Live Earth concerts around the globe on Saturday will show whether pop stars can do more than scientists and governments to encourage people to tackle global warming.

But are musicians the right people to get a message across about a need — as agreed by almost all climate experts – for sharp cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases in coming decades?

Stars bring charisma and hit songs to encourage millions to act – by turning off the lights at home, biking to work or lobbying governments for tougher environmental laws. That makes the idea sound like a winner because far and way more people listen to music than read U.N. reports about the risks of climate change.

On the other hand, glitz and glamour risk making the fight against climate change sound like a passing fad championed by a bunch of hedonists. Aren’t these same people pampering themselves in air-conditioned Hollywood mansions, driving around in limousines and flying by private jet?

“There are pitfalls about moving in this direction too enthusiastically,” says Max Boykoff, a researcher at Oxford University, of the celebrity connection at the concerts in Sydney, Tokyo, Shanghai, Johannesburg, Hamburg, London, Rio de Janeiro and New York, arranged by an alliance led by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore.

So what do you think? 

Prince Charles says his household emitted 3,425 tonnes of greenhouse gases last year. That must make him one of the biggest emitters in the world, even though he is cutting back with measures like running his Jaguar on fuel made from cooking oil.

Obviously his ”household” extends well beyond a wife and two children — his accounts released on Tuesday say it covers his London home at Clarence House, two other residences, his and his wife’s official activities and those of all their staff. His Duchy of Cornwall owns land in 20 counties.

But it’s still a lot of heat-trapping carbon dioxide.

By my reckoning, you would have to drive a small car about 500 times around the planet to generate the same amount of carbon dioxide, based on calculations from CarbonNeutral’s website. And Charles’ emissions are way, way above those produced by the people of Qatar who, with annual output of 63.1 tonnes per capita, are the leaders in the latest ranking by the U.N. Development Programme.

On that list, Americans are the top emitters per capita among large nations with 19.8 tonnes. Prince Charles’ compatriots are on just 9.4 tonnes each, meaning his household has emissions equivalent to those of 364 Britons (… his accounts list just 106 staff).

According to the U.N. figures, in China, which is set to overtake the United States as the world’s biggest national emitter, each person generates just 3.2 tonnes and everyone in India 1.2 tonnes. At the bottom of the list are many African nations, such as Niger and Sierra Leone, with emissions of 0.1 tonnes or less.

So, I wonder who else in the world has higher emissions than Prince Charles? A few presidents or heads of state? Perhaps chief executives of big companies who use private jets a lot? And how many of them are following Prince Charles’ example and trying to offset their emissions to live ”carbon neutral”?

I wonder how many people are cleaning their shoes with bananas to help save the planet?

The idea of peels for shoes was recently voted top tip in a survey of ideas for helping protect the environment sent out every day by green group Friends of the Earth.

Among many websites I subscribe to, Friends of the Earth’s daily tip by e-mail is often useful, entertaining, challenging or, like the bananas, bizarre.

Turn off the tap when brushing your teeth to save water, buy a second-hand bike, boil pasta for 2 minutes and then turn off the heat and cover the saucepan rather than boil it all the time are among the wise-sounding ideas.

Among the less obvious environmental tips: on Valentine’s Day make home-made cards to show you care … both for the planet and for your loved one. Or don’t wear bright floral patterns on your clothes in summer to stop attracting wasps and bees.

In an online survey, the banana shoe tip was the most popular (…though I guess not necessarily the one most used) – ”To clean leather shoes, rub with banana peel (the inside of the peel), then wipe and buff with a cloth”.

It’s not as odd as it sounds — several books including one called the Complete Idiot’s Guide to Household Solutions includes it too.

It’s a funny idea but they might have added: “If you’re not already laughing, make sure you don’t slip up on the peel when you put your shoes on”.

  Here’s a wildlife quiz — what are these footprints all over the posters advertising a U.N. wildlife conference in the Hague?

Along with many delegates, I have been puzzling over some of them for days. Is the one at the top the print of a yeti or an abominable snowman that some people say you risk running into high in the Himalayas?

And the one on the bottom, joke some delegates at the 171-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, shows the leaves from a marijuana plant — the drug is sold legally in the Netherlands in coffee shops.

Pretty much everyone guessed the second one from the top is a human foot but even wildlife experts were a bit uncertain about some of the others - a gorilla? a frog? a tiger?

So I got in touch with Frederique Hermie, spokeswoman of the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality. She in turn got in touch with the designer of the poster, who says they are, from the bottom up:

Tropical leaf … Bird … Reptile … Bear … Ape … Human … Map of the Netherlands

 So did anyone get them all right? No prizes, I’m afraid.

P.S. To avoid libelling the Dutch hosts, the picture below makes clear the leaf at the bottom of the poster doesn’t look anything like a marijuana plant.

Many people get worried when talk turns to elephant ivory at U.N. wildlife trade talks in The Hague. They know the issue is too big to be hidden in a corner.

“I have approached this moment with trepidation for months,” Greg Leach, chairing a meeting of the U.N. Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, said to delegates from 171 nations when he opened debate this week about whether to extend or relax a 1989 export ban on ivory.

He drew a few nervous laughs but passions run high over pachyderms – chatting to delegates in the corridors I find the conversation almost always turn to ivory even if we start off talking about tigers or mahogany. 

  ”Getting the U.N. Security Council to agree on something is easy compared to working out an elephant ivory deal among African states,” one delegate reckoned.

Kenya and Mali want to extend a 1989 trade ban for 12 years while Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe want tightly limited trade, arguing that their elephant stocks are on the rise. And both sides claim their plan is the best way to discourage poachers.

They are trying to present a common front, so far without luck. Some environmentalists say the dispute is a distraction from other debates about elephants, such as how to rescue stocks in West Africa.

Leach has presided over contentious decisions about corals, eels or sawfish this week that have gone through with a minimum of fuss but the problems of the world’s biggest land mammal are getting a jumbo amount of attention.

                                                                                                                                                                                                 Come on Africa, sort it out. Can it be that difficult?

Elephants have a lot of friends at a U.N. meeting on international trade in endangered species in the Hague this week — but why are those arguing the merits of the ivory trade so silent?

The first display that met me walking to the meeting hall today was a life-sized elephant sculpture on the forecourt outside, made shockingly from the wire used by elephant trappers in Kenya.

Over the street is an electronic sign saying that hundreds of the mammals are falling victim to poachers every week to feed demand for illegal ivory.

Yet another set of posters splashed down the street has pictures of the giant mammals made out of the word “Elephant” and asking “Will only words remain? Give them a break. Vote for the 20-year moratorium.”

Kenya and Mali want the June 3-15 conference to vote for a two-decade halt to trading elephants, building on a 1989 ban that has rarely been relaxed to allow sales of ivory from stocks. They say elephants are under threat and need better protection.

I think it’s a pity the countries in favour of limited ivory trade have totally failed to put their argument alongside the animal rights’ and conservationists’ posters, which also campaign for tigers, whales, polar bears and penguins.

With the blitz of publicity, it’s easy to get the impression that Botswana, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia have no hope with their argument that that strictly limited trade might actually help conserve the mammals in areas where poor farmers now see elephants simply as a threat to their livelihoods.

Elephant populations in the region are rising at 5 percent a year, sometimes kill or injure people, trample crops and displace other wildlife, they say.

Why are there are no posters up with pictures of a school or a hospital, for instance, saying: “We built this with the proceeds of legal ivory sales”. Or perhaps one asking Europeans: “If you want to restore wildlife, start by putting the wolf at your own door.”

Or would people tear down posters advocating elephant trade?

G8 leaders lunched on Friday on a menu of reheated waffle and fudge, at least according to a spoof menu that poked fun at what campaigners believe was an inadequate response to global challenges.

“I thought we’d liven the place up,” said John Coventry, of Action Aid UK, who posted alternative menus around a media centre where journalists are treated to a more enticing diet of free sandwiches, sausages, beer and ice creams.

Coventry’s nine-course menu for world leaders on the final day of the summit starts with “cocktail” and includes other delights such as “eight prawns grilled under a warm climate”, “aid stew on a bed of insufficient replenishment”, “wurst G8″ and ends with a “legacy of peanuts”.

Many activists reckon that the summit has come up with little fresh cash to help the poor even though G8 leaders promised $60 billion to fight AIDS and other diseases in Africa.

Parts of the fake menu are unlikely concoctions that would only be understood by the most committed G8 gourmets, such as a “Roast Lamy in a forced liberalisation juice”, or “promises a la Gleneagles, tossed”.

Pascal Lamy heads the WTO, which campaigners say enforces unfair global trade rules. Aid workers say pledges to help Africa made at the G8 summit two years ago in Gleneagles, Scotland, have not been kept.

I’m sticking with the sandwiches. 

 Filed by Erik Kirschbaum

   You know you’re at a special kind of demonstration when the protesters clean up after themselves — and the police trying to contain them leave behind a mess.
     I’ve spent most of the last three days following the anti-G8 demonstrators who’ve come from around the world to try to disrupt the Heiligendamm G8 summit.   

    They brought a lot of plastic water bottles, paper plates, cups, beer bottles and all kinds of wrapped food with them on their long hikes through forests and wheat fields to get past police security to reach the fence surrounding the world leaders in Heiligendamm. They took control of the main roads leading into the Baltic Sea village for much of the last two days.
   Even though some demonstrators left their emptied bottles, used paper plates, empty cups and beer bottles lying on or near the blockaded roads, I’ve seen volunteer clean teams making regular sweeps up and down the 500 metre long stretches of “occupied territory” on the roads. They carefully sorted the rubbish into paper, plastics and returnable glass bottles.

 The left the rubbish in blue plastic bags neatly set up alongside the road every 50 metres or so.

By contrast, the riot police I’ve seen standing opposite guarding the fence have for the most part simply dropped their empty plastic water bottles and containers on the ground behind them, leaving rather large and unseemly piles of trash.
    The only time I saw protesters leave their empty bottles was when nine police water cannon blasted about 1,000 of their number at a blockade at the western access road to Heiligendamm. The water cannon and riot police pushed them 100 metres away from the road, leaving their refuse behind them.
 
 
  
 
 
 

Posted by Erik Kirschbaum

    The German chancellor told journalists on Thursday she hoped the Greenpeace activists in rubber boats didn’t cause too much climate-changing emissions with their foiled attempt to deliver a message to the summit warning about the perils of global warming.
    “I hope they won’t emit too much CO2 with their boat trips out there on the Baltic Sea,” Merkel said — with a wry smile.
    At the same time, some 16,000 German police were sitting in vans and trucks armed with water cannon — many with their motors running all day – while trying to keep protesters away from a security fence around summit venue Heiligendamm. Helicopters hovered overhead all day and all night.

The eight world leaders in Heiligendamm and their entourages flew into the nearby Rostock airport with their respective jets and helicoptered to and from the Baltic town. But she didn’t mention all that CO2, did she?
    German magazine Der Spiegel published a “conservative” estimate this week from the Munich firm ClimatePartner that the three-day G8 summit in Heiligendamm has caused 30,000 tonnes of CO2. That’s about a third of the CO2 created by the month-long World Cup soccer tournament in Germany last year.
    ClimatePartner estimated the government aircraft alone caused 7,138 tonnes of CO2, with another 5,000 tonnes caused by visitors and delegations to the summit.  On top of that, more CO2 was produced by the transportation of 16,000 police, 4,700 accredited journalists and the 30,000 demonstrators as well as the emissions during the construction of the 12-km long security fence around Heiligendamm earlier this year.
   That’s a lot of CO2, Frau Merkel. And that reminds me that Germany is the world’s sixth largest emitter of greenhouse gases and has actually accomplished little in the last decade to reduce its emissions even though it is trying to persuade much of the rest of the world of the importance of cutting back. Emissions from the fleet of the government cars under Merkel have actually risen considerably in the last year.
    But there was little mention of that in Heiligendamm.  

The speedboats limped past the media centre at the G8 summit under German police escort after a chase worthy of a James Bond movie.

I sat on the wide balcony of the centre at the G8 summit, with a glorious view over the Baltic Sea on a bright sunny day, as the Greenpeace inflatables were accompanied away.

The only problem was that I was meant to be listening to a news conference by Greenpeace and other environmental groups telling us about their hopes for the summit.

Most of us were instead craning our necks past the speakers, as they called for tougher cuts in greenhouse gases, to see the speedboats.

Two had just been rammed by police boats after they breached a security zone and were intercepted after dodging and weaving in vain in a high-speed chase. Three activists were injured. Watch the video
The environmental groups had to organise their news conference on the balcony because they don’t have rooms indoors, reserved for the media and delegations.

It’s airier outside and swallows swoop in and out of their nests, built in the roof of a Dutch-built building that is in fact a giant wooden and plastic tent.

So, a note to anyone organising a news conference — don’t do it when your colleagues are doing something more exciting in the background.