News in perspective

Upfront–

“AUSTRALIA will more than play

its part to address climate

change.” This was the surprising

announcement on Tuesday from

Australian prime minister John

Howard, who has shunned

international carbon reduction

schemes such as the Kyoto

protocol. Now here’s the “but”:

Australia will do it “in a practical

and balanced way in full

knowledge of the economic

consequences for this nation”,

Howard said.

The A$627 million (US$548

million) climate-change package

amounts to a national “cap and

trade” greenhouse gas emissions

scheme. However, Howard has

not revealed what the “cap” – the

emissions target – will be, nor has

he put a price on carbon

emissions, notes Erwin Jackson, of

the Climate Institute of Australia,

an independent environmental

organisation based in Sydney.

The scheme could be up and

running by 2011 and would apply

to about 55 per cent of Australia’s

carbon emissions, according to

the country’s environment

minister.

Howard has been under strong

pressure to announce some sort

of carbon trading system. In April,

Australia’s states declared their

intention to go it alone and set up

a national trading scheme. Public

support has also swung towards

opposition leader Kevin Rudd,

who has promised to ratify Kyoto

if he wins the next election, due

late this year.

Greenpeace Australia says

Howard has actually yielded to

pressure from another group – his

country’s powerful coal industry –

by announcing what amounts

to a delaying tactic in carbon

trading, rather than an effective

new scheme to reduce carbon

emissions.

The new climate-change

package includes A$336 million

for boosting energy efficiency in

schools, each of which will receive

“green vouchers” up to the value

of A$50,000, to help fund the

installation of rainwater tanks

and solar hot-water systems.

WITH all the security measures in

place against terrorist attacks, you

might think it would be difficult

to obtain enough radioactive

material from within the US to

build a dirty bomb. It turns out

that all you need is a little

ingenuity and one fake fax.

Posing as staff from a

construction firm, members of the

US Government Accountability

Office (GAO) asked the Nuclear

Regulatory Commission (NRC)

for a licence to purchase small

amounts of substances such as

caesium-137, which is found in

moisture meters used on building

sites. Four weeks later, without

running detailed checks on the

company or requesting a visit, the

NRC issued the licence.

The GAO staff then altered the

licence to indicate they had NRC

approval to purchase unlimited

amounts of radioactive material.

Suppliers of such material

accepted faxed copies of the

doctored licence and even offered

discounts for purchasing larger

quantities. The GAO then halted

its investigation and made public

its findings on 12 July.

DEFINING A VERY STRANGE LOOPIT is an icon of mathematics that is also

appreciated in wider culture, but what

is the actual shape of a Möbius strip, the

one-sided surface famously drawn by

the mathematical artist M. C. Escher?

This confounding surface is easy

enough to make – simply take a strip of

paper, twist it through 180 degrees and

tape the ends together to form a kind of

twisted loop. The difficult part, until

now, was to mathematically define the

shape. “The equations are huge, too big

to handle – even by a computer,”

says Gert van der Heijden, an expert

in non-linear dynamics at University

College London.

Now he and a colleague have solved

the problem by approaching it from a

new angle. The trick, they say, is to

work from the right set of coordinates

(Nature Materials, DOI: 10.1038/

nmat1929). As Escher may have agreed,

bringing art and science together may

simply be a matter of perspective.

SAINT AND SINNER, ON PAPER

“Support has swung towards the opposition leader, who has promised to ratify Kyoto”

“Could do better” seems a harsh verdict

on a country that has single-handedly

revitalised the paper recycling industry,

but when that country is as large as

China even a small improvement in

efficiency will create a global benefit.

A report by Forest Trends, a forest

conservation group based in

Washington DC, has singled out China as

an unexpected force for environmental

good. Since 2002, the country has

recycled 65 million tonnes – about

7 per cent – of the world’s waste paper.

In 2006 alone this saved 54.3 million

tonnes of trees from pulping. “Before

China became interested in using waste

paper as a fibre source, the market was

really flat. It hadn’t changed for years,”

says Luke Bailey from Forest Trends.

However, the report also highlights

a worrying new aspect of China’s paper

industry. Not content with being the

world’s waste-paper basket, China also

imports about 8 million tonnes of wood

pulp every year to produce high-quality

paper. Although two-thirds is sourced

from sustainable forests in the Americas

and Europe, the rest comes from

unsustainable sources in Indonesia and

eastern Russia. Forest Trends is calling for

an end to that practice, and believes that

pressure on China itself is the key. China

can influence the countries it imports

from while satisfying the markets it

supplies of the legality of their paper-

based goods, Bailey says. Pressuring

Indonesia, he adds, would simply raise its

wood pulp price and so open the way for

other countries to export illegally to China.

The report says Chinese paper

companies should verify the sustainable

origins of their pulp by adopting systems

such as that used by the Forest

Stewardship Council.

RICH

ARD

A.BR

OOKS

/AFP

/GET

TY

–Just can’t get enough–

Carbon U-turn Radioactive sting

6 | NewScientist | 21 July 2007 www.newscientist.com

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