or fuel shortages. And no one would dare say that they would cut the water of Egypt," said Abdel Arabi, 39, who sat on a tour boat watching sundown's rays glint off the Nile as birds swooped in for the evening's final catch.

For Abdel Aziz, a 45-year-old farmer, Ethiopia's plans mean that his extended family of 28, which supports itself on a 10th-of-a-hectare plot of corn, okra and eggplant fields, may go hungry.

"The water goes down, and it goes up," he said. "But now it may go lower and never come back again."

If it does, he said, there's no question of the outcome: "An even bigger revolution, worse than the last one."

This article appeared in Guardian Weekly, which incorporates material from the Washington Post

• Ethiopia
• Africa
• Egypt
• Water

Griff Witte
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Government subsidies raising interest in renewables, but higher bills could complicate Shinzo Abe's economic recovery plan

Across Japan, technology companies and private investors are racing to install devices that until recently they had little interest in: solar panels. Massive solar parks are popping up as part of a rapid build-up that one developer likened to an "explosion."

The boom was sparked by a little-noted government policy, implemented nearly a year ago, that guaranteed generous payments to anybody selling renewable energy, including solar power. Because of that policy, known as a feed-in tariff, investors and analysts say Japan has become one of the world's fastest-growing users of solar energy. This year alone, Japan is forecasted to install solar panels with the capacity of five to seven modern nuclear reactors.

Before the 2011 meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, Japan had all but neglected renewable energy, instead emphasising atomic power. But the accident at Fukushima forced the shuttering of the country's 50 operable reactors, only two of which have been restarted. The remaining shutdowns could prove temporary, with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pledging restarts of reactors that have been deemed safe. A majority of Japanese, though, remain opposed to atomic energy, and analysts say the solar takeoff highlights Japan's appetite for other options.

There is a downside to the rush for renewables: they are several times pricier than nuclear power or fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas. The rising use of solar power means energy bills will spike, potentially complicating Abe's plan to jump-start Japan's long-foundering economy.

Most consumers, so far, think that sacrifice is worthwhile, and they say nuclear power has hidden cleanup and compensation costs that only emerge after an accident. Fossil fuels, meanwhile, release greenhouse gasses and must be imported. People here tended to support clean energy projects even before the nuclear disaster, but now there is "more interest in natural energy," said Moriaki Yoshikawa, the head of an environmental NGO, Eco Plan Fukui, which has helped build five solar plants in a region of Japan that hosts four nuclear plants.

This year, Japan's total solar capacity – 7.4GW at the end of 2012 – is set to roughly double, Bloomberg New Energy Finance said in a recent report. Such growth would make Japan the second-fastest growing solar market behind China and leave it only behind Germany and Italy as measured by total installed capacity. A gigawatt can supply power to an estimated 250,000 homes.

The feed-in tariff is the legacy of Naoto Kan, prime minister at the time of the Fukushima disaster, who decided after the meltdowns that atomic power was too dangerous for this earthquake prone-country. So Kan made a deal with the opposition party. He'd resign only after Japan's parliament co-operated to pass several bills including a renewable energy bill that established the tariff. Japan, Kan said, should boost renewables to account for about one-fifth of Japan's energy mix by the 2020s. At the moment, they account for about 10%, most of that coming from hydroelectric sources.When it comes to energy, Kan said at the time, Japan needs to "start from scratch."

The tariff, launched in July, obligates utility companies to buy electricity from renewable sources - solar, wind and geothermal, for example - at fixed prices. In most cases, the utility companies are buying the renewable-generated power from private individuals and companies. European countries have used similar tariffs to spur clean energy booms, with the hope that widespread installation will drive innovations and lower prices for solar technology.The feed-in tariff is fixed at an artificially high price, specifically to encourage start-up investment. The investors, in many cases, aren't cutting-edge technology firms, but instead farmers, lumber companies and local governments. Once they install solar panels, they also moonlight as little power-generation companies.

Under the terms of the tariff, they sell their renewable-generated energy to the local utility company at rates guaranteed for 20 years. The rates vary depending on the source, but solar is the most generous. When the tariff was first unveiled, sellers could get 42 yen per kilowatt hour - about twice the rate in Germany and France.

Japan recently cut that rate by 10%, a change that applies to new projects, not those underway. But analysts say the reduction is unlikely to slow interest among solar developers.

"The government is sort of adding a bonus percentage to spark the market," said Travis Woodward, a Tokyo-based Bloomberg New Energy Finance analyst. "The downside is definitely that [consumers] are paying for it. It's great to introduce all this, but it's going straight on your electricity bill."

Even before the tariff was introduced, Japan had among the world's highest energy costs. If 15GW of already-approved solar projects come online, those bills could increase 5%, Woodward said.

Among the projects underway, Lawson, a convenience-store chain, is setting up panels on several thousand of its store rooftops. On a remote island that's a part of the Kyushu chain, developers are beginning work on a massive 400-megawatt solar park that will transmit energy to the regional utility company through underwater lines.

Much of the solar development comes from midsize projects, run by companies that operate large industrial buildings. Last December, one such company, SxL, an Osaka-based home builder, began blanketing the rooftop of its factory with Kyocera-made solar panels - 5,166 in total. Engineers then installed transmission lines that in March began sending energy to Tokyo Electric Power Co., operator of the Fukushima plant.

"They take all of it," said Takashi Kawasaki, the factory manager.

Kawasaki pointed to a flat-screen panel at the entrance of the factory office, installed to display data on the solar generation. On this partly sunny day, by lunchtime, the company had generated 2,355 kilowatts.

And for that, it would receive a profit of nearly 100,000 yen, or about $1,000.

• Yuki Oda also contributed to this report

This article appeared in Guardian Weekly, which incorporates material from the Washington Post

• Japan
• Asia Pacific
• Solar power
• Energy
• Renewable energy

Chico Harlan
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Widespread killing of elephants threatens economic prosperity and rule of law, warns African Development Bank

The massacre of elephants has gone beyond being a problem for animal rights activists. It now concerns international institutions and governments at the highest level because it is perceived as a threat to political and economic stability in central Africa.

Last month, the matter drew the attention of the African Development Bank in Marrakech, at an annual assembly that was also attended by African finance ministers. The bank's president, the Rwandan economist Donald Kaberuka, presented a global action plan addressing the problem along with the World Wildlife Fund.

"This is not just an environmental problem," according to the bank's Marrakech Declaration. "The violence and damage now threaten peace and the rule of law, as well as the revenue many African countries earn from tourism and other wildlife uses; some of the poorest and most vulnerable communities suffer ... wildlife trafficking thwarts governments' efforts to stop other illicit trades, such as arms and drugs. It fuels organised crime and corruption, and compromises regional security."

Kaberuka asked the finance ministers at the meeting to strengthen customs controls as a first step, saying these were key to dismantling smuggling networks.

The matter has also reached the UN. Last month, the UN secretary general presented a report to the security council on concerns about the links between poaching and the "criminal or even terrorist networks threatening the stability of central Africa". The most vulnerable countries were said to be Cameroon, which has deployed army patrols in its northern national parks, the Central African Republic, Chad and Gabon.

The report said that "the illegal ivory trade may currently constitute a major source of funding for armed groups", quoting the example of the Lord's Resistance Army. It also expressed concerns that poachers are using ever more sophisticated and powerful weapons, some of which, it is believed, may be originating from the political fallout in Libya.

The plan proposed by the African Development Bank in Marrakech recommends strengthening the resources of anti-poaching patrols, monitoring the strict application of the laws and increasing the penalties imposed on the traffickers.

These ideas are not new. Both the diagnosis and the cure have been known for many years. An action plan for African elephants was adopted in 2010 with $600,000 from China, France, Germany, the Netherlands and South Africa. "Now we need a commitment at the highest level, since that alone will enable us to contain this crisis," said Jim Leape, director general of WWF's international secretariat.

Some 30,000 elephants were killed in 2011, nearly 8% of the total elephant population in Africa, and the number has been rising steadily since 2006. The present levels are the highest since the 1989 moratorium on the ivory trade.

Gabon alone has lost 60% of its elephant population in the past decade and has already taken action. In Marrakech, Gabon's president, Ali Bongo Ondimba, proposed setting up an emergency task force that could intervene as soon as any large-scale poaching occurred in one of the countries. In mid-May Gabonese forces were sent to the Central African Republic to help defend the Dzanga-Sangha national park after an attack on elephants there.

"It is important to intervene before the situation gets out of control. Otherwise we know that there is a great risk of entering a spiral that ultimately leads to the creation of a new conflict zone," said Lee White, the executive secretary of Gabon's National Parks Agency.

Gabon has also suggested greater co-operation in training between the various national animal protection agencies, and providing "ecoguards" in the weakest countries.

The Gabonese president urged the establishment of a support fund for the widows and orphans of those guards. "Trafficking has become more and more violent and traffickers no longer hesitate before shooting any rangers who cross them," said White, who estimates the total cost of these actions at $15m a year.

Ondimba, who is working to get more international co-operation in the fight against wildlife trafficking, announced the action plan in an effort to spur progress on the matter at the next UN annual national assembly in September. But as the WWF's Leape put it: "Ivory trafficking is a two-headed monster. Targeting the poachers won't be enough if, at the same time, we don't deal with the countries providing an opening for this trade."

This article appeared in Guardian Weekly, which incorporates material from Le Monde

• Africa
• Animals
• Animal welfare
• WWF
• United Nations
• Cameroon
• Central African Republic
• Chad
• Gabon

Laurence Caramel
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China's urbanisation is the biggest and fastest social movement in human history – but it involves unsustainably sprawling cities

Chairman Mao would have hated it: he believed in keeping peasants in the countryside, toiling to produce food and to finance industrial development. Now, after nearly two decades of rapid urbanisation, China's official and unofficial city dwellers outnumber its farmers and more will have to move. By 2025 the government wants 70% of its people to live in towns. To achieve this, 250 million people will have to move in the next 12 years.

Overall, China's urbanisation counts as the biggest and fastest social movement in human history, but many questions hang over a plan that is turning Chinese society on its head. Some of them revolve around money. One legacy of Mao Zedong's version of social engineering is the hukou, a permit held by every Chinese citizen that determines where he or she is domiciled. In Mao's day, the hukou tied peasants to the land. Today, it locks migrant workers into a disadvantaged underclass, allowed to work in cities but not to enjoy the right of residence that would give them access to health or education.

This system gives the cities the benefit of cheap migrant labour without any of the associated costs, but it is widely recognised as unfair and in urgent need of reform. It makes for a precarious life for migrant workers, who often leave parents and children behind on the land – their only security – while they work in town for the cash wages that farming denies them. If China's new city dwellers are to become the consuming middle classes that China needs for its next stage of development, they will need the same privileges as existing urbanites, but who will pay for the new schools and hospitals?

Most of China's local towns and cities have little in the way of tax revenue: they have financed themselves in recent decades by seizing land from the farmers – one of the main causes of social unrest in the countryside – and developing it for commercial use, financing the development with debt secured against inflated property values. The true scale of these debts is worryingly unclear, but there is little argument that further urbanisation will depend on the reform of local government finance. That will most likely result in an urban property tax, a development that the new property-owning middle classes are not likely to welcome.

This model of financing has created other problems: it has swallowed up precious farmland and created sprawling cities whose inhabitants depend on cars and buses to get around. This means long commutes for workers and rapidly climbing carbon emissions, as well as the choking pollution and congestion that bedevils most Chinese cities. Planners have neglected essential urban infrastructure and many of China's major cities lack such basics as adequate sewerage systems. The design of China's cities has become an important obstacle to the effort to contain China's soaring contribution to climate change. If China is to become the kind of sustainable society envisaged in the 12th Five Year Plan, it would be wise to stop building Chinese versions of Los Angeles and copy Copenhagen instead.

If China does reach its urbanisation target, it will be a very different society in just 12 years. Few societies have undergone such rapid upheaval without consequences and the impacts in China will extend beyond the short-term social and economic shifts. In the past five years, China's urban middle classes have been willing to take to the streets in large numbers when they feel their interests are threatened, be it by unwelcome industrial development too close to their newly acquired property, or to challenge corrupt or inept local planning.

The security forces generally deal harshly with protests in the countryside, but the government treats city dwellers with more circumspection. Their demands for clean air and safe water, and for protection against noxious chemical plants, have spilled over into complaints about lack of accountability and transparency in government and insistence on more share in decision making. At every level, the government has been forced into concessions. In some residential developments, citizens have formed democratically elected committees that begin by regulating life within the development, but often go on to make demands of their political leaders.

China's rulers can see the economic benefits of becoming an urban society. The political results may be less welcome.

• China
• Urbanisation
• Asia Pacific

Isabel Hilton
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Top executive Astro Teller calls innovation unit 'moonshot factory of Peter Pans with PhDs kind of running amok'

Google's innovation unit Google X is working on a green energy project which its top executive Astro Teller believes could "have an important part to play in the future of the world energy production".

The alternative wind turbine project, which Google executives are still fine tuning, is likely to be one of the next projects coming out of the Google X, which Teller described as a "moonshot factory" of "Peter Pans with PhDs all kind of running amok".

The latest "moonshot" innovation from Google X follows hot on the heels of Google's Project Loon, its experimentation with solar-panelled balloons to bring Wi-Fi to remote regions of Africa and the Asia Pacific. Google Glass also emanated from Google X.

Google is working with Makani Power, the Californian start-up wind-power company it recently acquired, on the project, which uses complicated robotics to generate electricity.

Speaking at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity on Tuesday, Teller said: "We recently announced that we have purchased a company called Makani Power. You get one of these 300 tonnes wind turbines, 300 tonnes of steel. You only get power through tips of blades, just circulating in space. What if the little tips circle in space without the 300 tonnes of steel – wouldn't that be awesome?

"If you had a long tether attached to blades, you can generate power by this specifically designed tether. This technology exists. We believe there is some possibility, because this is so much radically cheaper and easier to deploy than a normal wind turbine that it may have an important part to play in the future of world energy production. That's the technology story."

Of the Google X project, generally, Teller said: "I have this incredible collection of Peter Pans with PhDs all kind of running amok, who are very productive in a sort of loosely organised way. But if you hold on too tight and turn it into something organised the magic will leave the building.

"But if there is no oversight, then the magic will also leave the building. So I've come to this phrase for my story of what I am doing and what Google can become, which is a Moonshot factory, because of tension between Peter Pan and PhD."

Teller said he believed that a likely innovation within the next 20 to 30 years will be the creation of "factories for ideas", virtual factories which will produce "new ideas in every domain".

• Cannes Lions 2013
• Advertising
• Cannes Lions
• Energy
• Google

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Targets including 30% reduction in emissions from heavily polluting industries are to be introduced

China's cabinet has outlined measures aimed at improving the country's air pollution problems, which have plagued many of its larger cities over recent years.

One of the main measures, announced in state media over the weekend, is a target to reduce emissions from heavily polluting industries by 30% by the end of 2017. In statement after a meeting chaired by Premier Li Keqiang, the State Council said there would be "tough measures for tough tasks".

In January and February 2013 air pollution levels in the capitial Beijing and a number of other cities rose to what are believed to have been record levels. Dubbed the 'airpocalypse', Beijing was shrouded in a thick cloud of smog. On more than one occasion the US embassy in the city, which monitors air quality and publishes the results on a Twitter feed, described the levels as "beyond index".

The new measures do not outline which industries would be included in the 30% target. However, in February in response to the air pollution crisis and a high level of public outcry, the government announced that six heavily polluting industries including iron and steel, cement and petrochemicals would have to comply with "special" emission limits from the start of March. Details of the limits were unclear.

Another of the new measures announced is to "enhance control" of PM2.5 pollution, which are fine particulates that measure less than 2.5 microns in diameter. The Chinese authorities only started to measure this type of pollution in Beijing in October 2012. This type of pollution is considered particularly dangerous to health as the fine particles can lodge deep within the lungs and enter the bloodstream. The statement said that a ranking of air quality in major cities should be made public.

Ten measures were outlined by the State Council including:

Emergency response plans to be carried out by local governments during periods of bad pollution which include restricting traffic and limiting emissions from industry.

"Strict controls" for heavily polluting industries that are looking to expand.

Ensuring that construction projects pass environmental evaluations before they are given permission to go ahead.

Previously concerns have been raised about the enforcement of environmental policies and regulations by local officials. Under the new measures, the State Council said that local governments will be held accountable and their performance assessed on reducing air pollution.

The statement acknowledged that air pollution is an increasingly "conspicious and discussed problem". It also stated that:

"Curbing air pollution is a complicated and systematic project that requires long and arduous efforts."

The Chinese administration under President Xi Jinping has pledged to deal with the problem of pollution. Earlier this in June, Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli in a speech at the Fortune Global Forum in Chengdu said the government would take action, especially in relation to reducing PM2.5 pollution.

He said:

"We will attach greater importance to addressing problems resulting from environmental pollution, and strike a proper balance between optimizing economic structure, boosting development that is driven by science and technological innovation, and conserving resources and protecting the environment. We are determined to make long-term and unremitting efforts to solve the problem."

Meanwhile, Greenpeace has released results of tests they carried out earlier in 2013 on air pollution in Beijing to analyse what it contained. The analysis was carried out during one of the worst periods of air pollution in the capital. They found that the concentration of arsenic in the PM2.5 particles in Beijing's air contained a concentration of arsenic that is "above the norm".

The study found:

the average daily concentration median of heavy metal arsenic in Beijing's PM2.5 was 23.08 nanograms per metre cubed. According to Ambient Air Quality Standards issued in February 2012, the annual mean reference concentration limit value is 6 ng/m3, meaning the concentration detected during the course of this research is 3.85 times the limit. During heavy pollution days, the concentration median reached 34.68 ng/m3, and the highest average daily concentration during this period reached 70.91 ng/m3.

It also found that for four days during the 15-day testing period the concentration of cadmium rose above the annual limit value and two days in which lead concentration rose above the limit level.

Beijing did not fare well in comparison to other cities around the world:

Compared to previous research, the arsenic concentration of PM2.5 in Beijing is constantly at a high level. And while the levels of this period are lower than previous, it is still significantly higher than other international cities.

• Pollution
• China

Jennifer Duggan
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Labor appears to have backed away from laws granting greater federal powers to protect Australia's national parks

Environmental groups have forecast a huge public backlash to proposed logging, shooting and prospecting within national parks, after the government backed away from adding federal oversight to conservation areas.

The Greens put forward an amendment to a government bill – on protecting water tables from coal seam gas drilling – that would have given the commonwealth greater power to protect national parks.

Under the current the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, the federal government can intervene only if an endangered species, heritage area or place of "national significance" is affected by development.

It is understood a proposal by federal environment minister Tony Burke to include a national parks trigger was rejected at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday night.

A spokesperson for Burke said that the government supports its bill "as it stands" and that separate 2011 proposals, which would have brought most national parks under the commonwealth's remit, were "still under consideration".

Environmentalists have pushed for greater federal involvement in national parks due to their dismay at pro-development decisions made by state governments.

Last year, the New South Wales government said it would open up 77 of its national parks and reserves to amateur hunters to shoot feral animals, despite concerns over the safety to people.

The Queensland government is conducting a review of all protected areas put aside since 2002, with a view to allow logging in certain parks, while the Victorian government has introduced 99-year private leases for tourism development in all of its national parks.

Lyndon Schneiders, national campaign director of the Wilderness Society, said that the public was strongly against the erosion of national parks.

"Millions of people use national parks," he said. "Governments that are driving these changes to realise commercial opportunities don't really realise they are biting their constituents. Most people out there can't really believe what is happening is real and that it is being allowed to happen. The backlash is already there and it's only going to get bigger.

"The individual impacts of each development are bad, but what's most disturbing is that there is now a section of politics that has decided that national parks aren't worth it. This is a lost opportunity because the states have shown they can't be trusted. We've encouraged the government to do something on this for three years, but they've dragged their heels and now they are barely functioning. This is a skirmish in what will be a much longer debate around nature conservation. We are at a crossroads moment about how we best protect national parks and other areas."

Matt Ruchel, executive director of the Victorian National Parks Association, said he was "disappointed" by the lack of federal oversight.

"If the states go feral and undermine the integrity of national parks, who else will provide the checks and balances but the federal government?" he asked.

"National parks are the cornerstone of conservation. They are well respected by the Australian community, they are a major draw card every day of the year, they clean air and water and draw carbon from the atmosphere.

"Up until recently, protecting national parks was a bipartisan issue. I don't understand why there's been a shift away from that approach. It's deeply concerning."

• National parks
• Australian politics
• Australia
• Conservation
• Wildlife
• Animals

Oliver Milman
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World Heritage Committee says reef will be listed as threatened ecosystem unless government takes steps to protect it

The Great Barrier Reef will be listed as a threatened ecosystem by the United Nations from June next year unless the government follows a series of recommendations to protect it, the World Heritage Committee has decided.

The committee, meeting in Cambodia, largely stood by a draft report it released in May, which noted "concern" at the "limited progress" in halting coastal development and other threats to the reef.

A separate committee concern over the "lack of clarity" around water quality was amended, after the federal government pledged $200m in the May budget for the continuation of its "reef rescue" program, which aims to reduce the amount of agricultural chemicals flowing into the reef.

The government has also produced, as the committee requested, an updated "scorecard" on the reef.

However, the rest of the committee's draft report findings were passed at the Cambodia meeting, effectively putting the government on notice that the Great Barrier Reef will join Unesco's "in danger" list at its next annual meeting if improvements are not made.

The committee is concerned that the Queensland and federal governments have made "no clear commitment toward limiting port development to existing port areas". The report also urges Australia to ensure that the expansion of existing ports does not damage the "outstanding universal value" of the reef.

More than 150 Australian and international scientists signed a letter on the eve of the World Heritage meeting calling for urgent action to safeguard the reef.

Critics claim proposed expansion of coal and gas export terminals, such as at Townsville, and new major new export developments, such as Abbot Point, will hurt coral, turtles, dugongs and other wildlife through increased shipping and waste from dredging.

Meanwhile, the Queensland government, which has previously referred to itself as being "in the coal business", has also attacked the federal government for being too closely aligned to green groups and risking jobs and investment to the state.

Tony Burke, the federal environment minister, said he was pleased that the committee had recognised progress that Australia had made on managing the reef.

"The Great Barrier Reef is an iconic environmental asset and the Australian government is absolutely committed to the protection of the reef and our oceans. It's one of the most precious places on Earth," he said.

"I am pleased that the final report takes into account more recent commitments by the government to safeguard the reef including a further $200m for the next stage of Reef Rescue.

"The Australian government is also pleased that the decision recognises the progress Australia has made on the comprehensive strategic assessment, including important new research which will help ensure that the reef is protected in accordance with the best available science.

"There are a number of threats facing the reef, including climate change, coastal developments, agricultural runoff, ocean acidification and outbreaks of the crown-of-thorns starfish. We are working to address each of these, on land and in the ocean."

A spokesperson for Greg Hunt, the shadow environment minister, said that an incoming Coalition government would focus on reducing the pollution that damages the reef.

"We welcome the acknowledgement of the improvements in water management on the reef," the spokesperson said. "It is an important responsibility of the Australian government and in that context it was disappointing that Minister Burke had delayed the re-commitment to the Reef Rescue funding."

"If elected, the Coalition will implement a Reef 2050 plan with a focus on water quality and increased action to address run-off and the subsequent threat posed by the Crown of Thorns."

Greens senator Larissa Waters, whose bill to halt new developments beside the reef was rejected by the government, said that urgent action was now needed to avoid the 'in danger' listing.

"The old parties are letting the big mining companies treat the Great Barrier Reef as a dumping ground for dredge spoil and a shipping super highway and the world is watching and sending a clear warning that this is simply unacceptable," she said.

"The Queensland and federal governments now have a year to act on the World Heritage Committee's recommendations to save the Great Barrier Reef from being added to the list of sites in danger."

• The Great Barrier Reef
• Australia
• Marine life

Oliver Milman
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A pro-wind energy advert paid for by actonfacts.org aimed at promoting wind energy and combating the 'myths dictating our future'

Meteorologists and scientists to try to figure out if icy winters and wet summers are due to natural variation or climate change

Leading scientists and meteorologists are meeting at the Met Office to discuss the UK's unusual weather patterns in recent years.

Experts will discuss the reasons for 2010's icy winter, last year's washout summer and this year's spring, which is set to be the coldest in more than 50 years.

Discussions at the Met Office in Exeter on Tuesday will seek to answer whether the unusual seasons were the result of natural variation or linked to the effects of climate change, such as melting Arctic sea ice.

Stephen Belcher, head of the Met Office Hadley Centre and chairman of the workshop, said: "We have seen a run of unusual seasons in the UK and northern Europe, such as the cold winter of 2010, last year's wet weather and the cold spring this year.

"This may be nothing more than a run of natural variability, but there may be other factors impacting our weather. For example, there is emerging research which suggests there is a link between declining Arctic sea ice and European climate – but exactly how this process might work, and how important it may be among a host of other factors, remains unclear.

"The Met Office is running a workshop to bring together climate experts from across the UK to look at these unusual seasons, the possible causes behind them, and how we can learn more about those drivers of our weather."

The meeting will assess the research done so far and discuss what needs to be studied in the future to get a better idea of what could be causing the weather extremes.

Earlier this month the Met Office said below-average temperatures through March, April and May made it the fifth coldest spring in national records dating back to 1910 and the coldest spring since 1962.

Provisional findings show the UK's mean temperature for the season was 6C (42.8F), while March was "exceptionally" cold, averaging 2.2C.

• Weather
• Met Office
• Meteorology
• Climate change

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Radio presenter Alan Jones acknowledges turnout of around 150 demonstrators was lower than expected

Lenore Taylor

Ministers give license to those threatening to derail Europe's efforts to tackle the world's most difficult environmental problem

The parliamentary debate on the energy bill resumes in the Lords on Tuesday and is set to be distorted by a small but influential group of global warming contrarians. This group arrogantly believe they have a better understanding of the complicated science of climate change than the vast majority of leading scientists in the field.

David Cameron meanwhile has sadly promoted other members of this reckless gang of deniers to positions of influence. Hence, we briefly had avowed sceptic and hater of windfarms, John Hayes, as energy minister. We still have an environment secretary, Owen Paterson, who declared on the BBC's Any Questions that climate change was not real, and Michael Gove appears to be systematically removing its teaching from the education syllabus.

The mood in the Conservative party, no doubt influenced by the rise of Ukip, is now so anti-science and irrational, that the new part-time energy minister, Michael Fallon, recently dismissed climate change as "theology". Small wonder investors in the low-carbon economy are spooked.

How has this come to pass? The answer is the same as for many issues the government is handling so badly: party leaders pandering to a small coterie of insiders. The public and large parts of industry remain strongly supportive of efforts to tackle climate change, despite the best efforts of some in the media to muddy the waters of scientific evidence. Ministers are giving license to those threatening to derail not just our own efforts to tackle the world's most difficult environmental problem but also those of the rest of Europe.

Although the LibDems are supposed to be having a moderating effect, the bill still has many flaws – and the scars of battles with the Treasury are evident. The proposed legislation does include some interesting, if undeveloped, ideas around supporting investments to reduce and better manage energy demand. But it is also very difficult to get a sense of the overall impact of the plans as they now stand.

Resolving one key issue would help bring some clarity about the overall purpose: whether or not a target should now be set, for significantly reducing carbon emissions from the power sector by 2030? The vote on a cross-party amendment in the Commons was only narrowly defeated. If in the Lords, the LibDems follow their own party policy, set only last year, a similar vote could be won. This would allow MPs to reconsider their position, and restore investors' confidence that there is a clear future investment path they need to follow.

Over the next few months, the bill will come under heavy scrutiny in Lords Committee, during which time more detail on the new market arrangements should emerge. Not least, information of on-going negotiations with EDF Energy, whose desire to build new nuclear reactors in the UK was the original impetus for the legislation. New nuclear is necessary and Labour supports the project – but not at any price.

Had we started out on this round of energy reform focused on how best to keep electricity affordable while addressing its environmental impacts, we would be working on a very different bill. One with clarity of purpose and a strong regulatory framework to protect consumers, with market forces then harnessed to dictate the solutions through increased competition.

Labour peers and others will work to ensure the final version of the bill enables the next Labour government to deliver on these outcomes. Then, hopefully, the hiatus in investment and the current culture of uncertainty in the sector will finally come to an end. Yes, the vocal minority opposing action on climate change will still be present at Parliament. But at least there will no longer be any risk of them being made ministers.

• Bryony Worthington is Labour's shadow energy and climate change minister in the Lords

• Energy
• Climate change scepticism
• Climate change
• Climate change
• Green politics

Bryony Worthington
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Citizens Climate Lobby aims to organize the public to create pressure behind a carbon fee and dividend system

Although a majority of Americans support taking action to address the threat of climate change, thanks mainly to opposition from conservative elected officials, US Congress has failed to implement climate legislation. Canada faces a similar situation where elected officials pay lip service to the climate threat, but have not taken any significant concrete steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Quite the opposite in fact; the Canadian government has made the exploitation of the Alberta tar sands a top priority, even though this development would make it nearly impossible for Canada to meet any sort of greenhouse gas emissions reduction target.

The situation appears similar to the efforts to implement gun regulations in the US, where 90 percent of Americans supported background checks, and yet this near-universal support was insufficient to convince most conservatives in Congress to vote for the legislation. In both cases, the influence of special interest appears to trump the will of the majority of citizens.

The question for those who understand the threat and urgency of climate change is then how to change this political calculus – how to close the gap between the will of the majority and the actions of Congress. Into this void steps a group called Citizens Climate Lobby (CCL). This group was formed with a very specific goal in mind – to organize and empower citizens to advocate for a carbon fee and dividend system.

Carbon subsidies and pricing

Putting a price on carbon emissions is a key climate solution. Failing to price carbon emissions is effectively a massive subsidy, estimated at about $800 billion per year globally by a recent International Monetary Fund report. However, that estimate was based on a carbon damages cost that was recently revised upwards by about 50% by the US government after incorporating updated economic modeling. Using conservative assumptions, global subsidies for the climate costs of carbon emissions now exceed $1.1 trillion per year, and may be much higher.

The absence of a carbon price to account for those costs is a failure of the free market. It prevents citizens from making informed purchasing decisions, because the actual costs of the products they buy are not accurately reflected in their market prices. When it comes to climate costs, American and Canadian consumers are flying blind. Unfortunately we can't avoid paying the costs of climate damage forever, and they are reflected in effects like rising food prices when crops are decimated by extreme weather like heat waves and droughts, with contributions from human-caused climate change.

Why carbon fee and dividend?

CCL pushes specifically for a carbon fee and dividend, which taxes carbon emissions, collects and divides up that revenue, and gives 100% of it back to citizens. Most people get the same or more money back as dividends as they pay in higher energy prices, but they would make even more money by using less fossil fuel energy.

CCL advocates for the fee and dividend approach for two main reasons. First, it's probably the simplest carbon pricing option. The carbon fee would be implemented at the point of entry (well, mine, or port), and we already have a system in place to return the dividend to citizens during annual tax filings. Second, it's probably the most feasible option to implement, from a practical and political standpoint. The dividend offsets the cost of the carbon fee for most people, so there is minimal financial impact on the public. A carbon fee and dividend system has been implemented in British Columbia since 2008 with great success – the economy is doing well, emissions are down, and citizens have seen no net increase in taxes.

There are also reports that interest in a carbon fee is 'creeping up' among US Senators. Perhaps most importantly from a practical standpoint, as noted in my Op-Ed in the Sacramento Bee with CCL's Mark Reynolds, a number of prominent politically conservative figures support the carbon fee and dividend system. This is critical because the only way to pass any sort of climate legislation is to bring some conservative support on board.

Recently two conservative think tanks, the Heartland Institute (which once again is in the news for all the wrong reasons) and R Street Institute debated the subject of a carbon fee. After the debate, a large majority of the audience of political conservatives and libertarians sided with the R Street Institute in support of a carbon tax.

What Does CCL Do?

CCL trains and supports volunteers to become effective advocates for a carbon fee and dividend system. Whenever a new CCL chapter is created, someone comes to that community and leads a 3-hour workshop to explain how CCL works and gives them the tools they need. CCL holds monthly conference calls, where groups come together to take action and listen to the call. These conference calls can include talks by climate scientists, discussions of recent CCL achievements, and training on important subjects (for example, what to tell a person who argues that American and Canadian climate action is pointless given Chinese emissions growth).

According to CCL Communications Director Steve Valk, the group has grown rapidly, nearly doubling in size every year, now with over 100 chapters, most in the USA and some in Canada. CCL helps its members write and publish articles in local media, and is now generating over 100 published pieces per month like mine in the Sacramento Bee.

CCL also has the support of some big names, with endorsements from climate scientists James Hansen:

and Katharine Hayhoe:

CCL is also exploring the possibility of launching some UK chapters. Although the UK is part of the European carbon cap and trade system, that system is experiencing difficulties, and CCL aims to maintain UK support for carbon pricing.

Fourth Annual Conference and Further CCL Details

CCL is holding its fourth international conference in Washington D.C. on June 23–25, 2013, with James Hansen as the keynote speaker. Its first conference had 25 attendees; they expect 375 this year and ambitiously plan to hold meetings with every Senate and House office during that time.

Ultimately, CCL provides a path through which ordinary citizens who want to do more to solve the climate problem than just clicking online petitions can become involved. The group doesn't require any special skills, just a desire to try and help grease the wheels for climate policy in the USA and Canada, and potentially the UK. CCL provides useful training, but doesn't require a large time commitment from its members. And the group's focus on a single specific climate solution (carbon fee and dividend) provides a helpful focus for its members.

For further information about the group, see the CCL FAQ, follow its local chapters on Facebook and the main group on Twitter, and/or attend its annual conference this weekend.

• Carbon tax
• Climate change
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Dana Nuccitelli
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