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Takamitsu Sawa–a prominent policy analyst working on environmental issues in Japan–has an informative article in the Japan Times on how Japan might reduce its CO2 emissions.

His main policy recommendation is to build more light-rail lines. Tokyo–being one of the most densely-populated places on the planet–has a pretty expansive train and subway system and an expressway system that used in excess of its capacity. However, many other cities in the country are less-equipped.

Sawa argues in favor of a system that has parking on the outskirts of the smaller urban areas where people could then transfer to light-rail to reach inner-city destinations. He is less explicit about how such systems would be financed.

Kiyohito Utsunomiya wrote a short article (.pdf) a couple of years ago in the Japan Railway and Transport Review making a more detailed case for light-rail transit and he nicely compares Japan to other countries. The main obstacle facing Japan is the history of not subsidizing transit. Utsunomiya notes a few examples from the 1990s where the national government gave some assistance for capital improvements, but railways are expected to generate enough fares to meet operating expenses.

Another unique way rail systems can contribute to energy savings is documented in the Real Tech News blog. They report on efforts by East Japan Railway Company to harness the energy produced by each passenger when they push the turnstyles at stations to power the electronic systems that monitor fare cards and grant access to the stations.

This type of energy micro-production stands in stark contrast to conventional wisdom where by energy needs are provided by large-scale industrial facilities.

Along with China, India has had one of the most dynamically-growing economies over the last decade. The country has quickly emerged as a center for both technology and manufacturing serving the global marketplace as a result of its relatively robust education system and low labor costs.

That growth, however, has not occured without problems. The New York Times has recently published a three-part series on the challenges posed by growth on the country’s water supplies.

The first article looks at the pressing problem of water provision in India’s cities. High levels of urban growth and the failure of the government to invest in sewers and water pipes makes simply finding water a full time job for many urban dwellers. This problem is found throughout the world, but the article shows how many people in the middle classes are having problems finding water. One of the main problems is the polluted Yamuna River into which raw sewage and industrial pollutants are deposited.
The second article looks at the problem of ground water depletion and how the scarcity of water is turning people who happen to own land fortunate to sit atop underground aquifer into water merchants.  Increased demand results in digging wells deeper and deeper and, in turn, minimizing recharge rates.  The article indicates that the intensive extraction of water above recharge levels is unsustainable over the long term.

Finally, the third article shows how a series of fundamental changes to part of the country’s hyrdological systems has made many communities vulnerable during monsoon seasons.  Damed rivers face the possibilities of breaches with the fast and intense percipitation that accompanies monsoon season.  As a result, local officials often have to open reservoir gates during periods of high rain.  The article reports that 120 people died this past summer when the Ukai Dam was opened without warning, flooding downstream communities.

Issues of water provision and management are core environmental policies that could severly threaten India’s growth if they are continually ignored.

The Christian Science Monitor has a pretty basic article today on environmental challenges facing the United States as the nation’s population reaches 300 million people.

The article mentions such things as the rising amount of farmland being changed to development and the fact that new land development is rising at a rate twice as fast as population. These issues are significant, but in framing the issue as one of simple population increases, it obscures the real challenge: how the nearly 300 million Americans live and the ecological processes that support this particular way of life.

The problem is less the raw number of people and the rate of population growth; rather it is the fact that per capita consumption of ecological space far surpasses that of other countries. The article does mention the “ecological footprint” of the US, but doesn’t unpack the global processes that undergird our practice of mass consumption. Instead, it goes on to talk about federal environmental legislation enacted a year ago and fails to mention the fact that many of the important enviornmental protections have been eroded by lax regulatory enforcement and redefinitions over the past several years.

The article does have a telling graphic, however, that compares the US to other countries’ ecological footprints:

According to the tech website, Cnet, a European Commission task force on the environment has announced a voluntary program spearheaded by Nokia which will encourage cell phone consumers to unplug their phones once they are fully charged.

The seemingly insignificant practice of leaving a cell phone plugged into a charger after the phone is fully charged is a prime example of a cumulatively collossal waste of energy.  The Cnet article indicates that if 10% of the world’s cell phone users unplugged their phone upon full recharge, enough electricity would be saved to power 60,000 European homes.

Under this scheme, the cell phone manufacturers will develop alerts on the phones which will give an indication when a phone is fully charged.

The significance of this step is hard to determine, but it represents a common practice on the part of large industrial producers of polluting commodities: developing voluntary changes in corporate practice in order to stave off governmental regulation.

In his post-Presidency days Bill Clinton has established a high-profile humanitarian effort called the Clinton Global Initiative. The purpose of the initiative is to bring together global power-brokers annually who pledge to develop a particular project that will contribute to resolving a pressing social problem. If you don’t follow through on your commitment, you don’t get invited back the following year.

It may not be sufficient enough to solve all of the world’s problems, but the results-based approach is rather ambitious. This year one of the issues the CGI is tackling is climate change and today, Sir Richard Branson–the head of the British-based Virgin conglomerate–pledged $3 billion to address global warming.

The sum is staggering. However, Bronson’s pledge is to invest the money in one of his own start-up companies, Virgin Fuels. The company has been in the works for several months with the goal to expand research into cellulosic ethanol. Branson has a distinct business interest in the development of biofuels, as his airline company could benefit greatly from lower fuel costs.

Whether this initiative will really be able to solve global warming is debatable. Ethanol is currently highly subsidized and requires a significant amount of energy & water intensive inputs. Furthermore, Bronson’s supposed “philanthropy” within the context of the Clinton Global Initiative is suspect given the fact that he was going to invest hundreds of millions of dollars anyway into this project.

Nevertheless, I expect Sir Richard to be invited back to New York next year.

In the interim, Friday is the last day of this year’s meetings and there is an interesting session on “Cities of the Future” featuring Jaime Lerner, the former mayor of Curitaba, Brazil–a city known for innovative sustainable urban development schemes. Today featured sessions on “Building a Sustainable Future” featuring Al Gore and “Energy and Climate Change.”

Follow the links above to view archived video of the sessions.

The latest outbreak of E.coli has been linked to bagged spinach produced by the ironically-named Natural Selection Foods, based in California.  Given the nature of E. coli and its ability to quickly and quietly infect proximate food, there may still be other products infected by the deadly virus.

The current problems facing Natural Selection Foods, which sells its produce under both its Earthbound Farm Organic brand and through the private brands of companies like Trader Joe’s, is a good example of the ways in which the organic foods industry has changed over the last couple of decades.

Moving from a rather insignificant percentage of food production to a large segement of the marketplace in relatively quick order, contemporary organic production has become more like industrial agriculture–mono-cultural, large-scale, and increasingly consolidated.  These characteristics undermine the integrative, ecological understandings of organics that many consumers still see as the major advantage of these products over conventionally-produced foods.

The New York Times has a good article today on how these tensions are being experienced in the organic dairy industry as Wal Mart gets more involved in selling organic products.  It seems that their main supplier–Aurora Organic Dairy–arranges its dairy operation more on an industrial model.  It confines its cows, gives them a diet dominant in corn-feed rather than the more natural grass, and milks them with great frequency.  The Wisconsin-based watchdog group, The Cornucopia Institute, filed a complaint earlier this year with the US Department of Agriculture charging that Aurora is not compliant with organic standards.

The food blog, The Ethicurean, has a nice review of a recent book by Samuel Fromartz called, Organic Inc., which looks at the development of the organic movement into a large-scale industry.

The Wall Street Journal reports on the recent endorsement by the World Health Organization–the United Nations public health arm–for the use of the insecticide DDT as a way to prevent the spread of malaria in Africa and Asia.

DDT was sprayed extensively throughout the United States during the 1950s without a real understanding of its environmental consequences. Rachel Carson’s popular book, Silent Spring, was published in 1962 and made an argument that DDT’s use contributed to declining bird and fish populations and constituted a direct threat to human health. The book made quite a splash and, some argue, was the impetus for the US government’s effective ban on the use of DDT some years later.

The insecticide has been legal throughout the world, however, and many poor countries have used it as a short-term cost-effective measure against malaria-spreading mosquitos.

Malaria kills approximately 1 million people per year, but the long-term ecological effects of the insecticide’s widespread use are often ignored by cash-poor governments.

With the WHO endorsing the indoor use of DDT, international lenders such as the World Bank will likely provide more money to DDT projects. Ignored in the embrace of DDT, however, are other policy alternatives, such as eradicating mosquito breeding grounds and developing a malaria vaccine. These alternatives would generally cost more, but they would likely be effective and not have as many detrimential ecological consequences.

Former Chicago Tribune reporter, Merrill Goozner has an interesting interview with Janet Hemmingway, a British expert in tropical medicine who recent received a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop alternative insecticides. The Gates Foundation has also put money toward developing a malaria vaccine.

The issue pressing–particularly in parts of Africa. Not only are their hundreds of thousands of people dying due to the disease, but the widespread use of DDT could also threaten African exports, as important importers like the European Union have restrictions on importing commodities that come into contact with DDT .