Antarctic marine reserve threatened by sunset clause, conservationists warn

Antarctic waters are home to 10,000 species, including the bulk of the world's penguins. Photograph: Frans Lanting/Getty Images/Mint Images

Talks to create the world’s two largest marine reserves in the Antarctic could be undermined by a last-ditch push for a “sunset clause” that would allow protections from fishing and oil drilling to be stripped away in the future, conservationists have warned.

Negotiations at a meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) began in Hobart on Wednesday, with delegates from 25 member nations thrashing out details of the exact scope of the two reserves.

A proposal backed by the US and New Zealand would create a 1.3 million sq km “no take” zone in the vast Ross Sea, one of the last pristine bodies of water in the world.

A separate plan, put forward by Australia, France and the European Union, proposes to establish a 1.6 million sq km sanctuary in East Antarctica’s marine environment. Combined, the two reserves will be equivalent to the size of India and will double the 1% of the world’s oceans that are currently protected.

The reserves have to be agreed by consensus. The Hobart meeting is the third time the plans have been discussed since October last year. The Ross Sea protected zone has been shrunk by 40% in order to reach agreement.

A coalition of 30 conservation groups say the reserves are needed to provide long-term protection to the seas around Antarctica from oil drilling and fishing. The waters are home to more than 10,000 unique species, including the vast bulk of the world’s penguins, whales, seabirds and the Antarctic toothfish.

However, there are concerns that a “sunset clause”, put forward by New Zealand, could allow future exploitation of Antarctic waters.

“We are worried about the permanence of the marine protected areas as there is talk of 15 years or 50 years as a sunset clause,” Andrea Kavanagh, director of the Pew Charitable Trusts’ southern ocean sanctuary campaign, told Guardian Australia.

“These areas need to be permanent, any less than that is not good enough. Some countries are more comfortable with a sunset clause but that’s not how the ecosystem works. If you think of the life of some of these species, such as deep sea corals and toothfish, 15 years is ridiculous.

“I’m optimistic that we are close to a final agreement but I’m a little nervous about the permanence question. Countries are agreeing on boundaries and management first, which is understandable, but if time is squeezed, the sunset clause could become a real issue.”

Negotiations have hit several stumbling blocks, with Russia and Ukraine previously questioning the legal basis of the plan. Meanwhile, Norway is understood to have reservations about the zones due to the limits they would put on the country’s fishing fleet, which currently scoops up vast amounts of krill off the coast of the Antarctic in order to feed its salmon farms back home.

Jim Barnes, director of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, said: "Agreeing on large marine protected areas in the Ross Sea and East Antarctica is a key test of whether countries honour their international commitments.

“The science supporting the two proposals is compelling, and it is only short-term economic gain that is blocking consensus."

Talks will continue until 1 November.

Suck it and see: Dutch artist's vacuum cleaner could clear China smog

Buildings shrouded in smog in Beijing. The city will spend £102bn to reduce air pollution levels as part of a five-year plan. Photograph: Li Wen/Xinhua Press/Corbis

There are many theories on how China could best tackle its air pollutionproblem: it could shutter its factories, upgrade its emissions standards or, according to one Dutch artist, it could simply suck up the haze using a giant electromagnetic vacuum cleaner.

At least, Daan Roosegaarde says, it doesn't hurt to dream. With Beijing in mind, Roosegaarde has designed a system called Smog that can pull pollutants from the sky. Copper coils buried underground attract airborne particles by generating an electrostatic field, "like a balloon that attracts your hair", he explains. The particles can then be collected and repurposed. An animated promotional video shows the smoggy sky above a park parting like the Red Sea, the blue sky visible through a perfectly round gap in the haze.

"We always had this notion of merging nature with technology," says Roosegaarde, who owns studios in the Netherlands and Shanghai. "It's hacking the landscape, in a poetic way."

Over the past week, a noxious cloud of smog has blanketed a broad swath of the the country's north-east. In the city of Harbin, levels of PM2.5 – particulate matter small enough to lodge itself deep within the lungs – soared to 1,000 micrograms per cubic metre, worse than Beijing's historic highs. Visibility dropped to 20 metres and authorities grounded flights and closed more than 2,000 schools.

Air pollution has been a huge source of public outrage since last winter when Beijing was hit by a week of smog so noxious that central government had no choice but to respond. Environmental authorities, once reticent to even discuss the issue for fear that it could stoke social unrest, have begun seeking a dash of inspiration to buoy their long-haul anti-pollution measures. They have lent support to a bevy of innovative small-scale ideas.

Roosegarde, already known for developing ambitious projects such as an internet-connected "smart highway" in the UK, conceived of the Smog system during a business trip to Beijing, as he watched the CCTV tower gradually disappear into a white-grey haze from his hotel window.

The artist recently forged an agreement with Beijing's mayor to test the project in one of the city's public parks, having already run successful trials in a 25sq metre room. He says the project should be ready for launch within nine months. "Right now it's just a question of getting funding for the pilot."

A woman wearing a face mask cycles in Beijing, which is preparing emergency measures such as traffic limits to kick in when pollution levels are high. Photograph: Andy Wong/AP

As part of a five-year plan released last month, Beijing will spend £102bn to significantly reduce air pollution levels by 2017. This week, the city announced it would enact a raft of emergency measures when pollution levels remain "serious" for three consecutive days – schools and factories would close and some private cars would be banned from entering the centre of the city.

The measures are a step forward but Song Ranping, a Beijing-based climate and energy expert at the World Resources Institute, says there is still a long way to go. "The system is so large, and there are so many conflicting interests between different parties," he says.

Polluting factories are simply moving to parts of the country that are not as economically developed, he says. "In Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, the air quality should be getting better pretty soon, given all the things the government is doing. But for Harbin, I don't know – I don't have too much reason to be optimistic there."

Many of Beijing's air pollution-related design projects lend themselves more to inspiration than sustainable change. One Beijing-based artist, Matt Hope, has developed a prototype for an air-purifying bicycle out of a mesh rubbish bun, a fighter-pilot mask, a moped helmet and a pedal-powered wind generator.

Xiaowei Wang, a recent graduate of Harvard's Graduate School of Design, has developed a work of performance art using air quality-indicating LED lights affixed to kites.

"The goal was to raise awareness about air-quality issues in Beijing through the poetic, participatory act of kite flying," Wang says.

Her project, called Float, consists of two parts: workshops in which Beijing residents affix small air quality-reading modules to homemade kites, and night-time kite-flying sessions in a local park. LED lights on the modules flash different colours according to their readings, creating a "constellation" of pollution-indicating lights in the sky.

Wang organised the project in August 2012, before the Beijing smog crisis. State security agents initially approached her about the project, fearing that the data could harm the city's image, but eventually deemed her unthreatening enough to proceed.

Wang says she is amazed by how dramatically China's attitudes towards air quality has changed since that summer. "I feel like I'm getting an email once a month from someone heading to China to do an air-quality monitoring project," she says. "And this is all very official – it's just become not a problem, and that's been astonishing to me.

Greenpeace activists have piracy charges dropped by Russia

Greenpeace's ship, Arctic Sunrise, being towed into the Russian port of Murmansk. Photograph: Igor Podgorny/AFP/Getty Images

Russia has dropped piracy charges against 30 people involved in aGreenpeace protest over Arctic oil drilling, replacing them with lesser charges, the Itar-Tass news agency reported on Wednesday, citing federal investigators.

Investigative committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said the charges against activists who protested at an oil platform last month had been changed from piracy, which carries a maximum jail sentence of 12 years, to hooliganism which has a lesser punishment, Itar-Tass reported.

The boat was seized by Russian coastguards last month as it approached the Prirazlomnaya oil rig, an offshore Arctic drilling platform operated by the state energy giant Gazprom.

President Vladimir Putin said it was "completely obvious" that the environmentalists were not pirates, but Russia's investigative committee went ahead with the charges.

The activists come from 18 different countries and include six Britons. Investigators also claim that they found drugs on board the ship and have hinted that new charges could be forthcoming.

All of the activists have been refused bail, despite bail securities being pledged, and the head of Greenpeace International, Kumi Naidoo, offering in an open letter to Putin to come to Russia as a human bail guarantee ahead of trials.

Is the Dubai desert about to go green?

By 2030, Dubai will have cuts its carbon emissions by 29%, according to a state of energy report. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

Dubai, the Arab emirate often compared to a teenager because of its youth, breakneck growth and profligate use of resources, is to dramatically change its ways in an attempt to show the world that it can develop into an environmentally mature nation in just a few years.

The the indoor ski-resort, the manmade islands, the world's tallest building, the chilled sand and Armani hotels are not about to disappear, but the non-stop construction party which has seen the small fishing village on the edge of a stony desert turn into into a super-city of twisted glass towers and giant malls in under 50 years, may finally be over.

In place of Dubai's legendary excess and endless boom years comes a sober report from the state of energy on Wednesday, charting the new energy direction which the young city must take if it is to continue flourishing.

It must make strange reading for the average Dubai expat or emirati, normally used to being able to keep the air conditioning full on day and night and emit huge amounts of carbon, it makes strange reading.

Over the next 15 years, the emirate intends to cut its energy and waterdemand by 30%, retrofit 30,000 buildings to save energy, switch a quarter of the enormous government car fleet to run on compressed gas and keep the temperatures in many buildings at a modest 24C. Power subsidies will be slashed and new incentives offered to instal solar heating and electricity.

But that is just the start. As of last week, Dubai could generate just a fraction of the solar power of Britain or Germany despite the fact that it receives a nearly-guaranteed 10 hours of sun a day. That changed on Tuesday when Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, ruler of Dubai, switched on phase one of a solar power plant 50km out of the city, as part of Dubai's bid to host the 2020 World Expo. It will have a capacity of only 24MW to start with, but in the next 15 years will grow into a monster 1GW plant covering 20 sq km of desert.

"The physical potential of solar energy in Dubai is enormous. It's possible it could provide more than twice Dubai's current electricity consumption", says Graeme Sims, British regulator of the water and electricity authority.

By 2030, says the energy report, Dubai will have cuts its carbon emissions by 29%, switched 30% of its $100bn a year economy torenewable energy, 'clean coal' and nuclear, and initiated a plethora of energy- and water- saving initiatives.

It may be too late for the Dubai coastline which has been trashed by strings of housing developments, but the authorities believe they can avoid having to desalinate 8bn gallons of water a year, turn waste into energy, curb pollution and recycle water.

Dubai grew up ecologically in 2008 when the recession hit and the property market crashed, says Ivano Iannelli, a former Italian diplomat who directs the Dubai carbon centre of excellence, and helped collate Dubai's green master plan.

Then, over just a few weeks, dozens of giant projects were halted and property values bombed. British expats living a luxury lifestyle but fearing prison for their new debts, dumped their Ferarris and 4x4s at the airport with the keys still in them, and as many as 2,500 people a week reportedly fled the boom town.

The crash, says Iannelli, gave the Dubai government the chance to rethink its direction. "Success is no longer recognised in short-term strategies, but the long-term. Now we have a road map for the next 20 years," he says.

"Never before did we have the technology to address the challenges of sustainability. The recessions certainly made us think," says Saeed Mohamed Al Tayer, chief executive of Dubai Electricity and Water Authority.

Waleed Salman, a member of the Dubai supreme council of energy, says: "The ideas have evolved. We have bigger targets. This is organic growth. We learned after the financial crisis to do things better. The new growth will be a new way."

On the horizon, he says, is the possibility of Dubai becoming the world's first "smart" city, where all energy use can be monitored and controlled. "We have everything in place in term of infrastructure. But we do not jump into the water without knowing how to swim.

"This is just the beginning. Ambition is in our blood. It's what makes our heart beat. People need to be led but a lot of coaching is needed."

Today, Dubai is booming again with property values soaring and investors flooding in from less stable Arab states as well as Europe. "They're all welcome. As long as they don't think they can act like energy hooligans," said one energy adviser to the emirate.

Apple urged by Carl Icahn to spend cash pile on share buyback

Tim Cook with the new iPad Air. Apple is sitting on a cash pile of more than $147bn. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Corporate raider Carl Icahn stepped up pressure on Apple to hand back $150bn to shareholders on Thursday, when he published a letter to CEO Tim Cook on Shareholders' Square Table, a website he launched to promote shareholder activism.

Icahn and Cook met for dinner at the end of September after the investor disclosed he had bought 3.8m Apple shares and was calling for a $150bn share buyback. Apple chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer has described the meeting as "cordial."

In the letter, Icahn disclosed that he now owns 4.7m Apple shares, which represent 0.5% of the company and are worth $2.5bn. The additional share purchase reflects "our belief the market continues to dramatically undervalue the company, even when taking into account the recent market appreciation," wrote Icahn.

"The criticism we have as shareholders has nothing to do with your management leadership or operational strategy. Our criticism relates to one thing only: the size and timeframe of Apple's buyback program. It is obvious to us that it should be much bigger and immediate," he said.

Apple is currently sitting on a cash pile totaling more than $147bn. The enormous sum is equivalent to almost 10% of all the corporate cash held by non-financial companies in the US, according to an analysis by Moody's. More than $100bn of that money is held overseas and would be subject to taxation if brought back into the US, a fact that sparked acongressional hearing on the company's tax strategies earlier this year.

In the letter, dated 23 October, Icahn suggested that Apple borrow the money to buy back shares. The scheme would give an immediate boost to Apple's stock, which is currently priced at $525, Icahn argued. "Longer-term (in three years), if you execute this buyback as proposed, we expect the share price to appreciate to $1,250," he wrote.

Icahn said he would not sell his shares if there was a buyback. "There is nothing short-term about my intentions here," he wrote.

Apple will reveal the latest sales numbers for its high-profile products like iPads and iPhones on Monday, when it releases its results for the last quarter.

In an event earlier this week in which he unveiled upgrades to products including the iPad Mini and the new iPad Air, Cook revealed that the company had sold its 170 millionth iPad in October. Analysts estimate Apple shipped around 14.9m iPads during the last quarter, up from 14m iPads sold during the same time last year. The company will also update investors about sales of its new iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C.

Colin Gillis, a technology analyst at BGC Partners, said Apple was already handing back $100m to shareholders through a buyback and an increase in dividend payments, and warned that taking on debt the way Icahn is proposing has risks.

"The fortunes of technology companies can change very quickly. Just look at BlackBerry," he said.

Gillis said he would rather see Apple do something to fuel growth, and suggested it could buy Tesla, the electric car company, or look for other opportunities to expand its business. "The worst thing they can do is just let it pile up on their balance sheet," he said.

Icahn has built a $20bn fortune from a series of often hostile takeovers, and clashed with US business leaders at companies including Time Warner and the now-defunct airline TWA. Most recently, he lost out on an attempt to block Dell founder Michael Dell from taking the struggling computer firm private

Mild panic in the City as rate rise nears

'As a life-long Londoner I have never ever seen anything like the current frenzy,' says Albert Edwards of Société Générale. Photograph: Alamy

There is a sense of mild panic in the City as the end of cheap money appears on the horizon. An interest rate rise is nearing.

Maybe not tomorrow, when GDP for the third quarter is expected to be strong, or even next year, but most likely before the Bank of England's target date of late 2016.

Minutes of the last monetary policy committee meeting, published on Wednesday, have added to a sense of unease among those investors who rely on base rates at 0.5% to give them an easy profit. Banks, in particular, have recovered on the back of cheap funds, much of which they have retained to rebuild their balance sheets rather than pass on to customers.

Higher interest rates cannot come too soon for the band of analysts who view the current situation with alarm.

Albert Edwards, Société Générale's global strategist, argues in a note for clients that four years of low rates have encouraged a return of the kind of risky investment behaviour that we saw before the crash. He cites evidence, albeit anecdotal, that the crazy derivatives favoured by traders prior to 2008 are in heavy use and posing a distinct danger to the stability of world markets. He calls as evidence an interview in the Financial Times where Craig Parker, head of leveraged finance at Goldman Sachs, says: "We're in the third year of the greatest leveraged finance markets of all time because of the efforts by the Fed, and all the central banks around the world, to keep rates at zero."

Edwards believes there are signs of asset bubbles everywhere and the US, the UK and Japan are standing on the edge of a precipice, much as they did in 2006.

Making matters worse is the seductive charm of low interest rates for governments. Most western governments have borrowed heavily in the last four years. The UK has doubled its debt mountain and is still running a considerable annual budget deficit.

Public sector debt issuance as a proportion of GDP. Source: Datastream

Edwards reproduces a chart showing public sector debt issuance as a proportion of GDP in 17 key economies that puts Japan at the top with a startling figure of 58.4%. The US ranks third behind Italy with a total of 23.9%. The UK reaches 11th in the table with 12.1%.

The chart measures the amount of government debt that has matured this year and must be renewed. To some extent it merely shows the length of maturity on government bonds, and because the US has many more short-dated bonds than the UK, they therefore come up for renewal more often.

But the point Edwards is making needs to be recognised. Whatever each government's bond strategy, they are all relying on cheap borrowing for their newly minted debt.

In the UK's case, the Bank of England has been a major buyer and now owns around a third of the overall total. Without the central bank as a buyer, demand will be lower and the interest rate higher.

So quantitative easing and low interest rates are not only good for mortgage payers with big loans, investors who want to speculate with cheap money and banks that need to increase their reserves, it helps governments that need to borrow.

Sadly, bringing current spending under control is not a silver bullet when there is so much debt coming up for renewal, which is why finance ministers are tempted to just keep low rates rolling along forever, or at least until the middle distance.

Edwards argues that Japan is now in a situation where, like a junkie strung out on adulterated crack, it must keep pumping more and more into its system just to stay afloat (the junkie image is mine, by the way).

Edwards says of the UK: "Make no mistake, as a life-long Londoner I have never ever seen anything like the current frenzy. We are in the midst of the mother of all housing bubbles, and although the rest of the country has yet to follow, it inevitably will do so – it always does.

"The London housing bubble is no longer driven by Asian or eurozone buyers looking for safe havens. This bubble, like the one in the mid-noughties, is about excessively loose monetary policy and light touch regulation. No one should have any confidence the authorities will rein in this bubble. Indeed, quite the reverse. Getting house prices moving briskly upwards is the objective of monetary policy. And this is before the George Osborne's 'moronic' Help-To-Buy (votes …) scheme really begins to kick in."

It is hard to agree with Edwards' theory when evidence of reckless lending is hard to find, (see the Guardian video debate on the subject). The London market is dominated by cash buyers, foreigners and corporate interests, all of which can withstand higher interest rates (if they have a mortgage at all).

London is soaring and grabbing an greater slice of UK GDP, as set out by my colleague Aditya Chakrabortty. Yet there is no evidence that self-certified and 125% mortgages are back. In 2007 we had arrived at a point where a decade of booming house sales, some of them to people with no income or an uncertain ability to pay, had built up in the system. A crash of sorts was inevitable. Sure, left to its own devices, the UK property market will accelerate, there will be a bubble and the bubble will burst. Just give it five years.

Yet his wider argument, echoed by HSBC's chief economist Stephen King on the BBC Radio 4 show Analysis this week, that the global system is becoming unstable as QE distorts private sector and government behaviour, needs to be addressed openly by central banks and politicians alike.

Andy Murray failing to make Australian Open would worry Boris Becker

Andy Murray is in the middle of a long break following back surgery but hopes to play the Australian Open in January. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

Boris Becker thinks "we should all be concerned" for Andy Murray if he does not make it back to the tennis court in time for the Australian Open.

The winner of six grand slam tournaments said Murray, who had remedial surgery to ease chronic pain in his lower back last month and then announced he would rest for the remainder of 2013, was right to take a long break.

"It's no joke. It's not a torn muscle, it's not a twisted ankle. I mean it's a disc, you only have one spine – so it's a very serious injury. I think we should all be concerned. To have surgery is not a minor thing. I think we will know a lot more when he comes back.

"It makes no sense for him to come back quickly and risk not being completely healed; I totally understand that but he should be back for the Australian Open. I think that has to be the goal. Now we are in the middle of October, so there's still a little bit of time left.

"He loves Melbourne, it is one of his best grand slams, and he has a great track record there. So I would really hope he will come back there, maybe play a tournament before, maybe Brisbane, Kooyong. It would be a blow for his year if he can't make it."

Speaking in London on Monday in advance of the countdown to the climax of the season, the ATP World Tour Finals in Greenwich in three weeks' time, Becker said back injuries have always been the biggest concern for players, and revealed he had to deal with his own problems in that area.

"With all the bending, the serving and the leaning, I'm surprised there are not more disc problems among players. In my day, I had back problems – we never called them disc problems. I never had surgery. I was fortunate but that was also a weak part of my body because of the arch in the serve and the landing afterwards.

"I always had a great team. They took care of Bayern Munich and the national [football] team, and they took care of me. It was something I had to do every month. You get injections, certain treatments to take away the inflammation but there comes a point when you can't take the pain any more.

"I don't know in detail what was wrong with Andy's back but it's usually too much inflammation and there's something they do to take away the pressure.

"Andy's style is a lot of grinding, a lot of long rallies, baseline rallies, and therefore certain parts of your body are more over-exposed, like the lower back. That's the way they jerk around the baseline: knees, ankle – but more ankle. We've seen him many times touching his lower back in agony, and his upper thigh; it is all connected. And you wonder sometimes, can he finish the match or is he already in pain? And I think he was in pain."