Planetary Ruin

Iraq’s electricity grid could collapse any day because of insurgent sabotage, rising demand, fuel shortages and provincial officials who are unplugging local power stations from the national system, electricity officials said on Saturday.
U.S. President George W. Bush, meanwhile, was busy on the phone, calling Vice president Adel Abdel-Mahdi and President Jalal Talabani, urging political unity in the country, where the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is under a stiff challenge.
Abdel-Mahdi, a Shiite, and Talabani, a Kurd, provided few details of the conversations in statements released by their offices. But both men have been involved in trying to solve a government crisis after Iraq’s largest bloc of Sunni political parties ordered its ministers to quit the government.

For many Iraqi citizens, however, trying to stay cool or find sufficient drinking water was a more urgent problem. The Baghdad water supply already has been severely affected by power blackouts and cuts that have affected pumping and filtration stations.
And now water mains have gone dry in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, where the whole province south of Baghdad has been without power for three days. Power supplies in Baghdad have been sporadic all summer and now are down to just a few hours a day, if that.
«We no longer need to television documentaries about the stone age. We are actually living in it. We are in constant danger because of the filthy water and rotten food we are having,» said Hazim Obeid, who sells clothing at a stall in the Karbala market.
Aziz al-Shimari, the Electricity Ministry spokesman in Baghdad, said power generation nationally was only half of demand and that there had been four nationwide blackouts over the past two days.

«Many southern provinces, such as Basra, Diwaniyah, Nassiriyah, Babil have disconnected their power plants from the national grid. Northern provinces, including Kurdistan, are doing the same,» al-Shimari said.
He complained that the central government was unable to do anything about that or the fact that some provinces were failing to take themselves off the supply grid once they had consumed their daily ration of electricity.
Najaf province spokesman Ahmed Deibel confirmed to The Associated Press Sunday that the gas turbine generator there was removed from the national grid. He said the plant produced 50 megawatts while the province needed at least 200.
«What we produce is not enough even for us. We disconnected it from the national grid three days ago because the people in Baghdad were getting too much, leaving little electricity for Najaf,» he said.  Which confirmed al-Shimari’s charge that «we have absolutely no control over some areas in the south.

The conflict over electricity is a perennial problem in Iraq, which ironically sits atop one of the world’s largest crude oil reserves. The system became decrepit under Saddam Hussein whose regime was under a U.N. sanctions regime after the Gulf War and had trouble buying spare parts or the equipment to upgrade the system.
Al-Shimari said the electricity shortages now were the worst since the summer of 2003, shortly after the U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam.
«And what makes Baghdad the worst place in the country is that most of the lines leading into the capital have been destroyed. That is compounded by the fact that Baghdad has limited generating capacity.

He said that there are 17 high-tension lines running into Baghdad but only two were operational. The rest had been sabotaged.

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From “An Inconvenient Truth” to popularizing the Prius, Hollywood has helped lead the way on some environmental issues. One of the latest initiatives: Cool Change, Fox’s company-wide program to reduce the network’s impact on global warming. As part of that effort, the seventh season of “24″ will take steps to reduce and offset the carbon emissions from the show’s production, with the goal of having the season finale be entirely carbon-neutral.

It may sound like a publicity stunt, but Fox spokesman Chris Anderson says the network isn’t after bigger ratings. “We are publicizing ’24’s’ commitment to climate change for two reasons and two reasons only: to inspire the public to take global warming seriously and hopefully to motivate other studios to make changes to their production practices as well,” he says.

After all, shooting on soundstages requires energy-hungry lighting and gear, and going on location means using portable generators and driving trucks, vans and cars loaded with equipment, costumes and people. When production on Season 7 begins this month, the show’s 26 diesel vehicles and five generators will run on a more planet-friendly biodiesel blend, which will start at 5 percent biodiesel and gradually increase, barring any problems, according to executive producer Howard Gordon.

The show’s electricity bills will go toward renewable-energy credits that will bring a share of wind, solar and water power to Los Angeles’s grid. A diesel-powered soundstage will be converted to electricity, thus lessening the show’s contribution to the local air pollution problem, and the show’s five location scouts will be given Priuses to drive. Scripts, schedules and memos — which used to be hand-delivered by car — will be sent via e-mail.

The “24″ page at Fox.com now features energy conservation tips and a public service announcement about global warming featuring Kiefer Sutherland; more information will be posted when the show airs in January. Plus, climate change will be incorporated into the series’ plot (which just might scare some viewers into taking action).

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Havoc from monsoon rains killed another 12 people in India, including two children swept away by floods and a man attacked by a rhinoceros forced out of its inundated habitat, officials said Saturday. Helicopters dropped food to hundreds of thousands of frightened villagers perched on rooftops.

Vital to farmers, the annual rains are a blessing and a curse for the subcontinent. At least 198 people have been killed in India and neighboring Bangladesh and 19 million driven from their homes in recent days, according to government figures.

The South Asian monsoon season runs from June to September as the rains work their way across the subcontinent. It’s always dangerous - last year more than 1,000 people died, most from drowning, landslides or house collapses.

This year, estimates of total deaths vary wildly from a few hundred to well over 1,000.

Some 14 million people in India and 5 million in Bangladesh have been displaced or marooned by flooding, according to government figures. At least 144 people have died in India and 54 more in Bangladesh.

India’s Meteorological Department said unusual monsoon patterns this year have led to heavier than normal rains.

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U.S. President George W. Bush unveiled plans on Friday for global warming talks next month that will bring together the world’s biggest polluters to seek agreement on reducing greenhouse gases.
 
Under pressure for tougher action against climate change, Bush invited the European Union, the United Nations and 11 industrial and developing countries to the September 27-28 meeting in Washington to work toward setting a long-term goal by 2008 to cut emissions.

Bush was following through on his pledge in late May to convene a series of conferences with economic powers responsible for producing most of the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.

The United States is the world’s top emitter of greenhouse gases and the only G8 country outside Kyoto, the U.N.-sponsored plan for cutting greenhouse gases.

Some environmentalists voiced skepticism about the conference, seeing it as a bid to deflect attention from U.N. efforts and evade international calls for strict U.S. limits on emissions.

“In recent years, science has deepened our understanding of climate change and opened new possibilities for confronting it,” Bush said in his invitation letter.

He insisted the United States “is committed to collaborating with other major economies” on a new global framework for curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

But a senior U.S. official said the administration stood by its opposition to mandatory economy-wide caps. Many climate experts say that without binding U.S. targets, the chance for significant progress is limited.

Bush agreed with leaders at a Group of Eight summit in June to make “substantial” but unspecified reductions in greenhouse emissions and to negotiate a new global climate pact that would broaden the Kyoto Protocol beyond its 2012 expiration.

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