1. There’ll be no more energy-sucking televisions in the state where TV was born, now that California has passed the nation’s first law requiring TV energy efficiency standards.
2. Sometimes, incentives just don’t work. The Responsible Travel company has canceled its carbon offsets program, saying it helps travelers appease their guilt over flying but doesn’t actually help reduce emissions — and may even encourage more traveling.
3. Climate change plays favorites apparently. A new report from the U.N. Population Fund says women suffer disproportionately from the impacts of climate change – but they also might be in the best position to mitigate it as well.
4. A rare giraffe species was on the brink of extinction in 1996, with just 50 animals left in Niger. But regulations against poaching and other conservation efforts have made a huge difference – 13 years later there are now 200 animals.
5. Wondering which major companies are going green? Check out this list of 5 big corporate names that are trying out new, more sustainable practices, from The Daily Green. 

Good news about cow poop. Good news (?) about Copenhagen. Good news for those of you who’ve always dreamed of a dress made of LED lights. Happiness is the smell of a new Cool Green Morning, to paraphrase Don Draper…

1. The rehabilitation of poop continues: The Netherlands has opened its second cow-dung power plant, reports CleanTechnica — to make biogas that will heat more than 1,000 homes.
2. In case you missed it yesterday, President Obama has endorsed a plan to push an ultimate climate change agreement sometime beyond December’s UN meeting in Copenhagen, reports The New York Times. Grist’s Dave Roberts says that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
3. Charlie the Tuna muzzled? Dot Earth says last week’s meeting among fishing countries to reach an agreement on restoring depleted numbers of tuna, shark, turtles and other marine life was missing one thing — a basis in science.
4. Count on Inhabitat to render us speechless — with a dress made of 24,000 LED lights (plus “4,000 hand-applied Swarovski crystals and 40-layers of pleated silk organza crinoline.” When’s it going to hit the shelves at Target?!)
5. Always like to end on good news — this time from the Brazilian Amazon, where deforestation dropped nearly 46 percent from August 2008 to July 2009, says AP. But the “why” is a chicken and egg problem — is it because of the Brazilian government’s promotion of sustainable livelihoods in the region (coupled with enforcement of laws against deforestation), or just a drop in ag commodity prices worldwide?

What am I trying to illustrate in the above photo (a picture of cattle and elephant dung)? That conservation planning is a pile of poop?

No. But this mixture of excrement does show why such planning needs to incorporate extreme events like drought or flooding – especially for the impacts of those events on local people.

In the place where I took this photo — Mt Kenya – livestock herders have moved into protected areas. Why? Because of a protracted and devastating drought — one Kenya is (hopefully) at the end of. The drought has caused the displacement of huge numbers of people and the estimated deaths of half the livestock.

In times this tough, local herders have been forced to graze their animals in protected areas around the country – areas normally set aside for nature and tourism. I can’t blame them — but in a country that relies on tourism so heavily (it’s the second largest sector of the economy), this development is big and troubling news.

Obviously, conservationists should be planning for such extreme events. They will occur; we just don’t know when. We do often include in our plans responses to long-term environmental events (e.g., blow-downs, hurricanes, etc) and critical threats (such as habitat fragmentation and large-scale agriculture). We are even slowly coming to grips with consequences of climate change. But how often do we consider the effects of extreme events on local people, especially the poor, in the areas in which we work?

Probably not nearly enough.

Why should conservationists do this kind of planning? Because quite often the people living in and around the areas we are interested in protecting rely on their immediate surroundings for sustenance. And how extreme events effect these people will likely tell us how they will in turn use those local resources (in many cases, such as around Mt. Kenya, for their survival). By planning for these events and the ramifications on both nature and people, the effects can be at least reduced or muted.

To that end, many Conservancy projects have indirect benefits to people; but not many plan for direct ones. One example of direct benefits to people is grassbanking – the setting aside of land that can be used for grazing livestock in the event of an extreme drought. It’s simple and effective, and something the Conservancy has done in areas such as Montana, and in Kenya, with our partners at the Northern Rangelands Trust (http://northernrangelands.wildlifedirect.org/) where the grassbanks are being put to good use right now – helping both wildlife and people get through the current drought. And this grassbanking in Kenya has helped reduce pressure on protected areas and keep many more people off of Mt Kenya.

We will get droughts, or floods, or extremes of some sort or another — and people, especially those in poorer areas and countries, will turn to nature to help them through those tough times. We should make sure that nature is resilient enough not only to endure these extreme events, but also the pressures that will be brought to bear by local people — especially when those people’s very survival is at stake.

(Image courtesy Timothy Boucher/TNC.)

1. We’re getting closer to regulating U.S. greenhouse gas emissions — yesterday the EPA took one more step through the obstacle course of government process, inspiring much optimism.
2. Is it too late to save the vaquita porpoise from extinction? Scientists are hoping not. Only 150 remain, threatened by fishing practices, but there’s new hope: the Mexican government has passed a resolution to ban trawling in the vaquita’s only habitat, in the Gulf of California. 
3. Melting glaciers often seem purely symbolic of the climate change problem, but they have real consequences: a new report says the melting of India’s Kashmir glaciers will threaten the water supply of millions of people in the Himalayas, where 90 percent of glaciers are receding.
4. The situation for the koala is nowhere near as dire as the vaquita dolphin, but cute and cuddly can get you a lot of publicity. New estimates indicate Australia’s koala population is getting smaller due to habitat loss, prompting an all-out media campaign by the Australia Koala Foundation.
5. Botanists are in a debate over whether assisted migration of plants — helping them relocate in the face of climate change — is a wise endeavor. Opponents worry that the science isn’t accurate enough to predict if a plant species will become invasive once moved. 

1. Now here’s a question that’s been keeping millions up at night! Which is greener: Going into the refrigerator for a bottle of cold water or using the water dispenser on the fridge door? (Do those still exist?) Treehugger’s Ask Pablo says…um, why are you refrigerating your water?
2. What’s a ton of emitted carbon actually worth? The Institute for Policy Integrity consulted 144 leading economists and got…wildly disparate estimates from the pointyheads. (But 98% of them favored putting a price on the stuff to incentivize energy efficiency and innovation. Hat tip: CleanTechnica.)
3. How can you change a climate change denier’s mind? “The Psychology of Climate Change Communication,” a new report from Columbia University researchers, gives tips for advocates — don’t pile on the anxiety, and be honest about uncertainties. (The report also says people wonder why we can’t just reopen the ozone hole to release the build-up of greenhouse gases. Hat tip: Bright Green Blog.)
4. How many species have been listed as endangered by the Obama administration? Would you believe just one? That’s a much slower rate than that under President George W. Bush, reports Jeremy Hance at Mongabay.
5. 31 days to Copenhagen…what will happen? Today, the BBC’s Richard Black takes his best guess…and says get ready for some late night pizza deliveries and last-second deals. (There is good pizza in Copenhagen, isn’t there?)

1. How are things in Barcelona (aside from the shocking underperformance of its namesake soccer team this year)? For the climate talks now underway there, Climate Feedback’s Jeff Tollefson reports there’s some optimism that the world can reach political agreement on a climate deal in Copenhagen, with a binding legal agreement following in 2010.
2. We’re #1! (in funding for geothermal R&D, that is!) EcoGeek says the United States government has announced $300 million in such spending — putting it ahead of every other country and Google.org (which is its own planet, isn’t it?)
3. Another, not so nice kind of #1 — the  2009 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is out, and Ecoworldy says Ecuador tops the list of countries with the most such imperiled fauna (2,211).
4. Great white sharks aren’t such sociopathic loners, after all — the Washington Post says they like to hook up in a spot halfway between Hawaii and California that researchers are calling “the cafe.”
5. Noah’s Ark Deux? A team of scientists is proposing an effort to sequence the genomes of 10,000 vertebrate species in an effort to aid their conservation, says a report in the Journal of Heredity. (No talk of cloning…yet. Hat tip: Journal Watch Online.)

Ecotourism is often presented as the savior for wildlife and wild places — providing local communities with financial incentives to preserve nature while also reducing poaching and development pressure.

But, lately, others question whether rich Westerners jetting around the world really help much at all: They disturb animals, create demands for new development and only employ local people in low paying jobs.

Some conservationists even consider tourism to be a significant threat to natural areas.

Which view is correct? Is ecotourism a problem, or a solution?

My biases up front: I’d rather travel for the purpose of seeing wildlife and enjoying various outdoor activities than just about anything. My wife has remarked it’s my drug of choice.

That aside, I still think the issue of ecotourism defies easy answers. Problem or solution?

It depends.

Certainly, the ecological havoc wreaked by tourists in places like the Galapagos is well documented. A fragile ecosystem, animals unafraid of humans and an increasing number of cruise ships has been a recipe for disaster.

One doesn’t have to look hard to see tourists behaving badly in nature.

People harass and feed wild bison, leave trash strewn across the Himalayas, demand resorts in places they shouldn’t be — the list is long.

And then there’s the whole carbon footprint issue. We all know that flying has tremendous impacts, so can we really justify flying off to some far-off corner of the world to see animals or scenery?

These are important concerns. Without a doubt, ecotourism can be a threat. But is it always?

After all, would there even be a Galapagos left as we know it if it wasn’t for tourism? Really?

Consider other island ecosystems and how difficult it is to conserve native island wildlife. If it wasn’t for those tour boats, the Galapagos would likely be a highly developed, rat-infested island devoid of wildlife.

Yellowstone may at times be crowded with tourists behaving badly, but would there still be herds of bison and packs of wolves and grizzly bears without those tourists?

The Serengeti faces issues, to be sure, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the wildebeest population there continues to migrate, during a period of time when so many other large mammal migrations have disappeared.

Private ranches in places like Brazil’s Pantanal and Namibia still have large populations of wildlife, in part because many ranchers here now attract tourists. It seems naïve to expect that they will keep conserving wildlife if visitors quit showing up.

Ecotourism, ultimately, is a complicated issue. And in that way, it’s not so different from most other conservation issues.

Some conservationists have the tendency to declare activities as simply “good” or “bad” — whether it’s ecotourism, ranching, timber harvest, invasive species, hunting, fire, or agriculture. All have their proponents and detractors.

However, we should make decisions based on the reality of our world, not on utopian fantasies where humans no longer have any impacts on nature.

We can work to make sure that ecotourism is done in appropriate ways that benefit wildlife and local communities.

And as the saying goes, conservationists can’t “let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”

Ecotourism isn’t perfect.

In many cases, though, it’s the best solution we have.

(Photo: Caimans draw tourists to Brazil’s Pantanal. Credit: Matt Miller/TNC.)

1. Can long-range climate forecasting get good enough to help us adapt climate change? That’s the vision of Jane Lubchenco, head of NOAA. But other scientists say it’s pie in the sky, reports Climate Feedback. (Not that anyone’s predicting actual pie floating in the sky…)
2. Are exaggerated claims about the risks of global warming undercutting efforts to stop it? Indubitably, say some British scientists in a Times of London piece. (Hat tip: Dot Earth, who asks: Can world leaders and climate campaigners tout a low-emission energy future instead of shaking the climate change boogie man?)
3. Certified sustainable palm oil is a booming business, reports Environmental Leader — rising from only about 15,000 tons sold worldwide in May to more than 100,000 in the last two months. (Somewhere in Indonesia, an orangutan — maybe a bunch — say thank you.)
4. Mon Dieu! Why are vandals putting a big dent in Paris’ bike-sharing program? They see the bikes as bourgeois, reports The New York Times — maybe because you have to present a credit card to own one? (Hat tip: Triple Pundit.)
5. Why worry about energy sprawl when feeding Rover chews up so much more real estate? A new study in New Scientist says that it takes over two square acres of land to feed a medium-sized dog — and, with Americans owning about 75 million dogs and 88 million cats, that takes a land mass bigger than Texas, says Wired Science!

Yes, global warming is a big deal and a big challenge. But sometimes I get so frustrated by conservation and environmental NGO’s for not being able to chew gum and walk at the same time — in other words, for failing to appreciate the real lesson of greenhouse gas emissions.

The real lesson is there is no such thing as succeeding at local conservation (and no such thing as protecting your backyard or local community’s natural heritage) without paying attention to global pollution as a whole – of which greenhouse gases are but a few of many.

The National Academy of Sciences has just released a study of global sources of local pollution that is revealing and compelling in its analysis of the long-range transport of pollutants into and out of the United States.

Do you know what’s landing in your backyard? Try ozone, particulate matter, mercury and persistent organic pollutants that have all traveled halfway around the globe from Asia and North Africa, according to the study.

We also give what we receive — the pollution we produce travels to Europe and Canada. There is haze in the Arctic because of particulate matter “imported” from thousands of miles away, and the western United States has experienced several episodes of dust being dumped on it from Asia.

These pollutants are not a vanity or aesthetic issue — they take a huge toll in human health, affecting especially children and other vulnerable portions of our population:

• Ozone is linked to the rate of child admissions to hospitals for asthma.
• The health impacts of particulate matter may account for millions of deaths worldwide per year.
• Organic pollutants impair hormonal, nervous, immune and reproductive systems.
• And perhaps most insidious of all is mercury — which interferes with the developing nervous systems of human fetuses and young infants.

Meanwhile, mercury and organic pollutants can also wreak havoc on wildlife, with well-documented impacts on fish and birds.

What does conservation have to do with this? Simply put, air pollution is the quintessential issue that links ecosystem health and human health and global land use and conservation. For instance:

• Dust storms can result from poorly managed arid lands.
• Organic pollutants are products of unsustainable agriculture.
• The Nature Conservancy’s own analysis of mercury found it to be a major threat to our conservation goals in northeastern United States.

Conservation has historically and consistently neglected pollution. Look at most conservation science textbooks and you will find long sections on invasive species, on deforestation, on greenhouse gas emissions…but almost nothing on pollution. Of course greenhouse gases are now categorized by the EPA as a pollutant — but that was only recently, and most of the public would not think of greenhouse gas as pollution in the same way mercury is.

The Nature Conservancy did publish last year a report on air pollution and wildlife in the eastern United States. But I do not understand the lack of uproar about pollution on the part of the Conservancy and other conservation NGOs. Pollution is the threat to biodiversity and people that can tie us all together in a common cause. If we purchased 90 percent of all the private land in the United States and set it aside for conservation but did not address these global sources of pollution, it would all be for naught.

I am all for focus — with Copenhagen coming up, it is natural that we talk and talk about emissions reductions. But climate change is simply one symptom of a general failure to think clearly about the costs and benefits of our actions in terms of general human well-being and ecosystem health. And climate change is but one of many threats to conservation that can only be dealt with by international agreements.

Let’s hope that negotiations at Copenhagen and beyond that are aimed at reducing greenhouse gases pave the way for future international cooperation regarding a wide variety of global pollutants.

(Image: Air pollution and power lines in China. Credit: AdamCohn/Flickr through a Creative Commons license.)

1. Best headline of the morning award goes to Bright Green Blog: “Surprise!  The world has more trees than you probably think.” New satellite imagery shows that trees actually cover a significant chunk of the world’s farmlands, indicating that maybe agriculture and deforestation don’t always go hand in hand.
2. Ethiopian farmers may soon be able to run carbon offsets operations via text message, according to Green Inc., which could help small farmers significantly increase their profits, in addition to reducing the carbon impact of large emitters. Win-win for everyone.
3. Computer company Dell has “planted” a number of solar trees in its headquarters’ parking lot.  CleanTechnica says that the solar trees will provide 130,000 kilowatts per year to the facility, as well as lots of shade and charging stations for hybrid and electric vehicles.
4. A new report reveals that, thanks to the Pacific garbage patch, the diet of the Pacific albatross now consists of large quantities of plastic, including lighters, fishing line and, in one case, a sealed bottle of face lotion, says Scientific American’s Observations blog. Mmm, just like Mom used to make.
5. The trucking industry is primed for a sparkly green makeover, says GreenBiz. Recent analysis shows that the technology already exists to double the energy efficiency of long-haul trucks, which will ultimately keep operating costs down and increase profits — the industry just needs to get on board.