Can capitalism do sustainable development? OK, let's ask that question again without the jargon. Can I really help save the planet by buying products from all these big companies "going green" and selling Fairtrade products?

I have been thinking about this a lot while researching my newly published book, Confessions of an Eco Sinner. You will have seen some of my travel notes here at Fred's Footprint over the past year. Here is where I have got to.

Many companies are making a real effort to cut their carbon emissions and fight climate change. Whether it is Richard Branson's biofuels plane or Rupert Murdoch's carbon-neutral media empire, they mean business.

Some of this is down to emissions caps imposed by the Kyoto protocol, some to consumer and shareholder pressure, and some is real executive interest in long-term sustainability of both their companies and the planet.

The bottom line is they believe they can make money out of cutting carbon emissions. Hardly surprising, when trading in carbon emissions permits and voluntary offsets is now a business worth more than a hundred billion dollars a year. And no wonder major US corporations are leaning on this year's Presidential candidates to sign the Kyoto protocol, so they can join in the new brand of carbon capitalism.

And in my own small way, I am part of this, whether it is offsetting my flights, turning down the thermostat, taking the train or buying an energy-efficient fridge. The potential is so great that capitalism really could save the planet. But will it make a fairer world?

Here my optimism gives out. I don't yet see a way in which companies can make bigger profits by making the world's poorest people wealthier. Rather, we of the rich world seem increasingly to demonise the poor for daring to want a better life.

Sure, some of us buy Fairtrade tea, coffee, socks and bananas. But what I discovered during my book researches was that, though genuinely worth supporting, Fairtrade is a misnomer. Call it: slightly less unfair.

The premium price I pay for my coffee does not reflect what the farmer on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro or wherever should receive. Rather it reflects how much Western consumers like me can be encouraged to pay for feeling a virtuous glow as we stand in the checkout queue on a Saturday morning. And that's a different matter.

Some clothes companies would like to treat workers in sweatshops on the other side of the planet rather better. They have corporate social responsibility (CSR) departments devoted to the task.

But in the factories of sub-contractors in Bangladesh, India and China, I heard endless stories of what really happens. The day after the CSR inspectors come to read the riot act over workers' conditions, the buyers from the same companies show up and threaten to cancel contracts unless they get cheaper prices. Guess who wins.

And we are partly to blame. We may weep crocodile tears over the sweatshops, but we still buy the $10 jeans that create them.

I fear that, in coming decades, a combination of Western consumerism and corporate muscle will conspire to save the planet and starve the poor. Unless we are careful, we will unleash a new green and global fascism.

Fred Pearce, senior environment correspondent

Labels: climate change, freds-footprint

We wrote last year about the spring bird hunt in Malta. Malta is the only European Union country to allow spring bird hunting, despite the fact that it is banned under the EU. In theory, hunters can shoot quail and turtle doves only; in practice it seems anything goes. Malta is on a bird migration route between warmer climes, where the birds winter, and Europe.

The EU announced in January that it would take Malta's government to court. The decision may have angered some: on Sunday morning, the cars of three volunteers for BirdLife International, which has been campaigning against the spring hunt, were torched. It's not clear who torched them. The police are treating it as a criminal act.

The issue is definitely heating up: at the beginning of this month, the hunters' federation sued the Maltese government for breaching their rights.

The federation is claiming that the promise made by the government then, through a letter sent by the Office of the Prime Minister to hunters and trappers before the 2003 election, promising that spring hunting would remain unchanged after EU accession, amounted to a formal commitment.

This, the federation argues, gives hunters the acquired right to expect that the legal regime would remain the same and, therefore, that the changes implemented in the years since accession breach this right.

From Surfbirds.com

If any of you are in Malta, I'd be interested to hear your views on the situation.

Catherine Brahic, online environment reporter

Sometimes, a fiery rebuttal is enough to tell you that you're on the right track.

Yesterday, Porsche threatened to take London's mayor Ken Livingstone to court over his proposal to charge certain cars £25 a day to enter the city.

Livingstone, one of the 40 mayors involved in the Cities Climate Leadership Group, introduced the congestion charge in central London in 2003. Under this scheme, cars entering the centre of the city pay £8 ($15) per day. It has had mixed reviews. (Personally I have no problem with it, but then I wouldn't: I don't own a car.)

Livingstone now wants to increase the penalty to £25 ($49) for gas-guzzlers (defined as cars emitting more than 225 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre travelled). This includes 4x4s and sports cars.

Porsche claims the fee is unfair. In a press release, they say they intend to write to Livingstone this week. They say he's got 14 days to respond or reconsider his proposal. If he doesn't they will submit an application for judicial review at the Royal Courts of Justice.

I can't help but think Porsche's reaction suggests they fear the £25 charge could damage their sales. Which would mean the policy works.

[You can read Porsche's full press release and Livingstone's response here.]

Catherine Brahic, online environment reporter

You may recall the "what's the worst that could happen" video that went around YouTube last year. US high school teacher Greg explained in a series of videos, complete with simple matrices and quirky hats, that decisions to act on climate change could all be resolved by considering the question: "what's the worst that could happen?"

His conclusion was that given error bars and confidence intervals, it's best to pay a little now to avoid huge damages later. This is the same conclusion reached, somewhat less colloquially, by Sir Nicholas Stern.

But there's a fault in both the above: they don't take into account human behaviour. Or rather, they both present the options (pay a little now or, if you don't, gamble on paying a lot later) but fail to consider whether humans will actually take the gamble. Both Greg and Stern know they would choose to pay a little upfront. But would you? And, more importantly, would governments?

A team led by Manfred Milinski of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology and Jochem Marotzke of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, both in Germany, analysed the behaviour of 60 university students to try to answer that question.

Six students were each given €40 and took turns putting money in a collective account. After 10 rounds, there had to be at least €120 in the pot. Providing this goal was reached, the players kept whatever money they had left-over from the original €40.

If, however, the €120 target was not reached, the computer "threw dice" to determine whether or not the students would be allowed to keep their leftovers. The dice were weighted so that there was a 90% chance the students would lose the remaining money, and just a 10% they would keep it.

The researchers got 10 groups of 6 students to play their game and found that half achieved the goal and half didn't.

When they loaded the dice differently so that there were just a 50% chance of losing the leftovers if the €120 target wasn't reached, just one out of 10 groups of players met the target.

I find it surprising that just half of those in the 90% games made it to the €120 target. It's not hugely encouraging. What's interesting is how the players changed their behaviour as the game progressed. Although they didn't know who they were playing, they could see if the others were playing fairly or selfishly. In the 90% games, players played less selfishly - giving as much as others - as the game progressed and neared its end.

In the 50% games, fair-sharing decreased and selfishness increased. Surprisingly perhaps, altruistic acts also increased. The researchers explain this by saying "altruists obviously tried to compensate free riding of others, but usually in vain". (How depressing.)

So the take-home message is: if it's clear that the risk is high, people will work together to reach a common goal. But if it's in the balance (ie, if there's a perceived 50-50 chance of dangerous climate change), then selfishness takes over.

The researchers make another interesting point: altruistic behaviour is likely to be diluted the larger the number of players. This implies smaller climate negotiations, such as those taking place in the G8 or in the "big emitters" meetings convened by the US are more likely to protect the common good than the all-inclusive UN process.

So... who fancies handing the world's fate over to a handful of governments?

Catherine Brahic, online environment reporter

I bought a new PC last week. Like much of the rest of the world, I bought a Dell. Last year I visited one of its biggest factories, at Xiamen in China. It was an eye-opener.

Dell famously claims to shift completed computers, made to order, within 24 hours. And it seems to be true. You might imagine that means holding lots of stock. But you'd be wrong. Dell buys $16-billion worth of components from Chinese companies every year - only Wal-Mart spends more in the "workshop of the world". Yet at Xiamen, it holds no stock at all. Nothing.

Instead, Dell instructs its suppliers to bring what it needs to the city. Every 2 hours, Dell emails new orders for parts, which it expects to arrive at the factory within 30 minutes. "Just in time," as they say.

I watched assembly. It begins like a cafeteria, with a large pile of pink plastic trays. Each receives a piece of paper detailing the individual order - even a Dell production line is not paperless.

The tray is loaded and delivered to a small production "cell" in which a single worker performs most of the assembly in less than 10 minutes. It's surprisingly intimate. Your Dell computer is assembled by one human being, by hand.

A few hours later - software installed and tests completed - the consumer-ready computer is packed into a box at the other end of the assembly room, addressed and shunted straight into a container for shipping.

This is the bit that Dell does. But actually, I discovered, the real business is done 700 kilometres away in Suzhou, a computer city near Shanghai. Here a series of companies you have never heard of make most of the components and do much of the assembly for most of the world's branded computers. They deliver "bare bones" computers to Dell.

Suzhou is stunning. I went to the Logitech factory that makes two-thirds of the world's computer mice, including Dell's. And to another, operated by a Taiwanese company called Asustek, which makes half of all the world's computer motherboards. More than 60 million a year: Dells, Acers, IBMs, Hewlett-Packards.

Back home in England, there are no factories even one tenth the size of this place. Asustek employs 85,000 people - mostly bored, methodical, nimble-fingered 18-year-old girls fresh out of school and recruited from all across China.

Do they like the work? Yes, if they can get overtime, said David Chen, the cheery vice-president for procurement as we watched them work. How long do they stay? "We have a turnover 10%," David told me, before adding sheepishly, "not a year, a month."

Truth is, huge numbers come to work in the big city each year, get homesick, go back to mum for the Chinese New Year - and never go back. Thinking about that again, I understand the fervour of those vast crowds we saw on our TV screens a couple of weeks ago, queuing for days in the blizzards to catch a train home for the New Year holiday.

But they will be replaced. To keep the lines running, Asustek trains a staggering 7000 new operators every month. Right now a new influx of young girls is heading for Suzhou and the other computer cities, part of China's rapid urbanisation - a process demographers are calling the biggest human mass migration ever seen.

I don't quite know whether it is the dynamism or the heartlessness of the Chinese economy that I find most stunning. But in my small way, with my purchase, I am part of it.

So is the Dell style of delivery, avoiding retailers, a smart environmental move? I've often wondered this. Nobody seems to have done a study for consumer electronics. But I came across a study of Amazon-style e-commerce in books, which suggested that that in urban areas, it may use more energy, but in suburban and rural areas, the efficiency of courier services compared to the long car drive to the store won out.

And despite the 24-hour claim, my computer briefly went missing last week. It turned out, Dell didn't have an up-to-date address for my local dealer. It took an extra day to track down my new machine. Not quite just in time. And having clocked some more carbon emissions, I imagine.

Fred Pearce, senior environment correspondent

Labels: freds-footprint

The freakish snowstorms which have been sweeping across China since early January have damaged one tenth of the nation's forests. The State Forestry Administration reports that 17.3 million hectares of forests have been affected - an area larger than England.

Trees suffer from the weight of heavy snowfall, which can bend or break branches, and even kill the whole tree, depending on the species and their size.

Research has shown that death by snow and ice can have all sorts of implications for forests, from boosting regrowth to boosting biodiversity (both a result of more light and "vacant" ecological niches).

On the grimmer side of things, they also generate dead plant debris – excellent fodder for summertime forest fires. Already, a SFA spokesman has warned that trees killed by the cold weather could lead to fire disasters later this year.

This year's snowstorms have been the worst in 5 decades. The total cost of the damage has yet to be determined. On 31 January, the SFA announced that the storms would cost 16.2 billion yuan (about $2.5 billion) in damaged forests, but the storms have been sustained since then, and more are predicted for this week.

Meteorologists have blamed the weather on La Niña, which warms up Pacific waters off the coasts of Asia. As a result, warm moist air comes in over the land and mixes with cold air from the north, resulting in heavy snow.

Catherine Brahic, online environment reporter

Thinking of going for a whiz around the countryside this weekend to ease your city-frayed nerves? Please, do.

Want to drive in to work because simply can't face the smell of your neighbour's armpit on the bus? Please, don't.

This is the philosophy that Iain Borden, professor of architecture and urban culture at the University College London in the UK, would like you to embrace. At a lunch-time lecture earlier this week, he encouraged audience members who want to save the environment to focus on driving for pleasure and not for getting from A to B.

Borden has been looking into why we drive, and he reckons all of those environmentalists who clamour for people to "please, please only drive if absolutely necessary, only if there is no other alternative" are barking up the wrong tree.

In my opinion, this isn't going to solve the problem of emissions caused by road transport. But the reasoning behind it is interesting, provocative, and definitely worth airing.

According to Borden's philosophy, a better way to reduce emissions is to find alternatives ways for "necessary" trips and let people carry on driving for fun.

This will be much more acceptable, he says, because driving has more to do with pleasure and culture than practicality and necessity anyway. We drive because we like being in control of our movements and because it is embedded in our culture - from films (Thelma and Louise), to music (Route 66), to video games (Grand Theft Auto).

Yes, you could take the train to the nearest town (it runs every hour, takes the same amount of time, leaves you in the town centre, right where you want to be), but that's not the point is it? You want to drive to the next town. All week, stuck in your open plan office cubicle, you've been looking forward to the winding road, the open windows, the music blasting on the radio.

So be it, says Borden, who owns two cars, but doesn't drive them every day: "Sometimes I can go two weeks without driving either."

How about pedestrian cities (which Borden also supports)? Cities which have such an efficient public transport system that you don't need to drive? So that cars really are only left for pleasure?

I live in London, which has possibly one of the world's worst metro systems. But thinking about it, I do, in fact, drive in exactly the way Borden prescribes. I don't own a car, I use public transport and my feet to get around town. I hire a car when I go away on holiday, because it allows me to get to small villages, up into the mountains, and to bits of foreign countries that are not on the proverbial tourist map.

It's nice to hear that someone thinks my attitude to driving is the way forward. But I'm not convinced the reasoning works all the way - truck drivers don't drive out of pleasure and most of North America does not have a local train station. But I wonder - if driving becomes a leisure activity, does that mean it might becomes something you might pay more for? Would you be willing for that money to go towards building your local public transport infrastructure?

No, while I'm tempted by Borden's argument, I don't think it works as environmental policy. But I do agree that begging people to stop driving because there are equally practical, environmentally friendly alternatives may be missing the point.

Catherine Brahic, online environment reporter

If I didn't know better, I'd say "so much for the pulling power of oil money". Reports suggested that it played a big role in George W Bush's two terms in office, but according to this stunning online interactive graphic, it was powerless to save Rudolph Giuliani in the 2008 primaries.

OilChange International is hosting the graphic, which shows just how connected each of the US candidates are to the oil industry – monetarily, of course.

Read the full post on our Short Sharp Science blog.