http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/03/science/earth/03fore.html?pagewanted=print
June 3, 2008
Forest Disappearing in Papua New Guinea
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
A new satellite analysis of logging in Papua New Guinea shows that the country has been losing about 1,400 square miles of rain forest, or about 1.4 percent of its total forest cover, each year.
At that pace, by 2021 more than 80 percent of the country’s accessible forest, and more than half of its total forest area, would be badly degraded or cleared, according to the study. It was conducted by scientists at the University of Papua New Guinea and Australian National University.
Logging and road building are already leading to erosion and fragmentation of ecosystems harboring some of the world’s most varied, and least-studied, wildlife, said Phil Shearman, the lead author and director of the Remote Sensing Center of the University of Papua New Guinea. The study is available online at gis.mortonblacketer.com.au/upngis/.
In an e-mail message, Mr. Shearman said there was still plenty of potential for cut areas to regenerate, but only if policies were changed to end what is essentially uncontrolled “timber mining.” He added that more would also have to be done to help fast-growing communities shift from continually clearing new forest areas for cropland to using less damaging farming methods.
The study was released Monday in Port Moresby at a conference on climate and forests. In international climate talks, New Guinea has been pushing for wealthy countries worried about global warming to pay forested countries to shift from cutting to conservation. Mr. Shearman said he was worried that all the accessible forests would be gone by the time such initiatives were worked out.
(For more images and background, and to comment, visit nytimes.com/dotearth.)
In a written introduction to the report, Belden Namah, New Guinea’s minister for forests and an owner of timber holdings, endorsed it as a necessary “bitter pill that we need to swallow to ensure that we maintain our forests into the foreseeable future.”
“If in 50 years, PNG is left only with scraps of forest inside national parks,” he wrote, “then we have failed.”
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Ban Says Food Production Must Rise - 060308 NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-UN-Food-Crisis.html?pagewanted=print
June 3, 2008
U.N. Chief Warns on Food Production
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:54 a.m. ET
ROME (AP) -- World food production must rise by 50 percent by 2030 to meet increasing demand, U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon told world leaders Tuesday at a summit grappling with hunger and civil unrest caused by food price hikes.
The secretary-general told the Rome summit that nations must minimize export restrictions and import tariffs during the food price crisis and quickly resolve world trade talks.
''The world needs to produce more food,'' Ban said.
The Rome-based U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization is hosting the three-day summit to try to solve the short-term emergency of increased hunger caused by soaring prices and to help poor countries grow enough food to feed their own.
In a message read to the delegates, Pope Benedict XVI said ''hunger and malnutrition are unacceptable in a world which, in reality, has sufficient production levels, the resources, and the know-how to put an end to these tragedies and their consequences.''
The Pope told the world leaders that millions of people at threat in countries with security concerns were looking to them for solutions.
Ban said a U.N. task force he set up to deal with the crisis is recommending the nations ''improve vulnerable people's access to food and take immediate steps to increase food availability in their communities.''
That means increasing food aid, supplying small farmers with seed and fertilizer in time for this year's planting seasons, and reducing trade restrictions to help the free flow of agricultural goods.
''Some countries have taken action by limiting exports or by imposing price controls,'' Ban said. ''They only distort markets and force prices even higher.''
The increasing diversion of food and animal feed to produce biofuel, and sharply higher fuel costs have also helped to shoot prices upward, experts say.
The United Nations is encouraging summit participants to start undoing a decades-long legacy of agricultural and trade policies that many blame for the failure of small farmers in poor countries to feed their own people.
Wealthy nations' subsidizing their own farmers makes it harder for small farmers in poor countries to compete in global markets, critics of such subsidies say. Jim Butler, the FAO's deputy director-general, said in an interview ahead of the gathering that a draft document that could be the basis for a final summit declaration doesn't promise to overhaul subsidy policy.
Congress last month passed a five-year farm bill heavy on subsidies, bucking White House objections that such aid in the middle of a global food crisis wasn't warranted.
The head of the summit's U.S. delegation, Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer, insisted on Monday that biofuels will contribute only 2 or 3 percent to a predicted 43 percent rise in prices this year.
Figures by other international organizations, including the International Monetary Fund, show that the increased demand for biofuels is contributing by 15-30 percent to food price increases, said Frederic Mousseau, a policy adviser at Oxfam, a British aid group.
''Food stocks are at their lowest in 25 years, so the market is very vulnerable to any policy changes'' such as U.S. or European Union subsidizing biofuels or mandating greater use of this energy source, Mousseau said.
Brazil is another large exporter of biofuels, and President Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva was expected to defend biofuels at the summit.
Several participants won't even be talking to each other at the summit.
Australia's foreign minister decried as ''obscene'' Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's participation in the summit. The longtime African leader has presided over the virtual transformation of his country from former breadbasket to agricultural basket case.
Zimbabweans increasingly are unable to afford food and other essentials with agriculture paralyzed by land reform and the world's highest rate of inflation.
The Dutch ministry for overseas development pledged to ''ignore'' Mugabe during the summit.
EU sanctions against Mugabe because of Zimbabwe's poor human rights record forbid him from setting foot in the bloc's 27 nations, but those restrictions don't apply to U.N. forums.
Jewish leaders and some Italian politicians were among those denouncing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's attendance at the meeting. On Monday, Ahmadinejad repeated his call for the destruction of Israel, which is also participating in the summit.
Ahmadinejad was scheduled to give a summit news conference Tuesday afternoon.
Schafer, asked about the presence of the Zimbabwean and Iranian leaders, told reporters in Rome that the two were welcome to attend the summit, but that U.S. delegates would not be meeting with them.
June 3, 2008
U.N. Chief Warns on Food Production
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:54 a.m. ET
ROME (AP) -- World food production must rise by 50 percent by 2030 to meet increasing demand, U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon told world leaders Tuesday at a summit grappling with hunger and civil unrest caused by food price hikes.
The secretary-general told the Rome summit that nations must minimize export restrictions and import tariffs during the food price crisis and quickly resolve world trade talks.
''The world needs to produce more food,'' Ban said.
The Rome-based U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization is hosting the three-day summit to try to solve the short-term emergency of increased hunger caused by soaring prices and to help poor countries grow enough food to feed their own.
In a message read to the delegates, Pope Benedict XVI said ''hunger and malnutrition are unacceptable in a world which, in reality, has sufficient production levels, the resources, and the know-how to put an end to these tragedies and their consequences.''
The Pope told the world leaders that millions of people at threat in countries with security concerns were looking to them for solutions.
Ban said a U.N. task force he set up to deal with the crisis is recommending the nations ''improve vulnerable people's access to food and take immediate steps to increase food availability in their communities.''
That means increasing food aid, supplying small farmers with seed and fertilizer in time for this year's planting seasons, and reducing trade restrictions to help the free flow of agricultural goods.
''Some countries have taken action by limiting exports or by imposing price controls,'' Ban said. ''They only distort markets and force prices even higher.''
The increasing diversion of food and animal feed to produce biofuel, and sharply higher fuel costs have also helped to shoot prices upward, experts say.
The United Nations is encouraging summit participants to start undoing a decades-long legacy of agricultural and trade policies that many blame for the failure of small farmers in poor countries to feed their own people.
Wealthy nations' subsidizing their own farmers makes it harder for small farmers in poor countries to compete in global markets, critics of such subsidies say. Jim Butler, the FAO's deputy director-general, said in an interview ahead of the gathering that a draft document that could be the basis for a final summit declaration doesn't promise to overhaul subsidy policy.
Congress last month passed a five-year farm bill heavy on subsidies, bucking White House objections that such aid in the middle of a global food crisis wasn't warranted.
The head of the summit's U.S. delegation, Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer, insisted on Monday that biofuels will contribute only 2 or 3 percent to a predicted 43 percent rise in prices this year.
Figures by other international organizations, including the International Monetary Fund, show that the increased demand for biofuels is contributing by 15-30 percent to food price increases, said Frederic Mousseau, a policy adviser at Oxfam, a British aid group.
''Food stocks are at their lowest in 25 years, so the market is very vulnerable to any policy changes'' such as U.S. or European Union subsidizing biofuels or mandating greater use of this energy source, Mousseau said.
Brazil is another large exporter of biofuels, and President Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva was expected to defend biofuels at the summit.
Several participants won't even be talking to each other at the summit.
Australia's foreign minister decried as ''obscene'' Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's participation in the summit. The longtime African leader has presided over the virtual transformation of his country from former breadbasket to agricultural basket case.
Zimbabweans increasingly are unable to afford food and other essentials with agriculture paralyzed by land reform and the world's highest rate of inflation.
The Dutch ministry for overseas development pledged to ''ignore'' Mugabe during the summit.
EU sanctions against Mugabe because of Zimbabwe's poor human rights record forbid him from setting foot in the bloc's 27 nations, but those restrictions don't apply to U.N. forums.
Jewish leaders and some Italian politicians were among those denouncing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's attendance at the meeting. On Monday, Ahmadinejad repeated his call for the destruction of Israel, which is also participating in the summit.
Ahmadinejad was scheduled to give a summit news conference Tuesday afternoon.
Schafer, asked about the presence of the Zimbabwean and Iranian leaders, told reporters in Rome that the two were welcome to attend the summit, but that U.S. delegates would not be meeting with them.
In Spain, Water Is a New Battleground - 060308 NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/03/world/europe/03dry.html?pagewanted=print
In Spain, Water Is a New Battleground
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL, NY Times
FORTUNA, Spain — Lush fields of lettuce and hothouses of tomatoes line the roads. Verdant new developments of plush pastel vacation homes beckon buyers from Britain and Germany. Golf courses — dozens of them, all recently built — give way to the beach. At last, this hardscrabble corner of southeast Spain is thriving.
There is only one problem with the picture of bounty: this province, Murcia, is running out of water. Swaths of southeast Spain are steadily turning into desert, a process spurred on by global warming and poorly planned development.
Murcia, traditionally a poor farming region, has undergone a resort-building boom in recent years, even as many of its farmers have switched to more thirsty crops, encouraged by water transfer plans, which have become increasingly untenable. The combination has put new pressures on the land and its dwindling supply of water.
This year, farmers are fighting developers over water rights. They are fighting one another over who gets to water their crops. And in a sign of their mounting desperation, they are buying and selling water like gold on a rapidly growing black market, mostly from illegal wells.
Southern Spain has long been plagued by cyclical droughts, but the current crisis, scientists say, probably reflects a more permanent climate change brought on by global warming. And it is a harbinger of a new kind of conflict.
The battles of yesterday were fought over land, they warn. Those of the present center on oil. But those of the future — a future made hotter and drier by climate change in much of the world — seem likely to focus on water, they say.
“Water will be the environmental issue this year — the problem is urgent and immediate,” said Barbara Helferrich, a spokeswoman for the European Union’s Environment Directorate. “If you already have water shortages in spring, you know it’s going to be a really bad summer.”
Dozens of world leaders will be meeting at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization headquarters in Rome starting Tuesday to address a global food crisis caused in part by water shortages in Africa, Australia and here in southern Spain.
Climate change means that creeping deserts may eventually drive 135 million people off their land, the United Nations estimates. Most of them are in the developing world. But Southern Europe is experiencing the problem now, its climate drying to the point that it is becoming more like Africa’s, scientists say.
For Murcia, the arrival of the water crisis has been accelerated by developers and farmers who have hewed to water-hungry ventures highly unsuited to a drier, warmer climate: crops like lettuce that need ample irrigation, resorts that promise a swimming pool in the yard, acres of freshly sodded golf courses that sop up millions of gallons a day.
“I come under a lot of pressure to release water from farmers and also from developers,” said Antonio Pérez Gracia, the water manager here in Fortuna, sipping coffee with farmers in a bar in the town’s dusty square. He rued the fact that he could provide each property owner with only 30 percent of its government-determined water allotment.
“I’m not sure what we’ll do this summer,” he added, noting that the local aquifer was sinking so quickly that the pumps would not reach it soon. “I come under a lot of pressure to release water, from farmers and also from developers. They can complain as much as they want, but if there’s no more water, there’s no more water.”
Rubén Vives, a farmer who relies on Mr. Pérez Gracia’s largess, said he could not afford the black market water prices. “This year, my livelihood is in danger,” said Mr. Vives, who has farmed low-water crops like lemons here for nearly two decades.
The hundreds of thousands of wells — most of them illegal — that have in the past provided a temporary reprieve from thirst have depleted underground water to the point of no return. Water from northern Spain that was once transferred here has also slowed to a trickle, as wetter northern provinces are drying up, too.
The scramble for water has set off scandals. Local officials are in prison for taking payoffs to grant building permits in places where there is not adequate water. Chema Gil, a journalist who exposed one such scheme, has been subject to death threats, carries pepper spray and is guarded day and night by the Guardia Civil, a police force with military and civilian functions.
“The model of Murcia is completely unsustainable,” Mr. Gil said. “We consume two and a half times more water than the system can recover. So where do you get it? Import it from elsewhere? Dry up the aquifer? With climate change we’re heading into a cul-de-sac. All the water we’re using to water lettuce and golf courses will be needed just to drink.”
Facing a national crisis, Spain has become something of an unwitting laboratory, sponsoring a European conference on water issues this summer and announcing a national action plan this year to fight desertification. That plan includes a shift to more efficient methods of irrigation, as well as an extensive program of desalinization plants to provide the fresh water that nature does not.
The Spanish Environment Ministry estimates that one-third of the county is at risk of turning into desert from a combination of climate change and poor land use.
Still, national officials visibly stiffen when asked about the “Africanization” of Spain’s climate — a term now common among scientists.
“We are in much better shape than Africa, but within the E.U. our situation is serious,” said Antonio Serrano Rodríguez, the secretary general for land and biodiversity at Spain’s Environment Ministry.
Still, Mr. Serrano and others acknowledge the broad outlines of the problem. “There will be places that can’t be farmed any more, that were marginal and are now useless,” Mr. Serrano said. “We have parts of the country that are close to the limit.”
While southern Spain has always been dry and plagued by cyclical droughts, the average surface temperature in Spain has risen 2.7 degrees compared with about 1.4 degrees globally since 1880, records show.
Rainfall here is predicted to fall 20 percent from this year to 2020, and 40 percent by 2070, according to United Nations projections.
The changes on the Almarcha family farm in Albanilla over the past three decades are a testament to that hotter, drier climate here. Until two decades ago, the farm grew wheat and barley, watered only by rain. As rainfall dropped, Carlo Almarcha, 51, switched to growing almonds.
About 10 years ago, he quit almonds and changed to organic peaches and pears, “since they need less water,” he explained. Recently he took up olives and figs, “which resist drought and are less sensitive to weather.”
Mr. Almarcha participates in a government water trading system, started last year, in which farmers pay three times the normal price — 33 cents instead of 12 per cubic meter — to get extra water. The black market rate is even higher. Still, his outlook is bleak.
“You used to know that this week in spring there will be rain,” he said, standing in his work boots on parched soil of an olive grove that was once a wheat field. “Now you never know when or if it will come. Also, there’s no winter any more and plants need cold to rest. So there’s less growth. Sometimes none. Even plants all seem confused.”
While Mr. Almarcha has gradually moved toward less thirsty crops, the government’s previous water transfer plans have moved many farmers in the opposite direction. The farmers have shifted to producing a wide range of water-hungry fruits and vegetables that had never been grown in the south. Murcia is traditionally known for figs and date palms.
“You can’t grow strawberries naturally in Huelva — it’s too hot,” said Raquel Montón, a climate specialist at Greenpeace in Madrid, referring to the nearby strawberry capital of Spain. “In Sarragosa, which is a desert, we grow corn, the most water-thirsty crop. It’s insane. The only thing that would be more insane is putting up casinos and golf courses.” Which, of course, Murcia has.
In 2001, a new land use law in Murcia made it far easier for residents to sell land for resort development. Though southern Spain has long had elaborate systems for managing its relatively scarce water, today everyone, it seems, has found ways to get around them.
Grass on golf courses or surrounding villas is sometimes labeled a “crop,” making owners eligible for water that would not be allocated to keep leisure space green. Foreign investors plant a few trees and call their vacation homes “farms” so they are eligible for irrigation water, Mr. Pérez Gracia said.
“Once a property owner’s got a water allotment, he asks for a change of land use,” he explained. “Then he’s got his property and he’s got his water. It’s supposed to be for irrigation, but people use it for what they want. No one knows if it goes to a swimming pool.”
While he said his “heart goes out to the real farmers,” he did not have the personnel to monitor how people use their allotments.
With so much money to be made, officials set aside laws and policies that might encourage sustainable development, Mr. Gil, the journalist, said. At first, he was vilified in the community when he wrote articles critical of the developments. Recently, as people are discovering that the water is running out, the attitude is shifting.
But even so, people and politicians tend to regard water as a limitless resource. “Politicians think in four-year blocks, so it’s O.K. as long as it doesn’t run out on their watch,” said Ms. Montón of Greenpeace. “People think about it, but they don’t really think about what happens tomorrow. They don’t worry until they turn on the tap and nothing flows.”
In Spain, Water Is a New Battleground
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL, NY Times
FORTUNA, Spain — Lush fields of lettuce and hothouses of tomatoes line the roads. Verdant new developments of plush pastel vacation homes beckon buyers from Britain and Germany. Golf courses — dozens of them, all recently built — give way to the beach. At last, this hardscrabble corner of southeast Spain is thriving.
There is only one problem with the picture of bounty: this province, Murcia, is running out of water. Swaths of southeast Spain are steadily turning into desert, a process spurred on by global warming and poorly planned development.
Murcia, traditionally a poor farming region, has undergone a resort-building boom in recent years, even as many of its farmers have switched to more thirsty crops, encouraged by water transfer plans, which have become increasingly untenable. The combination has put new pressures on the land and its dwindling supply of water.
This year, farmers are fighting developers over water rights. They are fighting one another over who gets to water their crops. And in a sign of their mounting desperation, they are buying and selling water like gold on a rapidly growing black market, mostly from illegal wells.
Southern Spain has long been plagued by cyclical droughts, but the current crisis, scientists say, probably reflects a more permanent climate change brought on by global warming. And it is a harbinger of a new kind of conflict.
The battles of yesterday were fought over land, they warn. Those of the present center on oil. But those of the future — a future made hotter and drier by climate change in much of the world — seem likely to focus on water, they say.
“Water will be the environmental issue this year — the problem is urgent and immediate,” said Barbara Helferrich, a spokeswoman for the European Union’s Environment Directorate. “If you already have water shortages in spring, you know it’s going to be a really bad summer.”
Dozens of world leaders will be meeting at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization headquarters in Rome starting Tuesday to address a global food crisis caused in part by water shortages in Africa, Australia and here in southern Spain.
Climate change means that creeping deserts may eventually drive 135 million people off their land, the United Nations estimates. Most of them are in the developing world. But Southern Europe is experiencing the problem now, its climate drying to the point that it is becoming more like Africa’s, scientists say.
For Murcia, the arrival of the water crisis has been accelerated by developers and farmers who have hewed to water-hungry ventures highly unsuited to a drier, warmer climate: crops like lettuce that need ample irrigation, resorts that promise a swimming pool in the yard, acres of freshly sodded golf courses that sop up millions of gallons a day.
“I come under a lot of pressure to release water from farmers and also from developers,” said Antonio Pérez Gracia, the water manager here in Fortuna, sipping coffee with farmers in a bar in the town’s dusty square. He rued the fact that he could provide each property owner with only 30 percent of its government-determined water allotment.
“I’m not sure what we’ll do this summer,” he added, noting that the local aquifer was sinking so quickly that the pumps would not reach it soon. “I come under a lot of pressure to release water, from farmers and also from developers. They can complain as much as they want, but if there’s no more water, there’s no more water.”
Rubén Vives, a farmer who relies on Mr. Pérez Gracia’s largess, said he could not afford the black market water prices. “This year, my livelihood is in danger,” said Mr. Vives, who has farmed low-water crops like lemons here for nearly two decades.
The hundreds of thousands of wells — most of them illegal — that have in the past provided a temporary reprieve from thirst have depleted underground water to the point of no return. Water from northern Spain that was once transferred here has also slowed to a trickle, as wetter northern provinces are drying up, too.
The scramble for water has set off scandals. Local officials are in prison for taking payoffs to grant building permits in places where there is not adequate water. Chema Gil, a journalist who exposed one such scheme, has been subject to death threats, carries pepper spray and is guarded day and night by the Guardia Civil, a police force with military and civilian functions.
“The model of Murcia is completely unsustainable,” Mr. Gil said. “We consume two and a half times more water than the system can recover. So where do you get it? Import it from elsewhere? Dry up the aquifer? With climate change we’re heading into a cul-de-sac. All the water we’re using to water lettuce and golf courses will be needed just to drink.”
Facing a national crisis, Spain has become something of an unwitting laboratory, sponsoring a European conference on water issues this summer and announcing a national action plan this year to fight desertification. That plan includes a shift to more efficient methods of irrigation, as well as an extensive program of desalinization plants to provide the fresh water that nature does not.
The Spanish Environment Ministry estimates that one-third of the county is at risk of turning into desert from a combination of climate change and poor land use.
Still, national officials visibly stiffen when asked about the “Africanization” of Spain’s climate — a term now common among scientists.
“We are in much better shape than Africa, but within the E.U. our situation is serious,” said Antonio Serrano Rodríguez, the secretary general for land and biodiversity at Spain’s Environment Ministry.
Still, Mr. Serrano and others acknowledge the broad outlines of the problem. “There will be places that can’t be farmed any more, that were marginal and are now useless,” Mr. Serrano said. “We have parts of the country that are close to the limit.”
While southern Spain has always been dry and plagued by cyclical droughts, the average surface temperature in Spain has risen 2.7 degrees compared with about 1.4 degrees globally since 1880, records show.
Rainfall here is predicted to fall 20 percent from this year to 2020, and 40 percent by 2070, according to United Nations projections.
The changes on the Almarcha family farm in Albanilla over the past three decades are a testament to that hotter, drier climate here. Until two decades ago, the farm grew wheat and barley, watered only by rain. As rainfall dropped, Carlo Almarcha, 51, switched to growing almonds.
About 10 years ago, he quit almonds and changed to organic peaches and pears, “since they need less water,” he explained. Recently he took up olives and figs, “which resist drought and are less sensitive to weather.”
Mr. Almarcha participates in a government water trading system, started last year, in which farmers pay three times the normal price — 33 cents instead of 12 per cubic meter — to get extra water. The black market rate is even higher. Still, his outlook is bleak.
“You used to know that this week in spring there will be rain,” he said, standing in his work boots on parched soil of an olive grove that was once a wheat field. “Now you never know when or if it will come. Also, there’s no winter any more and plants need cold to rest. So there’s less growth. Sometimes none. Even plants all seem confused.”
While Mr. Almarcha has gradually moved toward less thirsty crops, the government’s previous water transfer plans have moved many farmers in the opposite direction. The farmers have shifted to producing a wide range of water-hungry fruits and vegetables that had never been grown in the south. Murcia is traditionally known for figs and date palms.
“You can’t grow strawberries naturally in Huelva — it’s too hot,” said Raquel Montón, a climate specialist at Greenpeace in Madrid, referring to the nearby strawberry capital of Spain. “In Sarragosa, which is a desert, we grow corn, the most water-thirsty crop. It’s insane. The only thing that would be more insane is putting up casinos and golf courses.” Which, of course, Murcia has.
In 2001, a new land use law in Murcia made it far easier for residents to sell land for resort development. Though southern Spain has long had elaborate systems for managing its relatively scarce water, today everyone, it seems, has found ways to get around them.
Grass on golf courses or surrounding villas is sometimes labeled a “crop,” making owners eligible for water that would not be allocated to keep leisure space green. Foreign investors plant a few trees and call their vacation homes “farms” so they are eligible for irrigation water, Mr. Pérez Gracia said.
“Once a property owner’s got a water allotment, he asks for a change of land use,” he explained. “Then he’s got his property and he’s got his water. It’s supposed to be for irrigation, but people use it for what they want. No one knows if it goes to a swimming pool.”
While he said his “heart goes out to the real farmers,” he did not have the personnel to monitor how people use their allotments.
With so much money to be made, officials set aside laws and policies that might encourage sustainable development, Mr. Gil, the journalist, said. At first, he was vilified in the community when he wrote articles critical of the developments. Recently, as people are discovering that the water is running out, the attitude is shifting.
But even so, people and politicians tend to regard water as a limitless resource. “Politicians think in four-year blocks, so it’s O.K. as long as it doesn’t run out on their watch,” said Ms. Montón of Greenpeace. “People think about it, but they don’t really think about what happens tomorrow. They don’t worry until they turn on the tap and nothing flows.”
Monday, June 2, 2008
Think the Economy Is Bad? Wait Till the States Cut Back - 060108 NY Times
This of course will knock out most local plans for relocalization as there simply will be no available funds. It will also do a job on "enviornmentally friendly" infastructure upgrades. RK
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/weekinreview/01uchitelle.html?pagewanted=print
June 1, 2008
Think the Economy Is Bad? Wait Till the States Cut Back
By LOUIS UCHITELLE
Struggling as we are with the housing bust, the credit crunch, shrinking consumption, rising unemployment and faltering business investment, we can be forgiven for thinking that all the big shoes have dropped. There is another one up there, however, and it is about to come down.
State and city governments have yet to shrink the economy; indeed, they have even managed to prop it up. They have quietly maintained their spending at pre-crisis levels even as they warn of numerous cutbacks forced on them by declining tax revenues. The cutbacks, however, are written into budgets for a fiscal year that begins on July 1, a month away. In the meantime the states and cities, often drawing on rainy-day savings, have carried their share of the load for the national economy.
That share is gigantic. At $1.8 trillion annually in a $14 trillion economy, the states and municipalities spend almost twice as much as the federal government, including the cost of the Iraq war. When librarians, lifeguards, teachers, transit workers, road repair crews and health care workers disappear, or airport and school construction is halted, the economy trembles. None of that, or very little, has happened so far, not even in California, despite a significant decline in tax revenue.
“We are looking at a $4 billion cut to public schools and deep cuts that will result in thousands of Californians losing their health care,” said Jean Ross, executive director of the California Budget Project, offering a preview of coming hardships. “But the reality is we have not pulled money off the streets yet.”
Quite the opposite, the states and municipalities have increased their spending in recent quarters, bolstering the nation’s meager economic growth. Over the past year, they have added $40 billion to their outlays, even allowing for scattered spending freezes and a few cutbacks in advance of July 1. Total employment has also risen. But when the current fiscal year ends in 30 days (or in the fall for many municipalities), state and city spending will fall, along with employment — slowly at first and then quite noticeably after the next president takes office.
Sometime next year, the decline will reach an annual rate of $50 billion, Goldman Sachs estimates. “It is a big reason to expect a weak economy in 2009,” said Jan Hatzius, chief domestic economist at the firm.
The $90 billion swing — from more spending to less — could be enough to push down a weak economy to zero growth or less, because state and city spending has accounted for as much as half of total economic growth since last fall. (A robust economy has a growth rate of 3 percent to 4 percent, compared with the 0.9 percent or less of the last two quarters.) The $90 billion would certainly offset most of the $107 billion stimulus package now going out from the federal government to millions of Americans in the form of tax rebate checks. The hope is they will spend this windfall on consumption and in doing so sustain the economy. That might happen — for a while. But with the cutbacks in state and city outlays canceling out the consumption, the next president, struggling to revive a weak economy, will almost certainly have to consider a second stimulus package.
But what should it be? Should it be a reprise of the checks, relying again on private-sector spending for rejuvenation? Or should Washington channel extra federal money to city and state governments so they can sustain their outlays for the numerous programs that otherwise would be shrunk? The answer, even on Wall Street, is often: subsidize the states and cities.
“If you want to make sure that federal money gets spent, and jobs are created, you give it to them,” said Nigel Gault, chief domestic economist at Global Insight, a forecasting firm.
Like many others, Mr. Gault contends that more than 50 percent of the $107 billion in stimulus checks now going to households is likely to produce no stimulus at all. Instead, it will be used to pay down debt or buy imported goods and services. Imports bolster production in other countries; not in the United States.
Still, rebate checks have been a standard tool for years in efforts to revive the American economy. So have tax cuts and — the most popular tool of all — the Federal Reserve’s lowering of interest rates. Each tool assumes that people will respond to the incentive with more spending and investment, and markets will then work their magic. Not since the 1970s, when politicians still paid attention to the teachings of John Maynard Keynes, has public spending — government spending — surfaced in mainstream political debate as a potentially effective means of counteracting a downturn.
Government has to step in, Keynesians argue, when private spending is not enough to lift the economy, despite the nudge from tax cuts or lower interest rates or rebate checks. This downturn might be one of those moments, involving as it does the bursting of a huge housing bubble. That has precipitated sharp declines in various tax revenues on which the states and cities depend, forcing them into extraordinary spending cuts — not yet, of course, but after July 1.
The issue barely dents the presidential election campaign. The Republicans in particular are less than enthusiastic about Keynesian economics, with its use of government to rescue markets. They, and many mainstream economists, for that matter, argue that government is inefficient, bureaucratic, wasteful and unable to spend fast enough to counteract a downturn. The two Democratic candidates, in contrast, argue that a second stimulus package, if one is needed, should include federal subsidies to the states and municipalities, not to start new projects but to prevent cutbacks in existing ones.
No state seems more vulnerable than Florida, with its plunging home prices and slashed property-tax assessments, not yet on the books but soon to be. In anticipation, the legislature in May approved a $66.5 billion budget for the coming fiscal year, down from $72 billion in the current one.
Schools are a target, said Michael Sittig, executive director of the Florida League of Cities, “but none has been hurt yet. Nevertheless, everyone is scared. Everyone is in the mode of trying to figure out how to get through next year” — starting 30 days from now.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/weekinreview/01uchitelle.html?pagewanted=print
June 1, 2008
Think the Economy Is Bad? Wait Till the States Cut Back
By LOUIS UCHITELLE
Struggling as we are with the housing bust, the credit crunch, shrinking consumption, rising unemployment and faltering business investment, we can be forgiven for thinking that all the big shoes have dropped. There is another one up there, however, and it is about to come down.
State and city governments have yet to shrink the economy; indeed, they have even managed to prop it up. They have quietly maintained their spending at pre-crisis levels even as they warn of numerous cutbacks forced on them by declining tax revenues. The cutbacks, however, are written into budgets for a fiscal year that begins on July 1, a month away. In the meantime the states and cities, often drawing on rainy-day savings, have carried their share of the load for the national economy.
That share is gigantic. At $1.8 trillion annually in a $14 trillion economy, the states and municipalities spend almost twice as much as the federal government, including the cost of the Iraq war. When librarians, lifeguards, teachers, transit workers, road repair crews and health care workers disappear, or airport and school construction is halted, the economy trembles. None of that, or very little, has happened so far, not even in California, despite a significant decline in tax revenue.
“We are looking at a $4 billion cut to public schools and deep cuts that will result in thousands of Californians losing their health care,” said Jean Ross, executive director of the California Budget Project, offering a preview of coming hardships. “But the reality is we have not pulled money off the streets yet.”
Quite the opposite, the states and municipalities have increased their spending in recent quarters, bolstering the nation’s meager economic growth. Over the past year, they have added $40 billion to their outlays, even allowing for scattered spending freezes and a few cutbacks in advance of July 1. Total employment has also risen. But when the current fiscal year ends in 30 days (or in the fall for many municipalities), state and city spending will fall, along with employment — slowly at first and then quite noticeably after the next president takes office.
Sometime next year, the decline will reach an annual rate of $50 billion, Goldman Sachs estimates. “It is a big reason to expect a weak economy in 2009,” said Jan Hatzius, chief domestic economist at the firm.
The $90 billion swing — from more spending to less — could be enough to push down a weak economy to zero growth or less, because state and city spending has accounted for as much as half of total economic growth since last fall. (A robust economy has a growth rate of 3 percent to 4 percent, compared with the 0.9 percent or less of the last two quarters.) The $90 billion would certainly offset most of the $107 billion stimulus package now going out from the federal government to millions of Americans in the form of tax rebate checks. The hope is they will spend this windfall on consumption and in doing so sustain the economy. That might happen — for a while. But with the cutbacks in state and city outlays canceling out the consumption, the next president, struggling to revive a weak economy, will almost certainly have to consider a second stimulus package.
But what should it be? Should it be a reprise of the checks, relying again on private-sector spending for rejuvenation? Or should Washington channel extra federal money to city and state governments so they can sustain their outlays for the numerous programs that otherwise would be shrunk? The answer, even on Wall Street, is often: subsidize the states and cities.
“If you want to make sure that federal money gets spent, and jobs are created, you give it to them,” said Nigel Gault, chief domestic economist at Global Insight, a forecasting firm.
Like many others, Mr. Gault contends that more than 50 percent of the $107 billion in stimulus checks now going to households is likely to produce no stimulus at all. Instead, it will be used to pay down debt or buy imported goods and services. Imports bolster production in other countries; not in the United States.
Still, rebate checks have been a standard tool for years in efforts to revive the American economy. So have tax cuts and — the most popular tool of all — the Federal Reserve’s lowering of interest rates. Each tool assumes that people will respond to the incentive with more spending and investment, and markets will then work their magic. Not since the 1970s, when politicians still paid attention to the teachings of John Maynard Keynes, has public spending — government spending — surfaced in mainstream political debate as a potentially effective means of counteracting a downturn.
Government has to step in, Keynesians argue, when private spending is not enough to lift the economy, despite the nudge from tax cuts or lower interest rates or rebate checks. This downturn might be one of those moments, involving as it does the bursting of a huge housing bubble. That has precipitated sharp declines in various tax revenues on which the states and cities depend, forcing them into extraordinary spending cuts — not yet, of course, but after July 1.
The issue barely dents the presidential election campaign. The Republicans in particular are less than enthusiastic about Keynesian economics, with its use of government to rescue markets. They, and many mainstream economists, for that matter, argue that government is inefficient, bureaucratic, wasteful and unable to spend fast enough to counteract a downturn. The two Democratic candidates, in contrast, argue that a second stimulus package, if one is needed, should include federal subsidies to the states and municipalities, not to start new projects but to prevent cutbacks in existing ones.
No state seems more vulnerable than Florida, with its plunging home prices and slashed property-tax assessments, not yet on the books but soon to be. In anticipation, the legislature in May approved a $66.5 billion budget for the coming fiscal year, down from $72 billion in the current one.
Schools are a target, said Michael Sittig, executive director of the Florida League of Cities, “but none has been hurt yet. Nevertheless, everyone is scared. Everyone is in the mode of trying to figure out how to get through next year” — starting 30 days from now.
Airline Group Sees ‘Desperate’ Times - 060308 NY Times
It sure was fun while it lasted! RK
"In the next 12 months we could face $99 billion in extra costs from oil.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/03/business/worldbusiness/03air.html?pagewanted=print
June 3, 2008
Airline Group Sees ‘Desperate’ Times
By CAROLINE BROTHERS and MATTHEW SALTMARSH
ISTANBUL — Citing high oil prices and the slowing economy, the International Air Transport Association on Monday sharply lowered its industry forecast for 2008, saying it now expected a collective loss of $2.3 billion.
In March, the group had forecast a profit of $4.5 billion.
At its annual meeting here, the association urged governments to roll back regulations that they argue are damaging the industry at a time when many carriers are in a “desperate” situation.
If price of oil, which is now just below $130 a barrel, averages $107 over 2008, the aviation industry would lose $2.3 billion for the year, the chief executive of the group, Giovanni Bisignani, said. Should it hold at $135 a barrel for the rest of the year, the industry will lose $6.1 billion.
“After enormous efficiency gains since 2001, there is no fat left and skyrocketing oil prices are changing everything,” Mr. Bisignani said. “The situation is desperate and potentially more destructive than our recent battles with all the Horsemen of the Apocalypse combined.”
Other problems facing the airlines, the group said, include uncertainty about the approach by the European Union and governments toward state aid and airline mergers.
The chief executive of British Airways, William M. Walsh, said: “We’re definitely as an industry in a crisis situation. With a softening in the economic environment, high oil prices, it’s inevitable that fares have to go up.”
Mr. Walsh added that he expected to see additional bankruptcies soon.
John Leahy, chief operating officer of the European plane maker Airbus, said that the sector could adjust to higher fuel prices “but it will take several years, and how many will be left standing?”
Hartmut Moers, an analyst at the bank Sal. Oppenheim in Frankfurt, said “The key short-term question is who is best hedged against the oil rise.”
“And then further out,” Mr. Moers said, “you look for the airlines with robust operations, the flexibility to adjust and the ones that are best capitalized.”
In Europe, that probably means the strongest are the biggest — Air-France-KLM, British Airways and Lufthansa. The situation in the United States appears more complicated given difficulties of integrating different carriers and the weak dollar, which makes oil even more expensive.
Consolidation is the obvious solution, Mr. Moers said, but “there are more obstacles than you might think.”
In the United States, Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines said in April that they planned to merge. But last week, United Airlines and US Airways suspended merger talks. In Europe, Air-France back away from acquiring Alitalia of Italy. And in December, long-running talks by a consortium to buy Iberia of Spain collapsed.
Mr. Moers said that government support would be needed if a number of flag carriers are to survive. “It’s very hard for any government to let an airline go bankrupt,” he said, “and that is the scenario if nothing happens.”
One possibility, analysts said, is a resurrection of trans-Atlantic deals, provided antitrust rules are softened.
But Mr. Walsh of British Airways opposed government aid to support struggling flag carriers.
“If they were struggling with $65, $70, $80 dollar oil, I don’t see how they can survive.” Mr. Walsh said.
For its part, British Airways announced in May that it was “exploring opportunities for cooperation” with the two airlines in the United States, leading to suggestions that it would extend its OneWorld alliance with American Airlines to include Continental.
British Airways and American, a unit of the AMR Corporation, have failed to get an exemption from American antitrust laws to work more closely because of their dominance at Heathrow airport in London.
‘Things have changed” Mr. Moers said. “We now have the ‘open skies’ agreement. I’m not sure that we would see the same stringent conditions of such a move as before.”
At the industry conference, Mr. Bisignani said: “Twenty-four airlines have gone bust in the last six months and $130 per barrel oil is reshaping the industry even as we speak. In the next 12 months we could face $99 billion in extra costs from oil.”
He said governments must “stop crazy taxation, regulate monopolies effectively, ensure that the cost of energy reflects its true value, fix the infrastructure and change the rules of the game.”
“Labor must understand that jobs disappear if costs don’t come down,” he added.
In particular, he criticized the European Parliament for imposing 100 amendments an emissions trading proposal.
“We face a bill of 6.4 billion euros for a misguided and unilateral proposal that will inspire international legal battles but do very little for the environment,” he said. “These are reckless decisions when the industry is in crisis and oil prices have changed the game completely.”
Mr. Bisignani called for governments to develop an emissions trading scheme that is fair, voluntary and global. And he urged financing for innovation for biofuels and new generation engines and airframes.
"In the next 12 months we could face $99 billion in extra costs from oil.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/03/business/worldbusiness/03air.html?pagewanted=print
June 3, 2008
Airline Group Sees ‘Desperate’ Times
By CAROLINE BROTHERS and MATTHEW SALTMARSH
ISTANBUL — Citing high oil prices and the slowing economy, the International Air Transport Association on Monday sharply lowered its industry forecast for 2008, saying it now expected a collective loss of $2.3 billion.
In March, the group had forecast a profit of $4.5 billion.
At its annual meeting here, the association urged governments to roll back regulations that they argue are damaging the industry at a time when many carriers are in a “desperate” situation.
If price of oil, which is now just below $130 a barrel, averages $107 over 2008, the aviation industry would lose $2.3 billion for the year, the chief executive of the group, Giovanni Bisignani, said. Should it hold at $135 a barrel for the rest of the year, the industry will lose $6.1 billion.
“After enormous efficiency gains since 2001, there is no fat left and skyrocketing oil prices are changing everything,” Mr. Bisignani said. “The situation is desperate and potentially more destructive than our recent battles with all the Horsemen of the Apocalypse combined.”
Other problems facing the airlines, the group said, include uncertainty about the approach by the European Union and governments toward state aid and airline mergers.
The chief executive of British Airways, William M. Walsh, said: “We’re definitely as an industry in a crisis situation. With a softening in the economic environment, high oil prices, it’s inevitable that fares have to go up.”
Mr. Walsh added that he expected to see additional bankruptcies soon.
John Leahy, chief operating officer of the European plane maker Airbus, said that the sector could adjust to higher fuel prices “but it will take several years, and how many will be left standing?”
Hartmut Moers, an analyst at the bank Sal. Oppenheim in Frankfurt, said “The key short-term question is who is best hedged against the oil rise.”
“And then further out,” Mr. Moers said, “you look for the airlines with robust operations, the flexibility to adjust and the ones that are best capitalized.”
In Europe, that probably means the strongest are the biggest — Air-France-KLM, British Airways and Lufthansa. The situation in the United States appears more complicated given difficulties of integrating different carriers and the weak dollar, which makes oil even more expensive.
Consolidation is the obvious solution, Mr. Moers said, but “there are more obstacles than you might think.”
In the United States, Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines said in April that they planned to merge. But last week, United Airlines and US Airways suspended merger talks. In Europe, Air-France back away from acquiring Alitalia of Italy. And in December, long-running talks by a consortium to buy Iberia of Spain collapsed.
Mr. Moers said that government support would be needed if a number of flag carriers are to survive. “It’s very hard for any government to let an airline go bankrupt,” he said, “and that is the scenario if nothing happens.”
One possibility, analysts said, is a resurrection of trans-Atlantic deals, provided antitrust rules are softened.
But Mr. Walsh of British Airways opposed government aid to support struggling flag carriers.
“If they were struggling with $65, $70, $80 dollar oil, I don’t see how they can survive.” Mr. Walsh said.
For its part, British Airways announced in May that it was “exploring opportunities for cooperation” with the two airlines in the United States, leading to suggestions that it would extend its OneWorld alliance with American Airlines to include Continental.
British Airways and American, a unit of the AMR Corporation, have failed to get an exemption from American antitrust laws to work more closely because of their dominance at Heathrow airport in London.
‘Things have changed” Mr. Moers said. “We now have the ‘open skies’ agreement. I’m not sure that we would see the same stringent conditions of such a move as before.”
At the industry conference, Mr. Bisignani said: “Twenty-four airlines have gone bust in the last six months and $130 per barrel oil is reshaping the industry even as we speak. In the next 12 months we could face $99 billion in extra costs from oil.”
He said governments must “stop crazy taxation, regulate monopolies effectively, ensure that the cost of energy reflects its true value, fix the infrastructure and change the rules of the game.”
“Labor must understand that jobs disappear if costs don’t come down,” he added.
In particular, he criticized the European Parliament for imposing 100 amendments an emissions trading proposal.
“We face a bill of 6.4 billion euros for a misguided and unilateral proposal that will inspire international legal battles but do very little for the environment,” he said. “These are reckless decisions when the industry is in crisis and oil prices have changed the game completely.”
Mr. Bisignani called for governments to develop an emissions trading scheme that is fair, voluntary and global. And he urged financing for innovation for biofuels and new generation engines and airframes.
A Network to Make an Environmental Point - NY Times 060208
"But some of Planet Green’s advertisers could raise eyebrows. General Motors, maker of the Hummer, is the “exclusive automobile sponsor” of the channel, Discovery announced last month. G.M.’s Chevrolet brand is a “premier sponsor” of “Greensburg,” a documentary series about a tornado-damaged town that is rebuilding with an eye to the environment. As part of the deal, G.M. vehicles will be integrated into some programs, and Discovery will produce short-form videos about the company."
What's there to say? RK
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/02/business/media/02adcol.html?sq=environmental%20point&st=nyt&scp=1&pagewanted=print
June 2, 2008
Advertising
A Network to Make an Environmental Point
By BRIAN STELTER
CAN the environment make for entertaining TV? Discovery Communications is about to find out.
On Wednesday, Discovery will introduce Planet Green, a new cable brand promoted as the first 24-hour channel dedicated to eco-friendly living. It is the highest-profile cable channel introduction of the year, and an equally risky one. By wrapping itself in the planet, Discovery is betting that “eco-tainment” will appeal to viewers.
Planet Green will replace the Discovery Home Channel in more than 50 million homes. Eyeing the public’s increased interest in environmental issues, Discovery is confident that it can attract more viewers with green-themed programming.
“This is an eco-tainment channel,” said Eileen O’Neill, the general manager of Planet Green. “It’s a lifestyle and entertainment channel that’s designed to activate people in the green space.”
It is also intended to engage advertisers, many of whom have green-themed marketing messages to share with viewers.
“Green is a category companies want to be in,” said Gary Lico, the chief executive of CableU, an online service that analyzes cable networks. “Whether you’re an automaker or a bank or a petroleum company, somewhere in your marketing plan is something referring to the environment.”
But some of Planet Green’s advertisers could raise eyebrows. General Motors, maker of the Hummer, is the “exclusive automobile sponsor” of the channel, Discovery announced last month. G.M.’s Chevrolet brand is a “premier sponsor” of “Greensburg,” a documentary series about a tornado-damaged town that is rebuilding with an eye to the environment. As part of the deal, G.M. vehicles will be integrated into some programs, and Discovery will produce short-form videos about the company.
Ms. O’Neill said the company has “very thoughtful conversations” with any advertiser who shows an interest in the channel.
“We’re thinking about everyone being better — not necessarily perfect,” Ms. O’Neill said, noting that G.M. sells a number of vehicles that address fuel efficiency or feature hybrid technology.
David M. Zaslav, the chief executive of Discovery Communications, added: “If the standard is perfection, we’ll all fail. The journey is to do a little bit better.”
That attitude is in line with the channel’s mission, which is to “take green to the mainstream,” said Tom Carr, the senior vice president for marketing of the channel.
•
Discovery’s research, conducted last year, identified 40 percent to 50 percent of the United States population as “armchair environmentalists.” Mr. Carr calls the channel’s target audience “bright greens,” people who are motivated by the idea that they can help the planet.
Several other cable networks introduced green-themed programming last year. HGTV had the debut of “Living With Ed,” a reality show starring Ed Begley Jr. (It is moving to Planet Green.) The Sundance Channel created “The Green,” a weekly environmental series. And Discovery received wide acclaim for the broadcast of the documentary “Planet Earth.” After that program, the network was inundated with viewer requests for more environmental programming, Mr. Zaslav said.
“We’re pressing on the accelerator here,” he said. “We think it has a real chance to be a flagship brand for us.”
But programs that are promoted as being good for you aren’t always good for ratings, Mr. Lico noted. Perhaps that’s why “Compost Tonight” didn’t find a spot on Planet Green.
The channel’s schedule is star-studded, with the celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse hosting a cooking show featuring organic and locally grown foods, and the “Entourage” star Adrian Grenier living a green life. “Hollywood Green,” a weekly entertainment magazine, will showcase earth-conscious celebrities. The other programs will show every shade of green, from “G Word,” a daily series hosted by two news correspondents, to “Wrecklamation,” billed as “recycling on steroids.”
The channel has almost all original programming — partly because there was not an available vault of entertaining environmental programming to tap into. “It’s been challenging at times,” Ms. O’Neill said, “in part because we’ve been educating the production community that may have had certain expectations of what green content is.”
Namely, that it did not star Ludacris and Tommy Lee, at least not until now. On their new show, “Battleground Earth,” the celebrities participate in an eco-friendly reality competition. They were also the headliners of the channel’s premiere party in Los Angeles last week.
•
Timed to the switch from Discovery Home to Planet Green, Discovery marketers are conducting “Random Acts of Greenness.” At the Indianapolis 500 last month, they handed out T-shirts and beach balls to consumers who exemplified green living, and sponsored the cleanup day after the race. The giveaways will continue in New York this week.
Similar promotions will occur at Major League Baseball games in Milwaukee; Washington; and San Diego, San Francisco and Oakland, Calif., on Wednesday. Mr. Zaslav will throw out the first pitch in Washington, and the stadium’s JumboTron will count down to the channel’s 6 p.m. debut. Also that day, all the Discovery cable networks will show green logos.
The New York Post is going green on Wednesday, too: the newspaper will turn its flag green that day and feature advertisements for the channel all week. The newspaper will also give away 250 bicycles with Planet Green branding.
“This is a new genre,” Ms. O’Neill said. “People don’t have any set expectations of what green media is, and we’re defining it — as really funny, engaging, entertaining and definitely credible.”
What's there to say? RK
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/02/business/media/02adcol.html?sq=environmental%20point&st=nyt&scp=1&pagewanted=print
June 2, 2008
Advertising
A Network to Make an Environmental Point
By BRIAN STELTER
CAN the environment make for entertaining TV? Discovery Communications is about to find out.
On Wednesday, Discovery will introduce Planet Green, a new cable brand promoted as the first 24-hour channel dedicated to eco-friendly living. It is the highest-profile cable channel introduction of the year, and an equally risky one. By wrapping itself in the planet, Discovery is betting that “eco-tainment” will appeal to viewers.
Planet Green will replace the Discovery Home Channel in more than 50 million homes. Eyeing the public’s increased interest in environmental issues, Discovery is confident that it can attract more viewers with green-themed programming.
“This is an eco-tainment channel,” said Eileen O’Neill, the general manager of Planet Green. “It’s a lifestyle and entertainment channel that’s designed to activate people in the green space.”
It is also intended to engage advertisers, many of whom have green-themed marketing messages to share with viewers.
“Green is a category companies want to be in,” said Gary Lico, the chief executive of CableU, an online service that analyzes cable networks. “Whether you’re an automaker or a bank or a petroleum company, somewhere in your marketing plan is something referring to the environment.”
But some of Planet Green’s advertisers could raise eyebrows. General Motors, maker of the Hummer, is the “exclusive automobile sponsor” of the channel, Discovery announced last month. G.M.’s Chevrolet brand is a “premier sponsor” of “Greensburg,” a documentary series about a tornado-damaged town that is rebuilding with an eye to the environment. As part of the deal, G.M. vehicles will be integrated into some programs, and Discovery will produce short-form videos about the company.
Ms. O’Neill said the company has “very thoughtful conversations” with any advertiser who shows an interest in the channel.
“We’re thinking about everyone being better — not necessarily perfect,” Ms. O’Neill said, noting that G.M. sells a number of vehicles that address fuel efficiency or feature hybrid technology.
David M. Zaslav, the chief executive of Discovery Communications, added: “If the standard is perfection, we’ll all fail. The journey is to do a little bit better.”
That attitude is in line with the channel’s mission, which is to “take green to the mainstream,” said Tom Carr, the senior vice president for marketing of the channel.
•
Discovery’s research, conducted last year, identified 40 percent to 50 percent of the United States population as “armchair environmentalists.” Mr. Carr calls the channel’s target audience “bright greens,” people who are motivated by the idea that they can help the planet.
Several other cable networks introduced green-themed programming last year. HGTV had the debut of “Living With Ed,” a reality show starring Ed Begley Jr. (It is moving to Planet Green.) The Sundance Channel created “The Green,” a weekly environmental series. And Discovery received wide acclaim for the broadcast of the documentary “Planet Earth.” After that program, the network was inundated with viewer requests for more environmental programming, Mr. Zaslav said.
“We’re pressing on the accelerator here,” he said. “We think it has a real chance to be a flagship brand for us.”
But programs that are promoted as being good for you aren’t always good for ratings, Mr. Lico noted. Perhaps that’s why “Compost Tonight” didn’t find a spot on Planet Green.
The channel’s schedule is star-studded, with the celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse hosting a cooking show featuring organic and locally grown foods, and the “Entourage” star Adrian Grenier living a green life. “Hollywood Green,” a weekly entertainment magazine, will showcase earth-conscious celebrities. The other programs will show every shade of green, from “G Word,” a daily series hosted by two news correspondents, to “Wrecklamation,” billed as “recycling on steroids.”
The channel has almost all original programming — partly because there was not an available vault of entertaining environmental programming to tap into. “It’s been challenging at times,” Ms. O’Neill said, “in part because we’ve been educating the production community that may have had certain expectations of what green content is.”
Namely, that it did not star Ludacris and Tommy Lee, at least not until now. On their new show, “Battleground Earth,” the celebrities participate in an eco-friendly reality competition. They were also the headliners of the channel’s premiere party in Los Angeles last week.
•
Timed to the switch from Discovery Home to Planet Green, Discovery marketers are conducting “Random Acts of Greenness.” At the Indianapolis 500 last month, they handed out T-shirts and beach balls to consumers who exemplified green living, and sponsored the cleanup day after the race. The giveaways will continue in New York this week.
Similar promotions will occur at Major League Baseball games in Milwaukee; Washington; and San Diego, San Francisco and Oakland, Calif., on Wednesday. Mr. Zaslav will throw out the first pitch in Washington, and the stadium’s JumboTron will count down to the channel’s 6 p.m. debut. Also that day, all the Discovery cable networks will show green logos.
The New York Post is going green on Wednesday, too: the newspaper will turn its flag green that day and feature advertisements for the channel all week. The newspaper will also give away 250 bicycles with Planet Green branding.
“This is a new genre,” Ms. O’Neill said. “People don’t have any set expectations of what green media is, and we’re defining it — as really funny, engaging, entertaining and definitely credible.”
Student Loans Bypass 2-Yr. Colleges - 060208 NY Times
Thanks Dennis B. for this one
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/02/business/02loans.html?ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=print
June 2, 2008
Student Loans Start to Bypass 2-Year Colleges
By JONATHAN D. GLATER
Some of the nation’s biggest banks have closed their doors to students at community colleges, for-profit universities and other less competitive institutions, even as they continue to extend federally backed loans to students at the nation’s top universities.
Citibank has been among the most aggressive in paring the list of colleges it serves. JPMorgan Chase, PNC and SunTrust say they have not dropped whole categories, but are cutting colleges as well. Some less-selective four-year colleges, like Eastern Oregon University and William Jessup University in Rocklin, Calif., say they have been summarily dropped by some lenders.
The practice suggests that if the credit crisis and the ensuing turmoil in the student loan business persist, some of the nation’s neediest students will be hurt the most. The difficulty borrowing may deter them from attending school or prompt them to take a semester off. When they get student loans, they will wind up with less attractive terms and may run a greater risk of default if they have to switch lenders in the middle of their college years.
Tuition and loan amounts can be quite small at community colleges. But these institutions, which are a stepping stone to other educational programs or to better jobs, often draw students from the lower rungs of the economic ladder. More than 6.2 million of the nation’s 14.8 million undergraduates — over 40 percent — attend community colleges. According to the most recent data from the College Board, about a third of their graduates took out loans, a majority of them federally guaranteed.
“If we put too many hurdles in their way to get a loan, they’ll take a third job or use a credit card,” said Jacqueline K. Bradley, assistant dean for financial aid at Mendocino College in California. “That almost guarantees that they won’t be as successful in their college career.”
So far, financial aid administrators say they have been able to find fallback lenders that students can switch to, but the hurdles are costly to students — in money and time. The maximum interest rate on federal loans, now at 6.8 percent on the most commonly used loans, is set by Congress, but lenders are scrapping benefits, like rate cuts for borrowers who make their payments on time or allow direct withdrawals from bank accounts.
Some loan companies have exited the student loan business entirely, viewing it as unprofitable in the current environment. By splitting out community colleges and less-selective four-year institutions, some remaining lenders seem to be breaking the marketplace into tiers. Students attending elite, expensive, public and private four-year universities can expect loans to remain plentiful. The banks generally say these loans are bigger, more profitable and less risky, in part perhaps because the banks expect the universities’ graduates to earn more.
Lenders will not say how many colleges they have dropped, making it hard to determine just how many institutions have been affected. Although financial aid administrators say the trend is widespread, they are often reluctant to identify which lenders have stopped serving their colleges, for fear that it will complicate matters for current students who have taken out loans from those lenders and still need to deal with them.
Michelle McClain, 40, who is studying to become a teacher, learned on Friday that she would have to find a new lender after Citibank dropped William Jessup University. The news angered her.
“The loan is between me and the lender,” Ms. McClain said. “I’m the one that’s taking out the loan, I’m the one whose credit is in jeopardy if I don’t pay it, I am the one totally responsible for the loan, and as long as I’m going to an accredited college, I don’t understand why it would make one iota of difference where I am going to college.”
The government has been taking additional steps to keep the student loan market operating smoothly. And some lenders’ doors remain wide open. Sallie Mae and Nelnet recently reaffirmed their commitment to federal loans regardless of the institution a student attends. Kristin Shear, director of student financial services at Santa Rosa Junior College, said that days after the school was dropped by Citibank, Wells Fargo called to say it was eager to lend to students there.
The banks that are pulling out say their decisions are based on an analysis of which colleges have higher default rates, low numbers of borrowers and small loan amounts that make the business less profitable. (The average amount borrowed by community college students is about $3,200 a year, according to the College Board.) Still, the cherry-picking strikes some as peculiar; after all, the government is guaranteeing 95 percent of the value of these loans.
Mark C. Rodgers, a spokesman for Citibank, which lends through its Student Loan Corporation unit, said the bank had “temporarily suspended lending at schools which tend to have loans with lower balances and shorter periods over which we earn interest. And, in general, we are suspending lending at certain schools where we anticipate processing minimal loan volume.”
Financial aid officials in California said that Citibank had stopped making loans to students at all community colleges in the state. Mr. Rodgers said the bank would not provide details about which schools were affected.
The financial aid director at William Jessup, Korey Compaan, said he did not understand the bank’s explanation.
“The logic is so flawed, that for us to have volume with them in the future, we have to have had volume with them in the past,” Mr. Compaan said. Simply to cut off students at a college, he continued, “I find it totally and completely unethical.”
The government sets the criteria for college participation in federal loan programs, requiring that colleges be accredited and have low default rates to participate, for example. Now lenders are being more selective than the government.
“There’s been a certain amount of market segmentation going on, but this is the first time we’ve seen a lender, especially as large as Citibank, saying, ‘We don’t want to do business with you,’ ” said Samuel F. Collie, director of financial aid at Eastern Oregon University in La Grande, Ore.
“There’s a fundamental issue of fairness and equity that’s certainly not being addressed in this,” Mr. Collie said. “But short of completely revamping the way that financial aid, especially loans, is being delivered to students in this country, I don’t know that we have any easy answers.”
The credit crisis, which has made it harder for some lenders to raise money, and a reduction in the government’s subsidy to lenders have contributed to the reevaluations by the lenders.
“This is one of those perfect storm situations,” said Susan L. Mead, director of financial aid at Dutchess Community College in New York. She said her institution had been dropped by no less than six lenders: HSBC, Citibank, M&T, Chase, Citizens Bank and Student Loan Xpress.
Christine Holevas, a spokeswoman for Chase, said that the bank considered several factors in deciding whether to lend to a particular college’s students. “The repayment rate, you look at the size and length of the loan,” she said. “We have tightened credit standards, yes, but we haven’t cut off any category of school.”
Hugh Suhr, a spokesman for SunTrust, said it was “stepping away from some relationships” with universities, but that this was “not based on any particular type of school.” Mr. Suhr said the bank continued to lend to students at a range of institutions.
Another danger for students is that as they are forced to find and switch to replacement lenders, they may lose track of some debt obligations and miss a few payments.
“It might put them in default,” said Claudia Martin, director of financial aid at Monterey Peninsula College, a community college in California that was dropped by Citibank and two other lenders. “We always recommend that a student stay with the same lender all through school.”
Commercial colleges, among the first to suffer when lenders withdrew from the market, have been openly critical of the new differentiation.
“From what I can tell from our lawyers, it’s not technically illegal for them to reject schools,” said Harris N. Miller, the president of the Career College Association in Washington, a trade group for commercial colleges. “I just think that’s very objectionable.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/02/business/02loans.html?ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=print
June 2, 2008
Student Loans Start to Bypass 2-Year Colleges
By JONATHAN D. GLATER
Some of the nation’s biggest banks have closed their doors to students at community colleges, for-profit universities and other less competitive institutions, even as they continue to extend federally backed loans to students at the nation’s top universities.
Citibank has been among the most aggressive in paring the list of colleges it serves. JPMorgan Chase, PNC and SunTrust say they have not dropped whole categories, but are cutting colleges as well. Some less-selective four-year colleges, like Eastern Oregon University and William Jessup University in Rocklin, Calif., say they have been summarily dropped by some lenders.
The practice suggests that if the credit crisis and the ensuing turmoil in the student loan business persist, some of the nation’s neediest students will be hurt the most. The difficulty borrowing may deter them from attending school or prompt them to take a semester off. When they get student loans, they will wind up with less attractive terms and may run a greater risk of default if they have to switch lenders in the middle of their college years.
Tuition and loan amounts can be quite small at community colleges. But these institutions, which are a stepping stone to other educational programs or to better jobs, often draw students from the lower rungs of the economic ladder. More than 6.2 million of the nation’s 14.8 million undergraduates — over 40 percent — attend community colleges. According to the most recent data from the College Board, about a third of their graduates took out loans, a majority of them federally guaranteed.
“If we put too many hurdles in their way to get a loan, they’ll take a third job or use a credit card,” said Jacqueline K. Bradley, assistant dean for financial aid at Mendocino College in California. “That almost guarantees that they won’t be as successful in their college career.”
So far, financial aid administrators say they have been able to find fallback lenders that students can switch to, but the hurdles are costly to students — in money and time. The maximum interest rate on federal loans, now at 6.8 percent on the most commonly used loans, is set by Congress, but lenders are scrapping benefits, like rate cuts for borrowers who make their payments on time or allow direct withdrawals from bank accounts.
Some loan companies have exited the student loan business entirely, viewing it as unprofitable in the current environment. By splitting out community colleges and less-selective four-year institutions, some remaining lenders seem to be breaking the marketplace into tiers. Students attending elite, expensive, public and private four-year universities can expect loans to remain plentiful. The banks generally say these loans are bigger, more profitable and less risky, in part perhaps because the banks expect the universities’ graduates to earn more.
Lenders will not say how many colleges they have dropped, making it hard to determine just how many institutions have been affected. Although financial aid administrators say the trend is widespread, they are often reluctant to identify which lenders have stopped serving their colleges, for fear that it will complicate matters for current students who have taken out loans from those lenders and still need to deal with them.
Michelle McClain, 40, who is studying to become a teacher, learned on Friday that she would have to find a new lender after Citibank dropped William Jessup University. The news angered her.
“The loan is between me and the lender,” Ms. McClain said. “I’m the one that’s taking out the loan, I’m the one whose credit is in jeopardy if I don’t pay it, I am the one totally responsible for the loan, and as long as I’m going to an accredited college, I don’t understand why it would make one iota of difference where I am going to college.”
The government has been taking additional steps to keep the student loan market operating smoothly. And some lenders’ doors remain wide open. Sallie Mae and Nelnet recently reaffirmed their commitment to federal loans regardless of the institution a student attends. Kristin Shear, director of student financial services at Santa Rosa Junior College, said that days after the school was dropped by Citibank, Wells Fargo called to say it was eager to lend to students there.
The banks that are pulling out say their decisions are based on an analysis of which colleges have higher default rates, low numbers of borrowers and small loan amounts that make the business less profitable. (The average amount borrowed by community college students is about $3,200 a year, according to the College Board.) Still, the cherry-picking strikes some as peculiar; after all, the government is guaranteeing 95 percent of the value of these loans.
Mark C. Rodgers, a spokesman for Citibank, which lends through its Student Loan Corporation unit, said the bank had “temporarily suspended lending at schools which tend to have loans with lower balances and shorter periods over which we earn interest. And, in general, we are suspending lending at certain schools where we anticipate processing minimal loan volume.”
Financial aid officials in California said that Citibank had stopped making loans to students at all community colleges in the state. Mr. Rodgers said the bank would not provide details about which schools were affected.
The financial aid director at William Jessup, Korey Compaan, said he did not understand the bank’s explanation.
“The logic is so flawed, that for us to have volume with them in the future, we have to have had volume with them in the past,” Mr. Compaan said. Simply to cut off students at a college, he continued, “I find it totally and completely unethical.”
The government sets the criteria for college participation in federal loan programs, requiring that colleges be accredited and have low default rates to participate, for example. Now lenders are being more selective than the government.
“There’s been a certain amount of market segmentation going on, but this is the first time we’ve seen a lender, especially as large as Citibank, saying, ‘We don’t want to do business with you,’ ” said Samuel F. Collie, director of financial aid at Eastern Oregon University in La Grande, Ore.
“There’s a fundamental issue of fairness and equity that’s certainly not being addressed in this,” Mr. Collie said. “But short of completely revamping the way that financial aid, especially loans, is being delivered to students in this country, I don’t know that we have any easy answers.”
The credit crisis, which has made it harder for some lenders to raise money, and a reduction in the government’s subsidy to lenders have contributed to the reevaluations by the lenders.
“This is one of those perfect storm situations,” said Susan L. Mead, director of financial aid at Dutchess Community College in New York. She said her institution had been dropped by no less than six lenders: HSBC, Citibank, M&T, Chase, Citizens Bank and Student Loan Xpress.
Christine Holevas, a spokeswoman for Chase, said that the bank considered several factors in deciding whether to lend to a particular college’s students. “The repayment rate, you look at the size and length of the loan,” she said. “We have tightened credit standards, yes, but we haven’t cut off any category of school.”
Hugh Suhr, a spokesman for SunTrust, said it was “stepping away from some relationships” with universities, but that this was “not based on any particular type of school.” Mr. Suhr said the bank continued to lend to students at a range of institutions.
Another danger for students is that as they are forced to find and switch to replacement lenders, they may lose track of some debt obligations and miss a few payments.
“It might put them in default,” said Claudia Martin, director of financial aid at Monterey Peninsula College, a community college in California that was dropped by Citibank and two other lenders. “We always recommend that a student stay with the same lender all through school.”
Commercial colleges, among the first to suffer when lenders withdrew from the market, have been openly critical of the new differentiation.
“From what I can tell from our lawyers, it’s not technically illegal for them to reject schools,” said Harris N. Miller, the president of the Career College Association in Washington, a trade group for commercial colleges. “I just think that’s very objectionable.”
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