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Climate change: Some frightening stats

For years scientists have been warning, and being ignored, about climate change and its potential dire consequences. The public has now taken up the issue, and belatedly, politicians, previously sceptical, have realised that global warming is a hot political button. In Australia, even politicians like John Howard and some of his Ministers at least sprout climate change, even if, as one suspects, they neither understand it, let alone embrace the issue.

The Independent publishes some frightening and revealing stats:

"The accelerating destruction of the rainforests that form a precious cooling band around the Earth's equator, is now being recognised as one of the main causes of climate change. Carbon emissions from deforestation far outstrip damage caused by planes and automobiles and factories.

The rampant slashing and burning of tropical forests is second only to the energy sector as a source of greenhouses gases according to report published today by the Oxford-based Global Canopy Programme, an alliance of leading rainforest scientists."

And:

"Most people think of forests only in terms of the CO2 they absorb. The rainforests of the Amazon, the Congo basin and Indonesia are thought of as the lungs of the planet. But the destruction of those forests will in the next four years alone, in the words of Sir Nicholas Stern, pump more CO2 into the atmosphere than every flight in the history of aviation to at least 2025."

Meanwhile, Rupert Murdoch and his News Limited have seemingly embraced the climate change problem. He is even walking to work, although it is hardly a strenuous walk from his home to the office. But what is striking though, as reported by the SMH, is the effect of News Limited taking positive steps to alleviate, or at least reduce, carbom emissions.

"According to Murdoch snr, the process [that is, greenhouse gas neutrality] - which was only announced this week but which has been under way for almost a year - has made good business sense. Reducing energy usage not only cuts greenhouse gas emissions but saves money, too. Admittedly, a media and entertainment conglomerate is not exactly a smokestack industry. But it is slightly surprising that its activities generated 641,150 tonnes of greenhouse gases last year.

So News Corp cutting back to zero emissions would be the equivalent, Murdoch said, of turning off London for five days. It was an interesting analogy, given some of his columnists in Australia had criticised Earth Hour (which was, incidentally, supported by the publisher of this newspaper, Fairfax Media), where people were encouraged to turn off the power for just an hour.

News Corp's greenhouse gas audit uncovered some useful ways to save money and cut emissions at the same time. Like most global companies, it had never added up the costs of powering all those inefficient light bulbs. According to Murdoch, replacing bulbs in their exit signs will reduce carbon emissions by almost 200 tonnes.

The independent audit of News Corp activities also revealed some interesting, if slightly useless, information. Each copy of The Times of London produces 0.154 kilograms of CO2 equivalents. What isn't useless is that the exercise in calculating that figure can produce ways to reduce emissions."

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