Mouths hang open in disbelief at the amount of fish consumed last year.Photo: Sharon Mollerus

“The contribution of fish to global diets has reached a record of almost 17 kilograms [37 pounds] per person [per year] on average, supplying over 3 billion people with at least 15 percent of their average animal protein intake,” the FAO’s report said.

The “State of the World’s Fisheries and Aquaculture” report, published at the FAO’s Rome headquarters, said the increase was due mainly to a surge in fish farming. The report predicts that the number of fish bred for consumption is set to overtake the number caught by fishers.

Overall, fisheries and aquaculture support the livelihoods of an estimated 540 million people, or 8 percent of the world population, the agency said, noting that more people than ever before are employed in or depend on the sector.

“Fish is a good-quality and high-protein food and the sector contributes in an important way to world food security,” said senior FAO fisheries expert Richard Grainger, one of the report’s editors.

“That there has been no improvement in the status of stocks is a matter of great concern,” he said. “The percentage of overexploitation needs to go down, although at least we seem to be reaching a plateau.”

The report explores the growing legal efforts to enforce tighter controls on the fisheries sector, revealing that a recent study estimates the cost of illegal and unreported fishing at $10 billion to $23.5 billion per year.

The FAO report highlights debates surrounding trade measures meant to block illegally caught fish and fish products from international trade. 

The report also discusses a proposal to keep a global record of fishing vessels. Such a system would assign each vessel a unique identifier that would remain constant regardless of ownership or flag changes over time, making it easier to police vessels engaged in illegal fishing activities.

Wines going greener? We’ll toast to that.

“Still in 2011, there are people who do not trust in the fact that it is possible to grow organic in Bordeaux,” said Jean Michel Comme, manager of the 200-acre Chateau Pontet Canet in Pauillac. “As soon as the total estate was organic and biodynamic, we aimed for a certification as a way to prove that we were sincere in our project.”

“This is a return to viticulture in the right direction,” added Xavier Planty, co-owner and director of the first-growth 250-acre Chateau Guiraud estate, recently certified organic.

Wine made from organically grown grapes is generally defined as made without using any synthetic fertilizers, weed killers, or insecticides.

“But organic viticulture is just one step, and it only has meaning if you work the rest of sustainability,” said Planty.

Naysayers have long argued that while Bordeaux’s location on the 45th parallel in southwest France creates ideal conditions for Cabernet and Merlot, it’s also a happy spot for rot, mildew, and voracious insects like grapevine moth that can destroy quality, yields, and ultimately profits.

“We have to put an end to this idea that everyone is beautiful and nature is beautiful,” said Muriel Barthe, technical director at Bordeaux’s wine council. “We have to fight against aggressors. It’s a constant battle.”

Organic grape growers use copper — a traditional method — for fighting mildew, but Barthe nixes that as an option for Bordeaux.

“Copper is a heavy metal and we know it’s toxic for the soil,” she said. “We are not going to go backwards.”

As of 2010, 343 wine estates in the Gironde, where Bordeaux appellations dominate, practice organic viticulture. Some 5,560 acres are in conversion and 4,537 are already certified. More could be on the horizon.

Last year, Bordeaux’s wine council began a pilot sustainability program with 25 winegrowers, cooperatives, and negociants with the objective of achieving ISO 14001 certification. One year later, they have 250 new candidates.

“It’ll go fast,” predicted Barthe.

Vineyards are cutting down on harmful chemicals and metals and going organic.Photo: umamiFrontrunners such as Planty and Comme show evidence that low yields and a holistic approach allow them to avoid using low levels of copper, and eliminate the pesticides that could endanger workers’ health.

“It’s true that organic viticulture requires one to accept that the vines re-find a balance with regards to the soil,” Planty said.

“People think they are going to go organic but keep the same industrial production philosophy. That doesn’t work. You have to change the approach,” added Comme. “The industrial system is not sustainable. It’s not economical. It survives with subsidies.”

Both Planty and Comme contend that the lower yields are offset by increased grape quality, which leads to a higher proportion of first-label wines and profitability.

“Pontet Canet is not a potato patch,” said Comme. “I need sufficient yield and quality.”

Furthermore, Comme argues the same model works for less prestigious estates.

“I don’t live in the bubble of grand cru classe estate — I have a little vineyard myself,” said Comme.

Comme’s wife Corinne runs their modest 25-acre organic estate Chateau du Champs des Treilles, and sells their wine for a respectable $10 a bottle.

She now consults with first-growth Chateau Climens in their conversion to organic and biodynamic grape growing, while her husband consults with cru bourgeois Chateau Senejac with 99 acres in conversion.

“There is a real dynamic of development in conversions to organic viticulture,” said Elisabeth Mercier, director of Agence Bio, which certifies the vineyards.

The last holdout against organic grape growing — and the most influential — might not be the winegrower but the consumer.

A recent study from a California environmental economist showed that while quality might improve using organically grown grapes, the retail price dropped once the labeling mentioned organic.

Winegrowers say it is time for consumers to rethink their attitude.

“It seems to be clear that the wines of the estate have gained in aromatic complexity, finesse, and nobility in the quality of tannins,” said Comme.

Ban Ki-moon.

Ban is to redirect his efforts from trying to push forward the international climate change negotiations to a broader agenda of promoting clean energy and sustainable development, U.N. officials told The Guardian.

After his deep involvement with the failed Copenhagen summit in 2009, Ban realized world leaders were not going to strike a sweeping agreement on global warming in the next few years, the officials said.

“It is very evident that there will not be a single grand deal at any point in the near future,” said Robert Orr, U.N. assistant secretary-general for strategic planning and a key adviser to Ban.

“Because the circumstances have changed, the nature of his engagement is changing,” Orr added. “The relative balance of his time is shifting toward getting it done on the ground out there.”

The Guardian reported that Ban was ending his hands-on involvement with international climate change negotiations.

But this was played down by U.N. spokesperson Farhan Haq, who told AFP: “That’s not quite the case. He is still involved.”

The paper also said that Ban will not be deeply involved in negotiations leading up to the next U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting at Durban, South Africa, in December 2011.

Despite the shift in focus, Orr insisted that Ban still believed an international agreement on climate change was essential, saying: “We are still going in the same direction.”

Ban has previously said that it would be better to focus on individual areas than on clinching an overall deal. Before the Cancun climate conference last year, he said it would be better to make progress on areas such as financing efforts against climate change and on forestry than on reaching a sweeping agreement.

But, OK, he’s still talking about climate sometimes

Still, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Friday, Ban called on the United States and Europe to take the lead in combating climate change, rather than waiting for others to act.

“This climate change campaign should be led, must be led by developed countries. This has started from industrial revolution, and the United States and European countries they have to be morally, politically responsible,” Ban told world elites gathered at the Davos meeting of the World Economic Forum.

“The United States as a largest economy and superpower, this superpower of the world should take the political will, political leadership, and invest in it,” he added.

The United Nations chief pointed out that Washington should set its own house in order instead of waiting for others to take action. “You have to do your own homework before waiting for others to do.”

There are “psychological games” between the United States and Europe on one side, and China, India, and Brazil on the other, said Ban. “They ask you should do first.”

Making a plea for action on climate change, Ban noted that the world has believed in “consumption without consequences” until now.

“Climate change is showing us that the old model is more than obsolete. It has rendered it extremely dangerous. It is a recipe for natural disaster. It is a global suicide attack,” he charged.

Bingo, man.Photo: John Ott

WASHINGTON — Senators plan to introduce in the coming weeks new legislation aiming to prevent another disastrous oil spill like last year’s massive gusher in the Gulf of Mexico, Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) said Wednesday.

A similar bill that would revise offshore drilling rules had previously been considered but never reached a full Senate vote.

“We must ensure that we have systems in place in our government and in the industry so that this cannot happen again,” said Bingaman, chair of Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. “Beyond that, we should lead the world in development of these systems and technology and not settle for standards that are less rigorous than those of other nations.”

The presidential commission set up to probe the Gulf spill has called for overhauling industry practices and establishing a tough new safety watchdog to avoid a repeat of the Gulf disaster.

“This is a complex and challenging matter. This committee unanimously reported legislation in the 111th Congress [last session] that would take many of the necessary steps,” Bingaman said.

“Since then, the Department of the Interior has taken a number of important actions to address these issues. Nevertheless, I continue to believe that legislative change is necessary to fully ensure safe operations going forward, and intend to introduce legislation again in this Congress.”

Obama’s oil-spill commission — whose chairs Bill Reilly and Bob Graham testified before Bingaman’s Senate committee Wednesday — blamed “systemic” failures in oil-industry safety practices and weakness in regulation for the disaster.

Both must be reformed or an accident like that aboard the Deepwater Horizon might recur, they said.

More density and more public transportation help cities emit less GHG per capita.Photo: Duane Storey

Researchers examined data from 100 cities in 33 nations for clues about which were the biggest polluters and why, according to the report in the peer-reviewed journal Environment and Urbanization.

While cities across the world were to blame for around 71 percent of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions, urban dwellers who can use public transportation rather than drive helped to lower per capita emissions in some cities.

For instance, the sprawling western U.S. city of Denver’s per capita emissions were nearly double those in New York City, home to 8 million inhabitants and a heavily used subway system.

“This is mainly attributable to New York’s greater density and much lower reliance on the automobile for commuting,” said the study.

Denver’s per capita emissions, at 21.5 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e), were sharply higher than Shanghai at 11.2 tCO2e, Paris at 5.2, and Athens at 10.4.

Chinese cities stood out from the rest of the world because their average emissions were far higher — for instance with Beijing emitting 10.1 tCO2e — than the country as a whole, which emits 3.4 tCO2e.

“This reflects the high reliance on fossil fuels for electricity production, a significant industrial base within many cities and a relatively poor and large rural population,” said the study.

Looking at greenhouse gas emissions per GDP, researchers found that “citizens of Tokyo are 5.6 times more efficient than Canadians.”

The port city of Rotterdam in the Netherlands got a particularly bad rap because of its links to shipping and heavy industry.

“Rotterdam’s per capita value of 29.8 tCO2e versus 12.67 tCO2e for the Netherlands reflects the large impact of the city’s port in attracting industry, as well as fuelling of ships,” said the study. “This is similar to cities with busy airports and highlights the need to view the city-based GHG emissions cautiously and holistically.”

Other trends included the tendency for cities in cold climates to have higher emissions, and for poor and middle-income countries to have lower emissions per capita than wealthy countries.

When researchers looked at cities in Asia, Latin America, and Africa, they found low emissions per person across the board.

“This paper reminds us that it is the world’s wealthiest cities and their wealthiest inhabitants that cause unsustainable levels of greenhouse gas emissions, not cities in general,” said editor David Satterthwaite, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Environment and Development. “Most cities in Africa, Asia, and Latin America have low emissions per person. The challenge for them is to keep these emissions low even as their wealth grows.”

An analysis of three neighborhoods in Toronto found that the highest emissions came from the suburbs, where streets are lined with large single family homes that are far from commercial centers.

The lowest levels of emissions came from areas with apartment complexes in walking distance to shopping and transit.

If A Tree Falls tracks the rise and fall of an Earth Liberation Front cell.

If A Tree Falls, by Oscar-nominated director Marshall Curry, traces how the group, known for setting fires to draw attention to their cause, became a more intense target for the FBI after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

“Obviously 9/11 completely changed the way that the public saw what they were doing, the way that some of themselves saw what they were doing, and the way that the government saw what they were doing,” Curry said in an interview with AFP.

“Suddenly massive amounts of money and resources are devoted to fight terrorism. You know, there’s a saying that if you give a 2-year-old a hammer, he’ll be able to find out how many things he can hammer with. If you give millions of dollars to fight terrorism, you might be surprised by how many things are qualified terrorism.”

Curry, who was nominated for an Academy Award for the 2005 documentary Street Fight became interested in the ELF when he learned that a colleague of his wife’s, Daniel McGowan, was arrested for his involvement in the ELF, a group that had begun in Britain in the 1990s.

The story is told through McGowan, now behind bars in Illinois, who was a member of one of the largest cells of the radical ecologist group.

The ELF, which was made up of numerous autonomous cells around the world, targeted ski resorts, timber companies, SUV dealers, and others to draw attention to the environment, while aiming to avoid any harm to humans or animals.

“Nobody was getting hurt, but it was people who were using fear and intimidation, dangerous arsons in which easily a fireman could be killed, to promote their political views on people they disagree with,” said Curry. “I can understand why, for certain people, it can be considered as terrorism.”

The public perception of the ELF changed after the Sept. 11 attacks, which prompted government officials, including then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, to call the group “domestic terrorists,” according to the filmmaker.

“There were probably people who thought, ‘Okay, we’ve got this terrorism thing, now let’s see what we can fit into that, what else we can get under that umbrella,’” said Curry.

He said Gonzales was able to hold a televised news conference and say “‘We’ve put a halt to domestic terrorism’ … The attorney general of the U.S. would never hold a press conference to say ‘We’ve put a halt on arsons.’”

At the same time, Curry noted that the posture of the government also served to further radicalize the ELF.

“It’s a story of frustration,” he said. Environmental activists had “a feeling of frustration that making protests and writing letters [were] ineffective.”

This led to “a rage at a government which, in some case, uses violence against non-violence protesters. There were a lot of frustrations, which helped radicalize those people,” Curry said.

Watch Curry and codirector Sam Cullman discussing the film:

Further reading:

• Dean Kuipers on how terrorism laws are used to target eco-activists
• An interview with jailed eco-terrorist Jeffrey Luers

Carol Browner, headed for the door.Photo: White House

The departure of Carol Browner comes as passage of major clean energy legislation appeared increasingly unlikely under the new Republican majority controlling the House of Representatives.

“She will stay on as long as necessary to ensure an orderly transition,” Politico quoted a White House official as saying.

“Carol is confident that the mission of her office will remain critical to the president,” the official continued, “and she is pleased with what will be in the [State of the Union address] and in the budget [next month] on clean energy.”

But it’s unclear whether Browner will be replaced or whether her position will be eliminated.

The White House would not immediately comment on the report.

Browner had served as the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for eight years under President Bill Clinton and was at the forefront of the Obama administration’s response to the BP oil spill.

She had played a key role in Obama’s efforts to pass wide-ranging energy legislation with a cap-and-trade program to restrict emissions before the bill died in the Senate last year.

The bill would face even greater hurdles now, with Republicans — who say new regulations on businesses would stifle any economic recovery — in control of the House and an enhanced presence in the Senate.

The British report found that substantial changes to water and energy use are needed to bring about sustainability.Photo: tlindenbaum

Governments must take action to change dietary habits, cut waste, reduce subsidies, and embrace genetically modified food, said the “Global Food and Farming Futures” report out Monday.

The study — led by Professor John Beddington, the British government’s chief scientific adviser — said that with the global population forecast to reach 9 billion in 40 years’ time, radical changes were needed to a system already struggling to feed the existing population.

“With the global population set to rise and food prices likely to increase, it is crucial that a wide range of complementary actions from policy makers, farmers, and businesses are taken now,” Beddington said. “Urgent change is required throughout the food system to bring sustainability center stage and end hunger. It is also vital for other areas, such as climate-change mitigation, conflict, and economic growth.”

The report found that the threat of hunger could increase, saying that current efforts were already stalling and food prices could rise substantially over the next 40 years.

As hunger spreads, the threat of migration and conflict will increase, while wider economic growth would also be affected, it said.

The global food system is already living beyond its means, consuming resources faster than they can be replenished, according to the report.

Substantial changes to water and energy use and action to address climate change are needed to bring about sustainability, the report found.

It also warned that there was “no quick fix” to the problems.

Beddington said the world’s food system was already failing on two counts. “Firstly, it is unsustainable, with resources being used faster than they can be naturally replenished,” he said. “Secondly, a billion people are going hungry with another billion people suffering from ‘hidden hunger’, whilst a billion people are over-consuming. The project has helped to identify a wide range of possible actions that can meet the challenges facing food and farming, both now and in the future.”

Compensation for losses inflicted by human-made global warming would be jaw-dropping, a payout that would make tobacco and asbestos damages look like pocket money.

Imagine: A country or an individual could get redress for a drought that destroyed farmland, for floods and storms that created an army of refugees, for rising seas that wiped a small island state off the map.

In the past three years, the number of climate-related lawsuits has ballooned, filling the void of political efforts in tackling greenhouse-gas emissions.

Eyeing the money-spinning potential, some major commercial law firms now place climate-change litigation in their internet shop window.

Seminars on climate law are often thickly attended by corporations that could be in the firing line — and by the companies that insure them.

But legal experts sound a note of caution, warning that this is a new and mist-shrouded area of justice. Many obstacles lie ahead before a Western court awards a cent in climate damages, and even more before the award is upheld on appeal.

“There’s a large number of entrepreneurial lawyers and NGOs who are hunting around for a way to gain leverage on the climate problem,” said David Victor, director of the Laboratory on International Law and Regulation at the University of California at San Diego. “The number of suits filed has increased radically. But the number of suits claiming damages from climate change that have been successful remains zero.”

Lawsuits in the United States related directly or indirectly almost tripled in 2010 over 2009, reaching 132 filings after 48 a year earlier, according to a Deutsche Bank report [PDF].

Elsewhere in the world, the total of lawsuits is far lower than in the U.S., but nearly doubled between 2008 and 2010, when 32 cases were filed, according to a tally compiled by AFP from specialist sites.

The majority of these cases touch on regulatory issues and access to information, which can have many repercussions for coal, gas, and oil producers and big carbon-emitting industries such as steel and cement.

Billions of potential plaintiffs

“In this area, the floodgates have opened,” said Michael Gerrard, director of the recently opened Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School in New York, who contributed to the Deutsche Bank report.

In the United States, many cases seek clarification on the right of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, while in Europe, the main issue has been emissions quotas allotted to companies in Europe’s carbon market.

In some cases, courts have thrown out the suits, admitted part of them, or declared themselves unfit to issue a ruling and booted the affair to a higher authority.

The legal fog is especially thick when it comes to so-called nuisance suits, which seek to determine blame, and thus open the way to damages.

“There are billions of potential plaintiffs and millions of potential defendants,” said Gerrard. “The biggest problem, though, is causation.”

Gerrard and others pointed out some of the dilemmas for establishing liability, starting with the fact that fossil fuels are used by all of us, in complete legality.

And a molecule of CO2 is no respecter of national boundaries. Gas emitted by a car in Los Angeles or by a coal plant in China will help drive climate damage in South Asia, Europe, the North Pole — anywhere.

Then there is the business of distinguishing between weather and climate. For instance, hurricanes, droughts, and floods have always occurred in human history. Can one, or even several, of these be pinned to human meddling in the climate system?

And there’s a further complication: Rich nations were the first to plunder the coal, oil, and gas that powered the industrial revolution, but they are now being overtaken by China and other fast-growing but still poor giants. So who is to blame? And to what degree?

Some of the wrangling can be seen in a 2006 case in which California sued three U.S. and three Japanese carmakers, arguing that emissions from their vehicles had caused among other things a melting of mountain snow pack on which the state depends for its water.

That case was dismissed by a district court in 2007, which ruled that the issues were “political questions” that should be tackled by the U.S. president and Congress. It also noted that the cars were sold legally, that the car emissions had not violated any current laws or regulations, and that climate change had many contributing factors.

Two other big cases touching on liability have gone to the Supreme Court to adjudicate on competence. In the most eagerly awaited case, whose ruling is expected by the end of June, the state of Connecticut is demanding an injunction against major power companies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

“That will definitely be the big one,” said Gerrard. “Everyone is waiting to hear what the Supreme Court says.”

Christoph Schwarte, a lawyer with the British nonprofit Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development (FIELD), said that even if today’s lawsuits run into the sand, “some of these cases may be winnable in the future.”

“Case law in the future might evolve, and scientists’ claims to determine the percentage of human contribution to certain extreme weather events may be recognized in some way or another.” Today’s lawsuits may also spur thinking about future liability risks among major emitters, Schwarte argued.

Many tobacco and asbestos lawsuits, for instance, hinged on arguments that firms knew their product was dangerous at the time, but concealed this evidence from the public.

“[The lawsuits] create awareness and thus also may have an impact on the actions of governments and corporations,” said Schwarte.

“They also create caution” about what is said in internal documents and emails, he said. “In 15 years’ time, you might not be able to turn around and say, ‘I didn’t know anything about it at the time.’”

More info on climate lawsuits

• A quarter of U.S. climate lawsuits filed since 2001 have been by green groups against coal-fired power plants. Many other suits, filed by activists but also by industrialists, are requesting adjudication on regulation of carbon dioxide emissions by the EPA.

• In Europe, climate cases have focused especially on corporate appeals against Europe’s emissions trading system. A big case was in France, where a law proposing a carbon tax was annulled.
• Other areas of litigation include access to corporate data on emissions, the impact on endangered species, and compensation for climate-related damage.
• Unexplored areas include state-to-state litigation, the legal status of “climate refugees,” and whether island states that become uninhabitable because of rising seas should retain their seat at the U.N. or their rights to the sea bed.
• Compensation claims could theoretically lead to bills in the hundreds of billions of dollars, for those who extract fossil fuels, sell them, and burn them. In the courts, these cases have run into uncertainty about judicial competence and legal responsibility.

Still haven’t gotten enough? Check out:

• Columbia Law School litigation case index [PDF]
• Deutsche Bank report on U
  .S. climate-change litigation [PDF]
• Climate Justice database

Don’t forget to break out the SPF 800.

The trend also helped to melt Arctic sea ice cover to a record low for December last month, the WMO said in a statement.

Last year “ranked as the warmest year on record, together with 2005 and 1998,” the WMO added, confirming preliminary findings released at the global climate conference early December that were based on a 10-month period.

“The 2010 data confirm the Earth’s significant long-term warming trend,” WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud said. “The 10 warmest years on record have all occurred since 1998.”

In 2010, the global average temperature was 0.95 degrees above the 1961 to 1990 mean that is used as a yardstick for climate measurements, according to the WMO, basing itself on a broad set of U.S. and British-collected data.

That exceeded 2005 levels by 0.02 degrees and was 0.05 degrees above the 1998 mark, but within a margin of error that made the difference between the three years statistically insignificant, according to the WMO.

“Arctic sea ice cover in December 2010 was the lowest on record” for the month, the WMO also found.

Sea ice around the northern polar region shrank to an average monthly extent of 4.6 million square miles, 521,000 square miles below the 1979 to 2000 December average, according to the U.N. weather agency.

“There’s no good news with respect to that — the Arctic ice continues to be extremely low,” Jarraud told journalists.

Over the past decade, global temperatures have been the highest ever recorded for a 10-year period since the beginning of instrument-based climate measurements in the mid-19th century.

Last month, even before the year was over, Jarraud confirmed that 2001 to 2010 set a new record as the warmest decade ever.

Recent warming has been especially strong in Africa, parts of Asia, and parts of the Arctic, according to the U.N. agency.

2010 turned out to be “an exceptionally warm year” in much of Africa and southern and western Asia, as well as in Greenland and Arctic Canada, but there were big variations worldwide.

Northern Europe and Australia were significantly cooler than average, with “abnormally cold” conditions for large parts of Western Europe in December, including parts of Scandinavia.

The year was also marked “by a high number of extreme weather events” including Russia’s summer heatwave and the devastating monsoon floods in Pakistan.

The agency says that the temperature observations on their own do not pin the cause on human-made greenhouse gases, although it believes this is confirmed separately by other research into carbon emissions in the atmosphere.

Britain’s Meteorological Office and the University of East Anglia released provisional global figures on Thursday indicating that 2010 was the “second warmest year on record” with a mean temperature of 58 degrees F.

Meanwhile U.S. institutes including NASA have calculated that 2010 was the warmest in global terms. The WMO’s figures were based on data from British and U.S. agencies including the Britain’s Met Office.

“Self-proclaimed climate change ‘sceptics’ may still try to claim that global warming stopped in 1998, but they cannot explain away the fact that nine of the 10 warmest years on record have all occurred since 2000,” said Bob Ward, of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics (LSE).