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China Pollution Crisis Undermining Growth - Official (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 12-04-2006 at 09:00:23
| Reuters: China faces an environmental crisis that threatens to wipe out much of the gains of three decades of economic growth, one of China's most outspoken environment officials said in comments published on Saturday. "China is dangerously near a crisis. The country's enormous environmental debt will have to be paid one way or another," Pan Yue, deputy head of China's State Environmental Protection Administration, said in a letter to the South China Morning Post. "(We ... |
Philippines: Villages and families wiped out as deadly mudslides follow typhoon (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 12-04-2006 at 09:00:23
| Scotsman, UK: A STATE of "national calamity" was declared by the Philippines' president, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, yesterday as the Red Cross estimated more than 1,000 people had been killed in mudslides triggered by a typhoon that have swamped entire villages. Typhoon Durian was the fourth major storm to hit the Philippines in four months. It hit the Mayon volcano with so much wind and rain that ash and boulders cascaded down in walls of black mud that swept through several villages. ... |
Philippines Buries Hundreds of Typhoon Victims in Mass Graves (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 12-04-2006 at 09:00:23
| Reuters: Villagers in the central Philippines buried hundreds of relatives and friends in mass graves on Sunday as hopes faded of finding survivors from Typhoon Durian. Officials fear the death toll from Durian, which swept into the South China Sea on Friday, could hit 600 after driving rain and winds of up to 225 kph (140 mph) sent waves of mud crashing down an active volcano onto nearby villages. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo declared a state of national calamity on Sunday, ... |
Report Slams EU Travelling Circus for CO2 Emissions (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 12-04-2006 at 09:00:23
| Reuters: The European Union's "travelling circus", whereby the European Parliament sits in both Brussels and Strasbourg, produces at least 190,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions every year, a report said on Friday. The survey, by British-based environmental research organisation Climate Care, is set to resurrect a deep political row over the two-city arrangement, which costs EU taxpayers 200 million euros ($265 million) a year in travel expenses. The report is based on ... |
UK Government Failing on Global Warming - Tories (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 12-04-2006 at 09:00:23
| Reuters: The British government's aim of cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 60 percent by 2050 will not be enough to stop average temperature increases above two degrees Celsius, the Opposition Conservatives said on Friday. Instead, the government should look at how to cut emissions by 80 percent below 1990 levels over the same period and set an interim target to make sure it is reached. "Our understanding of the science tells us that the appropriate stabilisation target range ... |
Spain: Endesa Sees Clean Coal a Reality from 2015 (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 12-04-2006 at 09:00:23
| Reuters: Power plants in Europe could be burning coal with practically zero emissions at a competitive price by 2015 or 2020, a senior engineering executive at Spain's biggest power company Endesa said on Friday. As one of the biggest coal users in Europe, Endesa is among the companies pushing forward carbon capture technology, Santiago Sabugal told Reuters in an interview. Endesa, which generated 40 percent of its Spanish power from coal last year, is involved in a number of European ... |
Germany to Defy EU Rejection of its CO2 Plan (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 12-04-2006 at 09:00:23
| Reuters: Germany will ignore a ruling by the European Commission on Wednesday that rejected Berlin's climate change targets for 2008-12, the economics ministry said on Friday. Brussels said Germany's targets for greenhouse gas emissions were too generous to industry. "We will resist these decisions with all available means. As the economy minister said already on Wednesday, we find them unacceptable," a spokesman said from Berlin. "Reports that we would be ... |
Greens Says Germany Deserved EU Rebuke on Emissions (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 12-04-2006 at 09:00:23
| Reuters: Germany richly deserved the stinging rebuke it got from the European Commission this week for its inadequate efforts on fighting climate change, the leader of the opposition Greens party said on Friday. Greens party co-chairwoman Claudia Roth said Chancellor Angela Merkel and Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel had put the interests of energy suppliers ahead of fighting climate change and had undermined the EU emissions trading scheme (ETS). "Gabriel has been running away from ... |
Italy Cuts Free CO2 Emissions Limit Under New NAP (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 12-04-2006 at 09:00:24
| Reuters: Italy will cut free limits of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to 197 million tonnes from previously targeted 200 million tonnes under the 2008-2012 national allocation plan (NAP), a ministry spokesman said on Friday. After lengthy debates which followed the earlier draft announced in October, the environment and economic development ministries have agreed to trim the free quota, but total CO2 emissions cap, including the paid quota, was raised to 209 million tonnes from 206 million ... |
East Africa: Flood Victims Face Grim Prospect of Rains Continuing Well Into 2007 - UN (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 12-04-2006 at 09:00:26
| UN News Service: Somalia is already facing its worst floods in recent history, the numbers of those affected in Kenya are soaring, and hundreds of thousands of people throughout the Horn of Africa face the grim prospect of flooding problems continuing well into the next year, according to the latest United Nations update issued today. Current estimates put the number of affected people at 361,000 in Ethiopia's Somali Region and 330,000 in Somalia although other estimates go as high as 900,000, while ... |
Kyoto's (not so) Clean Development Mechanism (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 12-04-2006 at 12:00:23
| Green Left: A year after the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, which involves 166 countries and commits 36 industrialised nations to binding CO2 emission cuts of 5.2% by 2012, global emissions are rising faster than ever. This is because Kyoto promotes carbon trading as the key mechanism to reduce CO2 emissions. Today the global carbon market worth US$22 billion is being called a "green goldrush". The Stockholm-based Dag Hammerskjold Foundation's 360-page study, Carbon trading: a critical ... |
Carbon trading: an essential tool in the greenhouse struggle (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 12-04-2006 at 12:00:23
| Green Left: In their article "No to carbon trading: make the polluters pay" (GLW #691), Tim Stewart and Pip Hinman argue against the use of carbon pricing in general, and emissions trading in particular, as an important tool for reducing Australia's greenhouse gas emissions. Their argument against carbon pricing is that the costs will be passed on to consumers. This is inevitable and, I suggest, essential. Without a price signal, how can renewable energy sources compete with dirty coal? Without ... |
EU gets tough on carbon emission (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 12-04-2006 at 12:00:23
| Financial Times: The European Union last week ordered tougher greenhouse gas emission targets to meet its commitments under the Kyoto Protocol to combat global warming. The move was welcomed by traders of carbon dioxide emission permits and by some in the business community, although some industries' opposition to stricter curbs on emissions associated with the consumption of fossil fuels had led countries to submit unambitious plans to the European Commission in the first place. Traders and ... |
Greener, cleaner ... and competitive? (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 12-04-2006 at 12:00:23
| Christian Science Monitor: The last time renewable-energy entrepreneurs were this gung-ho, in the early 1980s, subsidies - not sales - buoyed their business plans. This time may be different. For example: • So many utility customers signed up for the "GreenChoice" program in Austin, Texas, that the city organized a raffle to decide who would get the last 1,400 slots. The reason: The program's wind-powered electricity was actually cheaper to generate than traditional power. • Midwestern ethanol ... |
Increase in carbon dioxide emissions accelerating (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 12-04-2006 at 12:00:23
| Innovations Report: According to the co-Chair of the Global Carbon Project, CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research scientist Dr Mike Raupach, 7.9 billion tonnes of carbon were emitted into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide in 2005 and the rate of increase is accelerating. "From 2000 to 2005, the growth rate of carbon dioxide emissions was more than 2.5 per cent per year, whereas in the 1990s it was less than one per cent per year," Dr Raupach says. He says this indicates that recent efforts globally ... |
China must pay pollution debt now (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 12-04-2006 at 12:00:24
| New Straits Times: FOR a decade, the world has wondered when China's leaders will recognise the staggering environmental crisis confronting their country. This year, we got an answer: A new Five-Year Plan that makes environmental protection a priority. A storm of green propaganda has followed, and the government now talks about using "Green GDP" to measure development. But will all this talk amount to real progress? While the central government admits to some of the environmental ... |
Canada: Dion says he'll honour Kyoto if he unseats Harper (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 12-04-2006 at 12:00:24
| Associated Press: The new leader of Canada's Liberal Party pledged Sunday to honour the country's commitment to the Kyoto protocol if he unseats Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper in an election expected next year. Stephane Dion reiterated his commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions in his first news conference since winning the leadership of the Liberal party, which ruled Canada for most of the last century but was ousted by the Conservatives in elections earlier this year. Dion, who ... |
Global Warming (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 12-04-2006 at 12:00:24
| Philadelphia Inquirer: 'When is the cataclysm?" Justice Antonin Scalia's question last week during the Supreme Court's most important environmental case in years sums up America's inertia on global warming. "You have to show that harm is imminent," Scalia told Massachusetts Assistant Attorney General James R. Milkey. Would the judge refuse blood pressure medicine unless doctors could pinpoint the date of his stroke? Despite melting glaciers, rising sea levels, ... |
Canada: Global warming threatens fisheries (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 12-04-2006 at 12:00:24
| Times Colonist: Global warming and unpredictable fish behaviour could prompt Fisheries and Oceans Canada to shorten openings and further restrict the number of boats on the fishing grounds. "We're seeing effects already, whether you call it climate change or temporary warming," said Brian Riddell, head of salmon and freshwater ecosystems at the department's Pacific Biological Station in Nanaimo, during a meeting with the Times Colonist editorial board. Global warming is prompting ... |
United Kingdom: Government 'lacks urgency' over cutting CO2 emissions (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 12-04-2006 at 12:00:24
| Guardian: A group of MPs today accused the government of a "lack of ambition" over its plans to cut carbon emissions. Tim Yeo, the chairman of the environmental audit committee, said the Department for Transport's plans to cut CO2 emissions were lacking urgency. "The department claims its policies are on the right track, but its own projections of future carbon emissions suggest that CO2 from transport will be no lower in 2050 than in 1990," he said. "This ... |
Indian monsoon intensified by climate change (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 12-04-2006 at 12:00:24
| SciDev.Net: Global warming is intensifying the monsoon in Central India, according to a study that warns of increasing risk from heavier rains during the season. The research, published in the latest issue of the U.S. journal Science, reinforces claims that global warming is boosting the power and number of storms and other extreme weather events across the world. Heavy monsoon rains in central India between 1981 and 2000 were more intense and frequent than in the 1950s and 1960s, and ... |
Indonesia aims to contain forest fires in a few years (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 12-04-2006 at 12:00:24
| Reuters: Indonesia is intensifying efforts to prevent forest fires that have spread a blanket of smoke across the region and hopes to control the annual haze problem in the next few years, the environment minister said on Monday. Indonesia's neighbours have grown increasingly frustrated by the fires, most of which are deliberately lit by farmers or by timber and palm oil plantation companies -- some owned by Singaporeans and Malaysians -- to clear land for cultivation. The smoke from ... |
Indonesia downbeat on stopping fires causing haze (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 12-04-2006 at 12:00:24
| Kyodo: The Indonesian government on Monday voiced doubt over its ability to extinguish peatland fires contributing to thick haze in the Southeast Asian region. "I'm not optimistic, I have to be realistic," Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar told a luncheon at the Jakarta Foreign Correspondents' Club. The haze has sent air quality levels in Singapore, Malaysia and parts of Indonesia plunging to unhealthy levels. It started to ease last month with the arrival of the rainy ... |
Movers: Spain to cut subsidies to wind-power plants (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 12-04-2006 at 12:00:24
| Bloomberg: Spain will cut subsidies to wind-power plants following an overhaul of the way it calculates aid for renewable power sources, hurting earnings at utilities including Iberdrola, the world's largest producer of wind power. Electricity generated from wind will be paid between €67 and €84, or $89 and $112, per megawatt hour starting next year, down from about €97 this year, Spain's secretary of state for energy, Ignasi Nieto, said on the sidelines of a conference in Palma de Mallorca. ... |
United Kingdom: MPs attack Government over emissions (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 12-04-2006 at 12:00:24
| Western Mail: The Government has been criticised for "lack of ambition" over its targets for cutting carbon emissions. MPs on the Environmental Audit Committee questioned whether the Department for Transport "appreciates the magnitude and urgency" of cutting CO2 emissions from transport to fight climate change. And in an open letter to Gordon Brown, the committee's chairman, Tory MP Tim Yeo, urged the Chancellor to increase environmental and transport taxes, encourage ... |
Search for crops that can survive global warming (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 12-04-2006 at 12:00:24
| Guardian: An unprecedented effort to protect the world's food supplies from the ravages of climate change will be launched today by an international consortium of scientists. The move marks a growing recognition that serious changes in weather patterns are inevitable over the coming decades, and that society must begin to adapt. Some £200m a year will be poured into the research by governments across the world to help agricultural experts develop crops that can withstand heat and drought, find ... |
US House to Vote on Offshore Drilling Bill (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 12-04-2006 at 12:00:24
| Reuters: Republican leaders in the US House of Representatives, who will yield to a Democratic majority in January, on Friday agreed to allow a vote on a limited offshore oil and natural gas drilling bill, which would open 8.3 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico off Florida. House Majority Leader John Boehner decided to allow the vote on the limited drilling bill passed by the Senate. The move ends months of jockeying by House Republicans who had tried to convince their Senate colleagues to ... |
Australia Should End Controls on Uranium Mining, Report Says (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 12-04-2006 at 12:00:25
| Bloomberg: Australia, holder of the world's biggest known uranium reserves, should ease restrictions on the exploration and mining of the nuclear fuel, a parliamentary committee recommended. State government mining bans ``are illogical, inconsistent and anti-competitive,'' federal lawmaker Geoff Prosser, chairman of the House of Representatives' resources committee, said in a 700-page report released today in Canberra. Easing restrictions will lift exports and help combat global warming, he ... |
Canada Liberal Leader Says He Won't Kill Oil Industry (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 12-04-2006 at 12:00:25
| Reuters: The new leader of Canada's opposition Liberal party, who wants to cut emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, said his plans to improve the environment would not kill the booming oil industry. Stephane Dion won a leadership convention Saturday on the back of a promise to boost environmental sustainability and to ensure Canada sticks to the Kyoto protocol on climate change, which calls for deep cuts in Canadian emissions. This is not a popular idea in the ... |
Philippines: Captive to 'extreme weather events' (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 12-04-2006 at 12:00:25
| ABS-CBN: I AM old enough to remember when typhoons that hit the country toward the end of the year rarely ever made landfall in Luzon. It was Mindanao that used to bear the brunt of year-end weather disturbances. The explanation then, if memory serves, was that as the temperature began to drop sometime in October or November the cold front from northern Asia prevented tropical cyclones from going beyond the latitudes of the central Philippines. Of course, that was when the so-called ... |
United States: Meeting greenhouse gas limit might be tricky (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 12-04-2006 at 12:00:25
| Sacramento Bee: As California carries out a new mandate to cut global warming pollution, its progress will be measured against its greenhouse gas output in 1990 -- the target point the state must reach by 2020. That may sound simple enough. But, like California itself, figures for that benchmark year rest on ever-shifting ground. Over the past decade, five state reports attempting to quantify 1990 emissions give five different numbers -- ranging from 425 million metric tons to 468 million ... |
Australia: Parliamentary report encourages Govt to remove nuclear impediments (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 12-04-2006 at 12:00:25
| Australian Broadcasting Corporation: MARK COLVIN: Last month Ziggy Switkowski said Australia could have 25 reactors within 50 years. Today a Federal Parliamentary Committee says Australia should become the world's biggest uranium exporter. The bipartisan committee released a report urging state and federal government to remove all impediments to Australia's nuclear industry. The report focussed on state governments in Queensland and Western Australia, where there are significant uranium deposits, but a ban ... |
Protecting Penguins Could Force Bush to Move on Climate Change (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 12-04-2006 at 12:00:25
| AlterNet: Though there are no wild penguins in North America, an environmental group is asking the US government to consider several species endangered -- a move that could help activists compel the government to act against global warming. On Tuesday, the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) petitioned the US Fish and Wildlife Service to classify twelve kinds of penguins as "endangered" or "threatened." The Center says the change could create legal leverage against ... |
Australia: Researchers target carbon capture (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 12-04-2006 at 12:00:25
| Australian Broadcasting Corporation: Researchers at the University of Newcastle in New South Wales are developing a new technology that concentrates carbon emissions to make them more easy to capture. The program is jointly funded by the University and the Newcastle Port Corporation. Associate Professor Behdad Moghtaderi says similar technology already exists in other industries, and local researchers hope to adapt it for use in the coal industry. He says the new technology could play an important role in ... |
Ski resorts sweat in warm weather (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 12-04-2006 at 12:00:25
| BBC: European ski resorts are hoping for sudden snowfalls to rescue the start to their season after an unusually warm autumn left slopes bereft of snow. Some resorts have delayed their openings, while early season World Cup ski races have been cancelled. While the peaks of many mountains have finally been dusted in white, lower runs are still green because it has been too warm to make artificial snow. Tourist workers, however, say they are still optimistic of a white ... |
Tokyo joins cities group to tackle climate change (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 12-04-2006 at 12:00:25
| inthenews.co.uk: Tokyo has joined other major cities around the world in pledging to reduce carbon emissions linked to climate change. The Japanese capital is the latest member to join the Large Cities Climate Leadership Group (LCCLG), a body chaired by London mayor Ken Livingstone. Members of the group contribute over three quarters of all greenhouse gas emissions in the world. After Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara and Mr Livingstone penned a partnership deal earlier this year on ... |
United Kingdom: Transport lobby group backs road pricing call (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 12-04-2006 at 12:00:25
| Scotsman: TRANSPORT lobby group TRANSform Scotland has welcomed the findings of the Eddington Review on transport and the economy. It comes after the review of UK transport policy warned that toll charges on trunk roads and in cities were "inevitable" and put a high-speed rail link from London to Edinburgh and Glasgow on hold. The review by former British Airways chief Sir Rod Eddington said that charging motorists to drive could generate £28 billion for public transport and ... |
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