Two German ships set off on Friday on the first commercial journey from Asia to western Europe via the Arctic through the fabled Northeast Passage – a trip made possible by climate change. Niels Stolberg, president and CEO of Bremen-based Beluga Shipping, said the Northern Sea Route will cut thousands of nautical miles off the ships’ journey from South Korea to the Netherlands, reducing fuel consumption and emissions of greenhouse gas. I had the chance to ask Stolberg a few questions about the Arctic expedition:

Question: What’s the status of the voyage?
Stolberg: MV “Beluga Fraternity” and the MV “Beluga Foresight” have just started to sail from Vladivostok (on Friday) with the destination Novyy Port at the river Ob.

Question: When did they leave Vladivostok and when will they arrive in Europe?
Stolberg: They’ve just left Vladivostok. They are scheduled to arrive in Novyy Port around September 6th. After discharging, they will proceed via Murmansk to Rotterdam. Estimated time of arrival is still to be confirmed and up to further voyage development.

Question: How much time/fuel/money/CO2 will this northern route save?
Stolberg: The amount of time, fuel, money or emission saved will be significant by transiting the Northeast Passage instead of sailing the traditional way through the Suez. From Ulsan via the Suez Canal to Rotterdam it would be a roughly 11,000 nautical mile journey whereas the short cut between Asia and Europe utilising the Northeast Passage is a 8,700 mile journey. The saved distance in detail always depends on the route, so the routes could be about 3,000 to 5,000 miles shorter. Savings of about three million euros by sending six vessels through the Northeast Passage per open time frame is realistic. Saving distance means saving bunker means saving money: That is the formula.

Question: Your company has been a pioneer in reducing costs/CO2 — is that why you’re so eager to sail the northern route?
Stolberg: It is a hallmark of the corporate philosophy of Beluga Shipping to go off the beaten tracks whenever possible and reasonable: MV “Beluga SkySails”, co-powered by a towing kite system, or many projects developed and driven by our own department “Research & Innovation” follow that principle with the overall intention and make shipping more efficient as well as into a greener business. In this sense, we reckon that the Northeast Passage offers unmatched chances for efficient sea traffic when as an effect of global warming in the summer there is the chance of using this seaway for a couple of weeks, thus connecting the markets in Europe and Asia

Question: Is drawing attention to global warming an aspect of this journey?
Stolberg: This is not our intention nor does it reflect our business. My personal opinion is that global warming and climate change, obviously, are developments with some negative effects. However, the melting ice in the Northeast Passage and thus the possibility to transit through this passage for commercial purpose has positive effects, too. This development enables shipping companies to reduce bunker consumption and as a consequence CO2 and other emissions as well which, in turn, are small factors to limit the scope of the global warming.

Question: Do you think many other ships will be taking this Arctic short cut?
Stolberg: The possibility to transit the Northeast Passage in combination with the cargo flow between Europe and Asia is a major reason and motivation why the Northern Sea Route will become even more attractive for shipping companies. So, it is our goal to utilise this seaway regularly, if possible, and we could imagine others will follow our example. You also have to have appropriate modern vessels, you have to have an experienced team of experts on board and all behind in the onshore offices and you have to be granted permission by the authorities.

Question: Why have no other ships tried this northern route yet? Why are you the first?
Stolberg: Russian submarines and icebreakers have used the northern route in the past. But it wasn’t open for regular commercial shipping until now because there are many areas with thick ice. It was only last summer that satellite pictures revealed the ice is melting and a small corridor opened which could enable commercial shipping through the Northeast Passage. We’re the first company to travel the route this summer because we have suitable vessels and are well prepared to master the challenge.

Question: What are the dangers of the northern route?
Stolberg: There are numerous challenges and some risks awaiting both vessel and crew. Even though the ice is melting in the respective time frame, cold temperature and ice, drifting ice fields or ridges can become a problem and produce a risk of injury to the crew as well as a risk of damage to the vessel. The look out is highly important. Also the ship material and not least the seaworthy and all lashings of the cargo have to be checked constantly under this even more rough and inhospitable conditions than elsewhere on the ocean. There is no expertise or field report we could rely on. However, we are well prepared and have been intensively working on this project for far more than a year now.

Question: When exactly is the “window”? Will it be opening wider soon?
Stolberg: The open window for transiting the Northeast Passage roughly is a six to eight weeks time frame in the Russian summer between August and September. This is when the sun powers up to 20 or even more degrees Celsius in Russia and the ice along the route is mostly melting. Thereafter the sun loses power again and the area refreezes. Whether or not the window will open wider soon is a question only climate experts can answer.

PHOTO: The Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E), a high-resolution passive microwave Instrument on NASA’s Aqua satellite, shows the state of Arctic sea ice on September 10 in this file image released September 16, 2008. Arctic nations are promising to avoid new “Cold War” scrambles linked to climate change, but a thaw may allow new shipping routes. REUTERS/NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

Who was president when U.S. greenhouse gas emissions rose most sharply since 1990, the U.N. benchmark year for action to fight climate change?
– George W. Bush (2001-2007)
– Bill Clinton (1993-2000)
– George H.W. Bush (1990-1992)
(I’m giving presidents responsibility for the full calendar year of their inauguration in January; official U.S. data are only available until 2007)

Answer — Bill Clinton (by a long way).

Many people might have thought the worst scorecard was by George W. Bush, who gave up plans to implement the 1997 Kyoto Protocol for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, signed by the Clinton administration but never submitted to a hostile Senate for ratification.

But emissions rose by more than twice as much in the Clinton years, when climate campaigner Al Gore was vice president, as during the combined years when two Bush presidents, father and son, were in the White House since 1990.

So is that legacy a problem for President Barack Obama, a Democrat like Clinton?

At U.N. negotiations on a new climate treaty due to be agreed in Copenhagen in December, many nations welcome promises by Obama of far tougher action than Bush for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. But there are nagging memories of unkept promises — Clinton’s administration agreed to cut U.S. emissions by 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12 as part of the Kyoto Protocol. In 2000, Clinton’s last full year, U.S. emissions were 15 percent above 1990 levels.

Of course there are excuses — the economy grew strongly during the Clinton years, bringing pressure for higher emissions, and the Senate opposed action. In 1997, the Senate voted 95-0 against key principles later built into the Kyoto Protocol.

The Bush administrations failed to keep U.S. commitments too — in 1992, George H.W. Bush agreed the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (the parent treaty of Kyoto which was ratified by the Senate) which set a non-binding goal of returning emissions to 1990 levels by 2000.

U.S. GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS (millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent)
PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. BUSH
1992: 6,140
1990: 6,084
rise 56
PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON
2000: 6,975
1993: 6,275
rise 700
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH
2007: 7,107
2001: 6,872
rise 235

* A rise of 700 million tonnes is about as much as the annual emissions of a country such as Britain, France or Canada. Under the combined Bush presidencies, emissions rose by 291 million tonnes.

(Source; official U.S. submissions to U.N. Climate Change Secretariat)

George W. Bush has suffered years of criticism by U.S. allies for failing to do more to combat global warming. But maybe Obama can’t just blame Bush?

(Photos: TOP: U.S. President George W. Bush, flanked by former Presidents Bill Clinton (L) and George H. Bush, speaks about relief efforts from hurricane Katrina in the Oval Office of the White House, September 1, 2005. RIGHT: A protester holds up a sign at a demonstration at the State Department in Washington September 27, 2007 during a  meeting of the world’s biggest greenhouse gas polluters — including the United States and China. Both pictures by REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque)

 U.N. climate talks started in Bonn on Monday with demonstrators dressed as camels, birds, trees, a cactus and several polar bears urging delegates to do more to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

The cactus costume with the sign “water me” was my favourite (left).

Too many  protesters at U.N. meetings dress up as polar bears — the bears’ icy habitat is coming under threat from receding ice. So to get the polar-bear-weary delegates’ attention, a bit of variety is a good idea, even though it’s probably harder to make people feel sorry for a prickly plant than an iconic Arctic predator.

I am not sure what the creatures (below right) are — any ideas? They look to me like a cross between a polar bear and a penguin with a carrot stolen from a snowman’s nose.

Environmentalists want developed countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, by 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.

The United States, even with President Barack Obama’s promises to do far more to fight climate change, says such a goal is impossible. U.S. delegates say even cutting back to 1990 levels by 2020 – a reduction of 14 percent from 2007 levels — is a stretch in an economy dependent on fossil fuels.

So what should the United States and other developed countries do at the June 1-12 talks as part of a new U.N. climate treaty due to be agreed in December?

Will they make the cactus happy?

In 2004, an economic adviser to former Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the U.N.’s Kyoto Protocol for reining in global warming would kill off the world economy like “an international Auschwitz”.

Jewish groups deplored the remarks by Andrei Illarionov (left side of photo, with Putin) as trivialising the Holocaust. And his fears seem far from justified — in 2007, the Russian economy grew by 8.1 percent and greenhouse gas emissions by just 0.3 percent. (For a story, click here).

Putin went on to defy his advice — Moscow ratified the Kyoto pact and Russia’s “Yes” gave Kyoto enough international backing weight to enter into force in 2005, setting caps on greenhouse gas emissions for industrialised nations until 2012. In the United States, former President George W. Bush’s administration did not sign up, describing Kyoto as an “economic straitjacket”.

I went to a 2003 “World Climate Change Conference” in Moscow at which Illarionov also denounced Kyoto (he was a cheerleader against Kyoto, getting more strident each time). He showed graphs projecting that Russia’s emissions would surge in coming years and explained it would be impossible to have strong economic growth and keep emissions down.  

Yet after a decade or stellar economic growth, Russia’s greenhouse gas emissions are just 11 percent up from a low in 1998 and still 33.94 percent below levels in 1990, the year before the collapse of the Soviet Union and its smokestack industries.

And analysts say there is still huge room for energy efficiency in Russia to cut emissions (and save money), even as it faces recession in 2009 as part of the global downturn.

Maybe Russia’s emissions data from recent years are misleadingly good — rising energy export prices during most of the period until 2008 were a gigantic windfall boosting economic growth but not emissions?

And maybe Kyoto is having little economic impact in industrialised countries because a lot of them are way over their goals, ignoring tough action on cuts while talking piously about their commitment to fight warming.

But overall, is Kyoto far less of an economic millstone than its opponents feared?

(Photo above: Smoke billow from chimneys of a power station that is attached to the Zlatoust steel mill in the Ural town of Zlatoust March 14, 2009. Reuters/Thomas Peter)

 When I attended a talk by Al Gore about global warming in Oslo in March 2007, I noticed that one of the people clapping loudest — about two rows in front of me — was the head of the committee that awards the Nobel Peace Prize.

Ole Danbolt Mjoes also joined in a minute-long standing ovation for the former U.S. vice president. “A very important message,” was all Mjoes would tell me of Gore’s speech afterwards when I went up and asked him if Gore had a chance of winning.

Gore of course went on to share the prize in December with the U.N. Climate Panel. The photo above shows Mjoes (left), handing the award to Gore in Oslo City Hall.

Gore said on Tuesday he will write a new book, “Our Choice”, for release on November 3 to follow up from his bestselling ”An Inconvenient Truth”. For a story, click here.

“It is time for a comprehensive global plan that actually solves the climate crisis. ‘Our Choice’ will answer that call,” Gore said.

Will it sell?

The timing is good because it will be issued a month before a U.N. conference in Copenhagen is meant to come up with a new global treaty to combat climate change.

But in 2007, Gore’s climate crusade stood out partly because former President George W. Bush was so out of step with his industrial allies by refusing caps on greenhouse gas emissions. (The Clinton administration, in which Gore was vice president, signed up for the carbon-capping 1997 Kyoto Protocol but never submitted it to the Senate for ratification). 

Now President Barack Obama favours cuts in emissions and every government in the world is coming up with plans. So will a new book by Gore about solutions to global warming stand out enough to have a big impact?

Mjoes will probably be among the readers of “Our Choice”.

Are you likely to read it?

California wasted no time asking incoming U.S. Environmental Protection Agency chief Lisa Jackson to reconsider a request to let the state impose stiff targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cars.

 The state’s top air quality regulator sent a letter to Jackson on Wednesday, the Obama administration’s first full day at work. Jackson hasn’t even been confirmed as the new EPA administrator yet, but California isn’t beating around the bush.

Stephen Johnson, the EPA administrator under former President Bush, drew the ire of California and more than a dozen other states in 2007 when he denied the state’s request for federal permission to impose tough new standards on auto emissions. 

With a new president in office, California is trying again. Even Gov. Schwarzenegger got involved, sending his own letter to Obama on Wednesday asking for his help in directing the EPA. To check out both Nichols and Schwarzenegger’s letters, click here.

Odds appear to be on California’s side, as Jackson said during her confirmation hearing that she would reconsider California’s request for a waiver on auto emissions — and would let science guide her on policy decisions.

After one of the briefest honeymoons in history, developing nations at U.N. climate change talks in Poland are saying that President-elect Barack Obama’s goals for cutting greenhouse gas emissions don’t go far enough.

Delegates from China and India told Reuters at the Dec. 1-12 talks that they welcomed Obama’s plan to cut emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 compared to less ambitious goals set by President George W. Bush. (Emissions are now about 14 percent above 1990 ).

But they say Obama isn’t going far enough. See story here.

Developing nations want all developed nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions by far more. That, they say, is the condition for the poor to start slowing their own rising emissions from factories, power plants and cars.

Is that realistic? Can the United States cut emissions to 1990 levels by 2020? And how far should developing nations curb their own emissions as part of a new deal on global warming meant to be agreed by the end of 2009?

Kenyan blogger Juliana Rotich is the editor of Green Global Voices, which monitors citizen media in the developing world, and is a regular contributor to this page. Thomson Reuters is not responsible for the content - the views are the author’s alone. 

Green buildings, a man walking the planet and a net metering law have been inspiring bloggers in South Africa in recent days.

Picture of Green Roof in the western cape South Africa, by Mark Turner on Flickr.

Rory of the Carbon Smart blog posts top ten reasons why we need green buildings

Buildings have a huge role to play in addressing environmental concerns. They contribute around 40% of global greenhouse gas emissions and the same proportion of waste; and since South Africa is in the top 20 list of worst offenders, the building industry in this country has a lot to be accountable for.

The Ethical co-op blog posts a video of John Francis - planetwalker.

John Francis walked and sailed around the Americas for 22 years, carrying a message of respect for the Earth. For 17 of those years, he did not speak. He earned an MA in environmental studies and a PhD in land resources during his monumental trek, and challenges us to go beyond our boundaries in this inspiring talk from TED.

The Urban Sprout blog highlights a new law being considered in the South African parliament. The law would allow consumers to sell energy to the public electricity utility company Eskom. Michael asks how would you like Eskom to pay you for a change?

If a private members bill being put before parliament very soon is successful, it will provide for the establishment of a feed-in tariff in South Africa.
A feed-in tariff allows people who are producing electricity (of an approved standard) from renewable sources to feed it into the grid and be paid for it. The bill suggests a tariff fixed for 15 to 25 years which may be up to 4 or 5 times the standard tariff.
This policy was adopted in Germany in law in 2003 and if you were to go there you could see the change the policy has made. It is hard to find a roof without a solar panel on it. This is because all of a sudden the economics of purchasing a solar panel change dramatically in its favour because you can guarantee a pay back on the cost of the installation. This means that businesses and private people can easily make a financial case for the installation and can easily get a loan for it.

The urban sprout blog also has an entertaining post with some (blog) self-deprecating humour about literally sprouting seeds and pulses. It includes a details how-to and links to more information about, well…sprouts!

Dozens of vultures landed on the grass the other day outside the building where U.N. climate talks are taking place in Ghana – and more were circling overhead.

“They’ve been attracted by all the delegates falling asleep inside,” one official joked.

(I missed those vultures, but when I tried to get a picture of a group on the grass to try to illustrate this blog they flapped off before I was close enough … The picture on the left is of a vulture in Spain).

The Aug. 21-27 talks among 160 countries working on a new treaty to fight climate change moved at a glacial pace even though the United Nations said they were making progress, for instance, in defining how to give tropical countries incentives to slow deforestation. Burning trees is a big source of greenhouse gas emissions.

Getting countries from Albania to Zimbabwe to agree to a new treaty to fight climate change by the end of 2009 as planned is clearly going to be a gigantic jigsaw, but some things could be simplified.

Many governments say fighting climate change is one of the biggest challenges facing the world, so why not design talks with a bit more built-in urgency?

– How about starting meetings on time? Sessions now start like clockwork — between 15 and 25 minutes after the appointed time.

– Speakers often feel obliged to spend half a minute or more praising the chairman, the host country, donors etc for arranging the talks before they get to the point. Why not streamline the formalities?

Any other ideas?

DALLAS - Following a path blazed by other U.S. religious groups, a diverse coalition of Jewish organizations has outlined its concerns regarding the environment and called for action from Congress and the Administration.

Spearheaded by the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, it calls among other things for an aggressive 80 percent cut in carbon reductions by 2050.

It also calls for a cap on emissions, tax credits to encourage the purchase of new technologies and provisions for public transit.

The statement, called “Jewish Community Priorities for Climate and Energy Policy,” is rooted in Jewish teachings about obligations to the poor and creation care — an echo of calls for action on the environment by other faith traditions including the U.S. evangelical movement.

“Our tradition teaches that Adam and Eve were asked ‘to till and to tend’ the Garden of Eden. We believe humans remain a partner in Creation,”  the statement says.

  It also notes that “Jewish tradition is founded on the principles of justice … (and) Both climate change itself and policies taken to address it present a disproportionate burden on the poor.”

The coalition of Jewish groups which have signed up to the document is diverse and include B’nai B’rith International, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and the Women’s League for Conservative Judaism among others.

It is all part of and parcel of the widening social agenda among faith-based groups in the United States and points to the broadening of the broad “green coalition.”

(Photo credit: REUTERS/Fred Prouser, June 19, 2008, USA)