Prix Milton F. Gregg Award

Moncton, 26 avril 2012 - Le Conseil de la conservation du NB a choisi Grand Moncton Post Carbone comme lauréat du Prix Milton F. Gregg pour les réalisations d'une organisation. Le prix est décerné annuellement à un organisme qui a fait une contribution exceptionnelle à l'amélioration de l'environnement au NB. Nous profitons de cette occasion pour vous remercier tous nos amis de l'appui témoigné depuis 2008.

Moncton, April 26, 2012 - The Conservation Council of NB has selected Post Carbon Greater Moncton as the recipient of the Milton F. Gregg Conservation Award for organizational achievement. The Award is given out annually to an organization that has made an outstanding contribution to the improvement of the New Brunswick environment. We want to take this opportunity to thank all our friends for the support given since 2008.

Comment se battre contre le gaspillage alimentaire

Source: Lemonde.fr

De nouvelles étiquettes ont fait leur apparition tout récemment dans les supermarchés britanniques de la chaîne Sainsbury's. Fini les recommandations appelant les clients à congeler les aliments dès leur achat : désormais, les consommateurs sont incités à prendre le réflexe congélation jusqu'à la date limite de consommation du produit.

La mesure a été inspirée par la "Waste & Resources Action Programme" (WRAP), une organisation britannique créée en 2000 pour aider les collectivités, les entreprises et les particuliers à réduire le gaspillage. La WRAP a établi dans une étude (PDF) que 60 % des consommateurs croient que les aliments doivent être absolument congelés le jour même de leur achat.

LES BRITANNIQUES, CHAMPIONS DU GASPILLAGE

L'initiative de Sainsbury's n'est pas isolée : le 6 janvier, la chaîne Marks & Spencer annonçait de son côté le lancement d'un nouveau type d'emballage, permettant de conserver les fraises fraîches deux jours de plus. Quant au gouvernement britannique, il a envisagé en avril dernier de supprimer les dates de péremption sur certains produits alimentaires comme les pâtes, la farine et le pain. Tout cela, dans un seul but : réduire l'énorme gaspillage alimentaire du Royaume-Uni et inciter les gens à ne pas jeter leurs aliments non périmés.

Cette problématique existe depuis des années de l'autre côté de la Manche. En 2005, une enquête commandée conjointement par The Guardian et la BBC révélait déjà que "les Britanniques gaspillent sans doute plus de nourriture que n'importe quelle autre nation, jetant entre 30 % à 40 % de toutes les denrées achetées ou cultivées chaque année". Plus récemment, un rapport de l'Organisation des Nations unies pour l'alimentation et l'agriculture (lien PDF) (FAO, Food and Agriculture Organization), chiffrait, en 2011, à près de 300 kg par personne la quantité de nourriture perdue ou gaspillée en Europe et en Amérique du Nord (pertes incluant tant les pertes dans le cycle de production que le gaspillage des particuliers). Soit deux fois plus que dans des régions en voie de développement comme l'Afrique sub-saharienne et l'Asie du sud-est.

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Saudis target 'triple-digit' oil price for the first time

Source: Globe & Mail, Jan 16, 2012

Saudi Arabia said on Monday it wanted to keep crude oil prices at around $100 (U.S.) a barrel, the first time the kingdom has targeted a “triple-digit” price and a quarter above the previous ambition of $75 suggested by King Abdullah in November 2008.

Ali Naimi, the powerful Saudi oil minister, said the world’s largest oil producer aimed to “stabilize” oil prices slightly below the current level of $111 a barrel.

“Our wish and hope is we can stabilise this oil price and keep it at a level around $100”, Mr Naimi told CNN television. “If we were able as producers and consumers to average $100 I think the world economy would be in better shape.”

Brent rose 92 cents higher at $111.36 a barrel in afternoon trading in London on Monday.

Saudi Arabia is traditionally seen as a moderate country within the Opec oil cartel. But Mr Naimi’s comments put the kingdom in line with hawks such as Algeria and Venezuela, which in the past have said they want to keep prices above $100.

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What do triple-digit oil prices mean for growth?

Source: Globe & Mail, jan 4, 2012 (Jeff Rubin)

Can we still expect to see sustained economic recoveries when oil, the world’s principal source of energy, is trading in triple-digit range?

As I argued several years ago in my book, Why Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller, triple-digit oil prices will redefine our notion of an economic recovery because as soon as the global economy picks up, oil prices will quickly soar to levels that challenge growth.

Last year was a case in point. In the second full year of recovery from as deep a trough as any seen in the postwar period, oil prices once again rose swiftly to levels that, in the past, torpedoed economic growth. Brent crude, the world oil benchmark, averaged $111 per barrel. This cracked the previous record of an annual average high of $100 in 2008 - a peak subsequently followed by a huge global recession.

The North American benchmark, West Texas Intermediate (WTI), rose even more, increasing by 20 per cent from its 2010 average price of $79. Even with the hefty discount that it traded to world oil prices throughout most of last year (at times over $20 per barrel), WTI still averaged just a shade under triple-digit levels at $95/barrel last year.

Of course there are always special factors to explain these price levels: the Libyan revolution, Iran’s threat to close the Strait of Hormuz, or an increasingly destabilized Iraq. While all these events certainly pose credible threats to world oil production, they are, at the same time, background noise even if they dominate the front page.

The real story behind triple-digit oil prices is not the threat of supply shocks, but the sheer, unrelenting rise in world oil demand. Already closing in on 90 million barrels a day, the quick rebound in world oil consumption to new record highs demonstrates the global economy can’t grow without burning greater amounts of oil.

No matter how many rabbits the oil industry can pull out of its hat, be it tar sands from Alberta or shale oil from the Bakkens, supply just can’t seem to keep pace - at least not at the prices most consumers can afford to pay. That is the message that triple digit prices keeps telling us.

If the global economic expansion, troubled as it may be, continues, we will see even higher oil prices in 2012. But what does that say about the sustainability of growth?

And even if there is growth, what is the pace?

Les poules débarquent en ville

Source: Le Monde, 28 décembre 2011

Claire est une Parisienne qui a bien de la chance. Non contente d'habiter un rez-de-chaussée avec cour privative et jardin derrière la butte Montmartre, la jeune femme a le privilège, chaque matin, de pouvoir récolter un oeuf frais au saut du lit. Car depuis six mois, elle est l'heureuse propriétaire d'une poule naine. "J'avais envie d'un retour à la nature, explique-t-elle. Et puis cela me rappelle mon enfance." Ses voisins n'ont pas tiqué. Au contraire. "Leurs enfants sont ravis de nous rendre visite !", se réjouit-elle.

Avec sa poule en plein Paris, Claire passe encore pour une originale. Mais pour combien de temps ? L'élevage de gallinacés en ville gagne du terrain. Les jardineries Truffaut ont vendu plus de 20 000 poussins et poules pondeuses ou d'ornement à des particuliers en 2011. "L'activité basse-cour a augmenté de plus de 50 % cette année", précise Pierre-Alain Oudart, chef de produit. "Elle connaît un grand succès dans tous nos magasins en zone périurbaine." Cela se confirme à Toulouse, Aubagne et Amiens, mais également autour de la capitale, d'Herblay (95) aux abords du Stade de France, à Saint-Denis (93).

En deux ans d'existence, l'entreprise alsacienne Eco-poules a écoulé suffisamment de poulaillers en kit pour abriter 30 000 gallinacés : "Nous nous attendions à toucher des milieux plus ruraux", observe Stanislas de Beaumont, son fondateur. "Mais c'est en ceinture parisienne que nous avons le plus de clients. Et 80 % de nos ventes se réalisent sur Internet."

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Behind the Durban Blame Game

By Richard Heinburg, Post Carbon Institute

Why did the Durban climate talks fail? Ultimately, the culprit is the near-universal pursuit of economic growth. All the major players want growth: the US, because it’s still pulling out of a recession; China, because it knows 10 percent annual growth can’t go on forever, but is trying to avoid a hard landing; Europe, which is trying to pull out of its sovereign debt spiral. The US and China, in particular, know that fossil fuels have given them growth in the past, and are especially reluctant to give them up now.

The Chinese pulled a PR coup during the talks by announcing that they were willing to consider emissions cuts if the US signs onto a global binding agreement. Perhaps Beijing felt safe saying this because there is a general understanding that binding climate action is currently unthinkable in the US for domestic political reasons. If China were indeed seriously concerned about climate, then as the world’s foremost greenhouse gas emitter it could simply unilaterally cut back on emissions and then challenge the US and other countries to follow suit. But of course that’s not what we’re seeing; instead, China is leading not only in total national emissions but in rates of emissions increase, due to its phenomenal coal consumption.

Can the world decouple GDP growth from carbon emissions? To a certain extent, yes. During the 90s there was some decoupling, especially in the US, but it was mostly due to globalization and financialization. Industrialized countries outsourced much of their production, mainly to China, which burned its coal to make America’s consumer goods; meanwhile, the financial industry blossomed as debt grew faster than GDP and banks leveraged that debt through securitization and derivatives. But, as we’ve seen since 2008, growing the size of the financial industry relative to the size of the rest of the economy can have some nasty long-term side effects.

Over the past decade, most of the decoupling effect has disappeared globally, and energy use and GDP growth have moved in tandem. In 2010, greenhouse gas emissions actually grew faster than GDP. So we’re moving in the wrong direction, and accelerating.

Could we still have economic growth while transitioning to renewable energy? Perhaps, but renewables typically have high up-front investment requirements. Once one has a solar panel up and running, one gets very low-cost energy, but buying and installing the panel is quite expensive—and for the world that’s problematic at a time when investment capital and credit are scarce. So, as regular oil and coal grow more costly, countries are often motivated to solve their energy supply problems simply by digging deeper into their resource base for lower-grade fossil fuels, such as tar sands, which just make the climate problem worse.

This dynamic is only likely to change when we finally get to the point where we are concerned less about short-term economic growth than about our longer-term survival prospects. But by then it may be too late to avert catastrophic and irreversible climate change.

Here’s the bitter irony: we are postponing serious climate action for the sake of immediate economic growth. But with a flood here, a drought there; with a famine here, a mass migration there, we soon arrive at a place where economic growth is unachievable in any case.

Nobody expected much from the Durban talks. Thanks to the US and China, the negotiations fully lived down to their expectations. It’s past time for these nations to wake up and realize that even their short-term growth strategy is doomed to failure. It may be too late by now to avert serious climate impacts, but the world can still benefit by abandoning its pointless and counterproductive quest for growth at any cost.

The Big Picture