Discovery of an “Earth-like” has generated a wave of excitement, but our fascination with finding other habitable worlds goes back a long way, argues science fiction writer Robert J Sawyer.

Read full article here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16068171

Marilyn Mason explains why humanists should act together on climate change – and why we need another humanist interest group.

Global Warming

The ground at night - a detail from the H4BW website

“Global warming” might not sound too bad right now, as we come out of one of the coldest winters in recent years to an delightful April sunny spell. But, counter-intuitively perhaps, global warming and the melting of the polar ice-caps, which cause changes to ocean and air currents, appear as likely to cause freezing winters in Britain as they are to intensify desertification in hotter parts of the world and to bring other unpredictable extremes of weather. Globally, we seem to be seeing more of these extremes: not just our unusually snowy winter, but more floods, more droughts, more forest fires.

“Climate chaos” is in fact a more apt description of our future, and the chaos is unlikely to stop at climate. We can expect increasing conflicts over diminishing resources such as oil, land and water, escalating extinctions of wildlife, more frequent humanitarian disasters, and mass migrations of refugees from areas where food crops no longer grow.

The end of this century, when most of us will be safely dead, is often given as the time when a 2 or 4 degree rise in the Earth’s temperature will cause this chaos, but of course it won’t suddenly start then – it will be a gradual process and may already have begun in Africa and Australia and even closer to home. If future humanity and the planet’s ecosystems are to survive in anything like good shape, radical action is needed now.

Acting together and personal choice

Organised Humanism in the UK has been surprisingly slow to take on the ethical challenges of reducing carbon emissions and mitigating climate change. Individual humanists are doubtless doing their bit, convinced by the scientific consensus that things will go very ill for our children and grandchildren, perhaps even for some of us, if we do not change our wasteful life-styles. I’m sure many of us switch off our lights and computers, eat less or no meat, avoid unnecessary travel, cycle, recycle, buy less stuff and local stuff, go on climate change marches, join environmental groups and campaigns, write to our MPs… but we have done little collectively. Why is this?

I can think of several reasons. Firstly, existing humanist organisations have their hands more than full with the day-to-day concerns of their members and the wider non-religious public: the provision of advice and ceremonies for the non-religious, campaigns for recognition and equality, and other domestic issues. The BHA can campaign against faith schools securely supported by its membership, but is there less consensus about human responsibility for climate chaos? the best ways to tackle it? whether it is really happening?

Perhaps it stems from our lack of (or freedom from) individual leadership. Humanism brings together freethinkers, and has no system, democratic, autocratic or sacred, for choosing, or following, personal leaders. Pronouncements from religious leaders on the environment and what their followers should do about it have been coming thick and fast recently (on the coat-tails of science, of course), but humanists have no equivalent figureheads. Many of us would resent being told what to think or do, even about something on which there is overwhelming agreement, including, remarkably, not just scientists but  the world’s politicians. Despite their failure to achieve fair and legally binding agreements at Copenhagen in December 2009 and at Cancun in December 2010, disagreements between world leaders seem to be about how best to mitigate climate change and who should bear the financial burden, not about whether to bother.

For humanists, whether or not to bother about climate change remains a personal choice. Some may in fact prefer the line of “skeptical environmentalist” Bjørn Lomborg that we should focus first on the problems that we can overcome, problems such as poverty, education and hunger, and that the resulting growth in prosperity will then produce environmental solutions; for example, less deforestation, stable populations, and technological advances. But the new humanist interest group Humanists for a Better World (H4BW) recognises that these global problems are indeed interrelated: for example, poverty can exacerbate deforestation and thus increase carbon emissions; education, particularly of girls, can help to stabilise population and thus reduce demands on land and water. Working and campaigning on these issues does not preclude working and campaigning on environmental sustainability, and the environment cannot necessarily wait while we solve these other problems: forests may not recover from the damage we inflict while, say, extending agriculture or growing bio-fuels; extinctions tend to be irreversible; and as developing nations develop out of poverty they pump yet more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, thus accelerating climate chaos. We need to act on all fronts, though not necessarily all of us on all fronts all the time.  H4BW intends to enable and encourage collective and individual humanist action on many of them.

The unique humanist position

Being a humanist should not involve ignoring the fate of people who live far away or who will exist in the future, or indeed the fate of other species; neither should it entail the Pollyanna-ish belief in human perfectibility and inevitable progress that some accuse us of. Progess is certainly not inevitable on most of the issues that H4BW is concerned about, and there are far too many vested interests and too much short-termism around to feel great confidence about solutions emerging in time without considerable pressure for change . Human beings can choose to act for the common good or not, but I hope that enough humanists are concerned enough to be a real presence in environmental campaigns and to add a strong collective voice to the pressure for change.

Humanists can offer something distinctive and constructive to the debates about sustainability, climate change, renewable energy and peak oil. We may well be more rational and far-sighted than most politicians about the economic and human costs of global warming and the investment and actions necessary to mitigate and perhaps ultimately adapt to it. Unlike some “deep greens”, we will not dismiss out of hand the technological solutions that are probably our best hope if we are to have enough food, clean energy and water. Unlike some commentators, we will tend to accept the scientific consensus rather than denying that there is a problem or hoping that it is just part of a natural cycle that will sort itself out or about which we can do nothing. Unlike a few of the more misanthropic environmentalists, we are unlikely to gloat over the mess that humanity has got itself into and rejoice that at least the planet and cockroaches and rats will survive even if we don’t. Unlike some religious believers, we will not oppose family planning or look forward to “end times” and eternal paradise or anticipate rescue by a deity if this life fails.

We know it’s up to us, we surely hope that our children and grandchildren and people in the most vulnerable parts of the world are not going to have lives immeasurably worse than ours, and we know that humanist ethics require us to consider the consequences of our actions – or inaction.

“Four out of five people think that the number of cars in use is having a serious effect on climate and two thirds agree that everyone should reduce their car journeys. These figures apply as much to car drivers as to anyone else. However, the figures suddenly drop when people are asked whether they are willing and able to match words with actions. Less than half said yes to reducing car journeys. Another 12 per cent admitted that they could use the car less, but did not seem willing to. And 23 per cent say that people should be allowed to use their cars as much as they like.” (British Social Attitudes, published January 2008)

I believe that committed humanists are more willing than most to match words with actions, and that together we can help to bring about much needed change and counter any perception that humanists believe the Earth exists just for us to exploit, that there is a “great gap at the heart of …liberal secular humanism”. To do so, humanists need to be more vocal and more visible, and I hope that the new website H4BW.org.uk (still in development) will enable many more of us to be so, and to work together on climate chaos and the other linked global issues. Though Humanists for a Better World will be mainly a virtual community sharing news, ideas and actions, we hope it will occasionally have a physical presence too, as there is always considerable positive interest when humanists appear at demonstrations and meetings, and support from the British Humanist Association will tie us in to existing structures and networks. Do please have a look at the website and take action as and when you can.

Marilyn Mason was a teacher for 20 years before working as Education Officer of the British Humanist Association (BHA) from 1998 to 2006. She is a campaigning member of South West London Humanist group, affiliated to the BHA and co-founder of H4BW.

Lightning dances in Shinmoedake’s volcanic plume, the eruption having already led Japanese authorities to call on those living nearby to evacuate. Seen from Kirishima city, the light shows last only for a few moments, but the ash and rocks fall relentlessly between the prefectures of Miyazaki and Kagoshima.

See more: http://www.boingboing.net/2011/01/31/shinmoedake-erupts-l.html

With the population still growing by about 80 million each year, it’s hard not to be alarmed. Right now on Earth, water tables are falling, soil is eroding, glaciers are melting, and fish stocks are vanishing. Close to a billion people go hungry each day. Decades from now, there will likely be two billion more mouths to feed, mostly in poor countries. There will be billions more people wanting and deserving to boost themselves out of poverty. If they follow the path blazed by wealthy countries—clearing forests, burning coal and oil, freely scattering fertilizers and pesticides—they too will be stepping hard on the planet’s natural resources. How exactly is this going to work?

Robert Kunzig goes on to outline just how the global population grew so quickly, explaining that as in Europe the average woman had six children in the 18th-century, making up for high child mortality rates, and as medical science and social conditions advance it takes time for the population to adjust. In the interim there is a population boom as couples still aim for six births. It’s a pattern which is repeated around the world in different times and places.

Demographers call this evolution the demographic transition. All countries go through it in their own time. It’s a hallmark of human progress: In a country that has completed the transition, people have wrested from nature at least some control over death and birth. The global population explosion is an inevitable side effect, a huge one that some people are not sure our civilization can survive.

It’s a mixed message. The population is still growing, but around the world the rate of growth has decreased since the early 1970s by around 40 percent. That still means the numbers are going up, though.

Many people are justifiably worried that Malthus will finally be proved right on a global scale—that the planet won’t be able to feed nine billion people. Lester Brown, founder of Worldwatch Institute and now head of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, believes food shortages could cause a collapse of global civilization.

… For centuries population pessimists have hurled apocalyptic warnings at the congenital optimists, who believe in their bones that humanity will find ways to cope and even improve its lot. History, on the whole, has so far favored the optimists, but history is no certain guide to the future. Neither is science. It cannot predict the outcome of People v. Planet, because all the facts of the case—how many of us there will be and how we will live—depend on choices we have yet to make and ideas we have yet to have.

Full article: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/01/seven-billion/kunzig-text/1

One species is added to the endangered list every week as the risk of extinction spreads to almost one-fifth of the world’s vertebrates, according to a landmark study released today.

The Evolution Lost report, published in the journal Science by more than 100 of the world’s leading zoologists and botanists, found that populations of mammal, bird, reptile, amphibian and fish species had declined by an average of 30% in the past 40 years.

Multiple factors have contributed to the demise, including logging, agricultural land conversion, over-exploitation, population growth, pollution and the impact of invasive alien species.

The worst die-off has occurred in south-east Asia, where hunting, dam building and the conversion of forest to palm oil plantations and paddy fields has been most dramatic. But Australia and the Andes have also suffered significant losses.

Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/oct/26/iucn-vertebrates-extinction-nagoya

While the world’s industrialised countries are building complex carbon markets to enable them to carry on polluting, Ecuador has come up with a much simpler idea for mitigating climate change: leave the oil underground. It is promising to lock up as much as a fifth of its oil reserves indefinitely, providing rich nations pay out at least half the market value of the oil – some $3.6bn – as compensation.

The trail-blazing proposal was first floated in 2007, but it took a step towards reality last week when the UN Development Programme signed an agreement with the Ecuadorean government to be the independent administrator for the project’s trust fund. The accord makes Ecuador the only country in the world offering to leave lucrative oil reserves untapped in an attempt to slow climate change.

Full article: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/the-worlds-first-really-green-oil-deal-2046512.html

A hundred years ago, they still numbered 100,000 and were spread across Asia, from India to China and passing through Russia. But today, even the most optimistic estimates find that only 3,500 tigers remain in the wild.

“Tigers are on a decline, they are threatened by habitat destruction and poaching,” said Joseph Vattakaven, one of India’s top tiger scientist.

The senior coordinator of Tiger Conservation for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in India and a couple dozen other experts from Asia gathered at the National Zoo in Washington to exchange plans to preserve the species.

A symbol of power and ferociousness, the super predators are hunted down for their prized coat of dark vertical stripes over white and reddish-orange fur.

But poachers are also after the predators’ bones, teeth, claws, whiskers and other organs used for traditional medicine and potions that allegedly boost sexual performance – think tiger penis soup – but also make a killing on the black market.

Most of the clients are in China, according to Vattakaven.

“We have to stop the demand in China. People are not aware of how many tigers are in danger,” he said.

“Everyone must be involved. We need to involve people of local communities” near tiger habitats to put a stop to poaching practices, he added.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/on-the-brink-of-extinction-tigers-need-man-as-never-before-1999548.html

While the Prince’s concern for the environment and population levels may broadly be in sync with most humanists, the conflation of science with anything wrong in the world, and religion and nature worship as necessarily right, is perhaps less appealing.

The Prince of Wales has blamed a lack of belief in the soul for the world’s environmental problems, and said that the planet cannot sustain a population expected to reach 9 billion in 40 years.

He said he found it “baffling” that so many scientists professed a faith in God yet this had little bearing on the “damaging” way science was used to exploit the natural world.

The Prince pinned part of the blame on Galileo. Criticising the profit imperative behind much scientific research, he said: “This imbalance, where mechanistic thinking is so predominant, goes back at least to Galileo’s assertion that there is nothing in nature but quantity and motion.

“This is the view that continues to frame the general perception of the way the world works, and how we fit within the scheme of things.

“As a result, Nature has been completely objectified — ‘She’ has become an ‘it’ — and we are persuaded to concentrate on the material aspect of reality that fits within Galileo’s scheme.” The Prince said that he believed “green technology” alone could not resolve the world’s environmental problems. Instead, the West must do something about its “deep, inner crisis of the soul”.

Article continues: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7147056.ece

Michael Shermer considers the difference between scepticism and denial…

WHAT is the difference between a sceptic and a denier? When I call myself a sceptic, I mean that I take a scientific approach to the evaluation of claims. A climate sceptic, for example, examines specific claims one by one, carefully considers the evidence for each, and is willing to follow the facts wherever they lead.

A climate denier has a position staked out in advance, and sorts through the data employing “confirmation bias” – the tendency to look for and find confirmatory evidence for pre-existing beliefs and ignore or dismiss the rest.

Scepticism is integral to the scientific process, because most claims turn out to be false. Weeding out the few kernels of wheat from the large pile of chaff requires extensive observation, careful experimentation and cautious inference. Science is scepticism and good scientists are sceptical.

Denial is different. It is the automatic gainsaying of a claim regardless of the evidence for it – sometimes even in the teeth of evidence. Denialism is typically driven by ideology or religious belief, where the commitment to the belief takes precedence over the evidence. Belief comes first, reasons for belief follow, and those reasons are winnowed to ensure that the belief survives intact.

Full article: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627606.000-living-in-denial-when-a-sceptic-isnt-a-sceptic.html

Although I’m a climate scientist by training, I worry about this collective fixation on global warming as the mother of all environmental problems. Learning from the research my colleagues and I have done over the past decade, I fear we are neglecting another, equally inconvenient truth: that we now face a global crisis in land use and agriculture that could undermine the health, security, and sustainability of our civilization.

Our use of land, particularly for agriculture, is absolutely essential to the success of the human race. We depend on agriculture to supply us with food, feed, fiber, and, increasingly, biofuels. Without a highly efficient, productive, and resilient agricultural system, our society would collapse almost overnight.

But we are demanding more and more from our global agricultural systems, pushing them to their very limits. Continued population growth (adding more than 70 million people to the world every year), changing dietary preferences (including more meat and dairy consumption), rising energy prices, and increasing needs for bioenergy sources are putting tremendous pressure on the world’s resources. And, if we want any hope of keeping up with these demands, we’ll need to double, perhaps triple, the agricultural production of the planet in the next 30 to 40 years.

http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/the_other_inconvenient_truth/

World temperature

Reasonable worst-case scenarios for global warming could lead to deadly temperatures for humans incoming centuries, according to research findings from Purdue University and the University of New South Wales, Australia.

Researchers for the first time have calculated the highest tolerable “wet-bulb” temperature and found that this temperature could be exceeded for the first time in human history in future climate scenarios if greenhouse gas emissions continue at their current rate.

Wet-bulb temperature is equivalent to what is felt when wet skin is exposed to moving air. It includes temperature and atmospheric humidity and is measured by covering a standard thermometer bulb with a wetted cloth and fully ventilating it.

The researchers calculated that humans and most mammals, which have internal body temperatures near 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, will experience a potentially lethal level of heat stress at wet-bulb temperature above 95 degrees sustained for six hours or more, said Matthew Huber, the Purdue professor of earth and atmospheric sciences who co-authored the paper that will be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Full article: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100504155413.htm

A dead Portuguese man-of-war floats on rust-colored oil off the Louisiana coast on Tuesday.

National Geographic on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

If the oil spill can’t be contained, the Gulf of Mexico could have another “dead zone in the making,” according to Sylvia Earle, a marine biologist and National Geographic explorer-in-residence. (National Geographic News is owned by the National Geographic Society.)

Often caused by algal blooms, dead zones are swaths of ocean devoid of life, save for hardy bacteria. (Related: “Gulf of Mexico ‘Dead Zone’ Is Size of New Jersey.”)

Oil bubbling up from the Gulf of Mexico wellhead, which sits more than 5,000 feet (about 1,500 meters) below the water’s surface, is coming from even deeper inside the Earth.

That means the oil is heavier and thicker than the crude spilled in past, tanker-based disasters, noted Ron Kendall, chair of the Department of Environmental Toxicology at Texas Tech University in Lubbock.

Full article: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/05/100504-science-environment-gulf-oil-spill-dead-zone/

Bees are tremendously important to agriculture around the world, with the species Apis mellifera responsible for around one third of all the food that ultimately reaches out plates. Colonies have been mysteriously dying around the world for a number of years, a phenomenon given the name Colony Collapse Disorder. But the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) says that no one single cause lies behind CCD. In a way the problem is worse than that – its causes are distributed and varied and there will be no miracle cure.

The global review conducted by OIE experts concluded that “irresponsible use” of pesticides may damage bee health by increasing their susceptibility to different diseases.

Inadequate “biosecurity” – especially protecting against invasive species – and climate change also likely play a role, the experts said.

“Resources to establish increased surveillance and registration processes, inspection, diagnoses and research capacity are missing in many countries and regions of the world,” Wolfgang Ritter, chair the expert panel said.

Earlier research has shown that different bee parasites are active in different parts of the world.

Culprits already identified include a blood-sucking mite called Varroa and a single-celled fungal parasite called Nosema cerenae that causes bee dystentery.

In Europe, a recent intruder – the Asian hornet, Vespa velutina – lurks near hives and captures honey bees in mid-flight, devouring them.

Another suspect is poor nutrition. Mega-farms stripped of hedgerows and wild flowers, along with spreading suburbs, are thought to be depriving bees of a decent diet.

More recently a new pathogen, Varroa jacobsoni, has attacked Apis mellifera in Oceania, and now presents a new threat to beekeeping globally.

Full article: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/no-single-cause-for-mass-die-off-of-honey-bees-oie-1957567.html

In commentary published last week on Seedmagazine.com, my co-editor Lee Billings suggested that Earth Day might be more effective if stripped of its “save the planet” sensibilities. He offered that a better message would be “save the humans.”

This idea immediately rubbed me the wrong way. But upon further reflection, I realized this more anthropocentric view is also the driving force behind the idea of “ecosystem services”—the goods and services that nature provides to humans. Indeed, one of the big ideas underpinning the 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment was that we might do well to go beyond acknowledging the inherent value of biodiversity; the MEA mostly emphasized the benefits that people reap from a healthy environment, from shared resources like a stable climate and clean water, to commodities like fuel, fiber, and food. The appeal to our species’ self-preserving, even self-serving instincts has arguably gotten even stronger past five years, as behavioral psychologists and behavioral economists have leveraged their insights to help make greener choices more appealing to our status-seeking, myopic brains.

Against this backdrop, it was all the more striking to see events unfold last week in Cochabamba, where Bolivian President Evo Morales opened
the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth with a call for a “Universal Declaration of Mother Earth Rights.”

Continues: http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/save_the_planet_vs_save_ourselves/

Despite India’s moratorium on GM aubergines, surveys point to most farmers enjoying increased yields and decreased costs.

Unlike the argument recently put forward by Daniel Church, three reports published this month have documented the benefits of GM crops around the world. A review of peer-reviewed surveys of farmers worldwide who are using the technology compared to farmers who continue to plant conventional crops, published last week in Nature Biotechnology, found that by and large farmers have benefited. Another report released last week by the National Research Council in the US concluded that many American farmers have achieved more cost-effective weed control and reduced losses from insect pests. And a survey of farmers in Brazil, which is a leader in global adoption of GM crops, shows benefits for soybean, cotton and corn growers. New technologies, such as Bt aubergine, promise additional gains to farmers if allowed for commercial release, despite the debate inspired by a recent moratorium in India.

Continues: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2010/apr/21/gm-crops-benefit-farmers

Birds, bats and lizards may play an important role in Earth’s climate by protecting plants from insects that forage on foliage. A new study suggests that preserving these animals could be a low-tech way to fight climate change.

“The presence, abundance and diversity of birds, bats and lizards, the top predators in the insect world, has impacts on the growth of plants,” said ecologist Daniel Gruner of the University of Maryland, co-author of the paper published April 5 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “If you don’t have plants, you don’t have organisms that are recapturing carbon.”

Because these animals feed on both plant-eating and insect-eating bugs in equal numbers, it was believed they wouldn’t have a net effect on plant growth: When the animals gobble up the plant-eating insects, the population of these harmful insects decreases. But, when the animals feed on insect-eating insects, there are fewer predators to eat the herbivores.

The new meta-analysis indicates this is not the case. The presence of insect-eating animals has a positive effect on the growth of plants.

Continues: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/04/bats-fight-climate-change/

Australian PM Kevin Rudd has voiced his anger over the grounding of a Chinese ship in the Great Barrier Reef.

Mr Rudd said it was “outrageous” the ship had apparently strayed 12km (7.5 miles) off course through the marine park, where it is now leaking oil.

He said the situation remained serious and vowed to bring those responsible for the disaster to account.

Officials say the ship is badly damaged but stable and that the threat of oil slicks has been largely contained.

Mr Rudd said there was “no greater natural asset for Australia than the Great Barrier Reef” and that he took any threat to the marine park “fundamentally seriously”.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8604250.stm

Consider these two quotations:

“The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything, save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe” – Albert Einstein, 1946.

“Arrogant&naive2say man overpowers nature” – Sarah Palin, 2009, tweetingabout the Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change.

These two statements reflect different aspects of the current dilemmas facing those of us who, for one reason or another, think about possible global catastrophes and how we might avert them. In January, on behalf of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS), I announced that the Doomsday Clock – established in 1947 by scientists who had worked on the first atomic bomb in 1945 – was to be moved back by one minute from its previous setting of five minutes to midnight – five minutes to Doomsday. As of 14 January, it reads six minutes to midnight.

This is the 19th time the clock has been adjusted since its inception. It was closest to midnight (two minutes) in 1953, when the United States and the Soviet Union tested thermonuclear weapons within six months of each other. It was set farthest back in 1992, at 17 minutes to midnight, as the Soviet Union dissolved.

The decision to add a minute – taken by the BAS Science and Security Board in consultation with the Bulletin’s Board of Sponsors, which includes 19 Nobel Laureates – reflects our sense that the world has entered a potentially more positive phase in dealing with the big twin threats of nuclear weapons and climate change.

http://newhumanist.org.uk/2272/judgement-day

The Science Museum is revising the contents of its new climate science gallery to reflect the wave of scepticism that has engulfed the issue in recent months.

The decision by the 100-year-old London museum reveals how deeply scientific institutions have been shaken by the public’s reaction to revelations of malpractice by climate scientists.

The museum is abandoning its previous practice of trying to persuade visitors of the dangers of global warming. It is instead adopting a neutral position, acknowledging that there are legitimate doubts about the impact of man-made emissions on the climate.

Even the title of the £4 million gallery has been changed to reflect the museum’s more circumspect approach. The museum had intended to call it the Climate Change Gallery, but has decided to change this to Climate Science Gallery to avoid being accused of presuming that emissions would change the temperature.

Last October the museum launched a temporary exhibition called “Prove It! All the evidence you need to believe in climate change”. The museum said at the time that the exhibition had been designed to demonstrate “through scientific evidence that climate change is real and requires an urgent solution”.

Chris Rapley, the museum’s director, told The Times that it was taking a different approach after observing how the climate debate had been affected by leaked e-mails and overstatements of the dangers of global warming. He said: “We have come to realise, given the way this subject has become so polarised over the past three to four months, that we need to be respectful and welcoming of all views on it.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7073272.ece

Their sheer size and strength have made them among the most celebrated of endangered species, yet they have all been betrayed — by vested interests at a UN meeting on wildlife protection.

Proposals to ban trade in bluefin tuna and polar bears were overwhelmingly rejected yesterday at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites), meeting in Doha, Qatar.

A plan for a 20-year ban on ivory sales, to protect African elephants, is also likely to fail in the coming days — partly because Britain and other members of the EU are refusing to support it. Delegates are instead expected to approve a weak compromise, which would encourage poaching by allowing the sale of ivory being stored by several African nations.

Feelings were running high yesterday about the failure of measures to protect endangered tuna. Only 20 of the 120 countries at the meeting voted to ban trade in the bluefin. Intensive lobbying by Japan, which consumes 80 per cent of Atlantic and Mediterranean bluefin, meant that a snap vote was held before any debate on scientific reports that show a catastrophic decline in the largest of the tuna family.

Continues: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7067909.ece