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Arctic Melt Threatens Indigenous People (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 10-04-2007 at 12:00:39
| Reuters: A "grab for the Arctic" will add strains to indigenous hunters' cultures as a record melt opens the icy region to shipping or oil and gas exploration, an Inuit activist said on Tuesday. Sheila Watt-Cloutier, who is among those tipped to win the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize on Oct. 12, said global warming was happening twice as fast in the Arctic as elsewhere on the planet with mainly negative consequences for indigenous peoples. "There is a real sudden grab for ... |
China Solar Power Firm Sees 25 Pct Growth (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 10-04-2007 at 12:00:39
| Reuters: China's top maker of solar water heaters, Himin Solar Energy Group, expects earnings to grow 25 percent to around 2.5 billion yuan (US$333.2 million) this year, but said raw material costs and a lack of government support are denting profits. The solar heaters are the only form of renewable energy competitive in China without any subsidies, and have edged out gas and electric-powered heaters to take around 20 percent of the urban market, Himin's President Huang Ming, told the Reuters ... |
Australia 'falling behind' on renewable energy (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 10-04-2007 at 12:00:39
| Brisbane Times: Australia is falling behind countries like Germany and China, and the US state of California in terms of the proportion of electricity it generates from renewable energy, the Australian Conservation Foundation said yesterday. "Surely we can do so much better with solar power here. It just makes common sense, but we need government leadership," ACF executive director Don Henry said in Brisbane. Mr Henry said the brain drain of renewable energy experts to overseas ... |
Coal is 'Whipping Boy' for Greens - Exec (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 10-04-2007 at 12:00:40
| Reuters: The coal industry has become the "whipping boy" of environmentalists who fail to come up with realistic alternatives for energy, the head of one of America's biggest coal producers said. Brett Harvey, chief executive of Consol Energy Inc also suggested a surcharge on electricity use to help pay for development of technology that makes coal burn off less carbon dioxide and converts the fossil fuel into liquids and gas. "If you're not going to use coal anymore ... |
EU Environment Chief Faces GMO Hot Potato (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 10-04-2007 at 12:00:40
| Reuters: Europe's environment chief faces a showdown this month with his colleagues in the EU's executive Commission over biotech foods and crops, officials say. The root cause is a potato. Since July, the biotech industry has been waiting for the Commission to authorise an application by German chemicals group BASF for a genetically modified (GMO) potato for use in industry rather than as food. The application for a potato, engineered to yield high amounts of starch has ... |
Inuit Culture on the Brink (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 10-04-2007 at 12:00:40
| Utne Reader: In the town of Illulissat on Greenland's western coast, the native Inuit culture is receding with glaciers. The environmental changes brought on by global climate change are having a devastating cultural and psychological effect on the people of Greenland's largest settlement north of the Artic Circle. So reports Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, for the Huffington Post. Commercial fishing and oil exploration were already eroding Inuit cultural practices. Now, says Pope, ... |
Despite Warming, Ships to Shun Northwest Passage (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 10-04-2007 at 12:00:40
| Reuters: While there has been much talk that Arctic trade routes will open up as northern ice melts, shipping companies and experts say using the fabled Northwest Passage through Canada's Arctic archipelago would be too difficult, too dangerous and totally impractical. In theory, the idea is tempting -- the passage cuts the distance between Europe and the Far East to just 7,900 nautical miles (14,630 km), from 12,600 nautical miles through the Panama Canal. Global warming means that ... |
India's States in Favour of More Ethanol Blending (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 10-04-2007 at 12:00:40
| Reuters: India's states have agreed to 10 percent blending of ethanol with petrol from October 2008 and are in favour of allowing sugar mills to directly produce the biofuel from sugarcane juice, the farm minister said. "We have reached general understanding with state governments on 10 percent blending of ethanol for fuel to be made mandatory from October 2008," Sharad Pawar told reporters on Wednesday after meeting state officials. Pawar said there was also agreement that ... |
Brazil: Groups propose measures to end Amazon deforestation (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 10-04-2007 at 12:00:41
| Agence France-Presse: Environmental groups on Wednesday gave the Brazilian government a seven-year plan aimed at putting an end to deforestation in the Amazon rain forest. "It is necessary to immediately halt the deforestation of the Amazon region," said Paulo Adario, a coordinator for Greenpeace, one of nine non-governmental organizations that presented the plan to the government. "The climate of the planet and the natural diversity of the region cannot support the current rates of ... |
United States: How green is Silicon Valley? (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 10-04-2007 at 12:00:42
| Mercury News: An ambitious effort to persuade Silicon Valley companies, governments and residents to dramatically cut greenhouse-gas emissions won't be achieved, the leader of the effort said Tuesday, a sign of the tremendous challenges of fighting global warming. Some members of the group, Sustainable Silicon Valley, have been successful in achieving their own carbon dioxide reduction goals, said Rick Row, its executive director. But the group's goal of persuading the entire valley to cut carbon ... |
Florida Gov. might allow new coal power plants (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 10-04-2007 at 12:00:42
| Reuters: Florida's Gov. Charlie Crist said he does not want new coal power plants built in his state because of their greenhouse gas emissions, but stopped short of ruling out new plants fired by the fuel. "I'm not a coal fan, I'm just not. I really don't want it in Florida," Crist told the Reuters Environment Summit via telephone late on Tuesday. Still, Crist said the state's heavy energy demand means that if coal plants can be proven to be clean "then, perhaps" new ... |
World climate deal faces hurdles for '09 deadline (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 10-04-2007 at 09:00:34
| Reuters: A growing sense of urgency is pushing world leaders to agree a new treaty to fight climate change but the U.S. presidential election might still foil hopes of a deal by the end of 2009, experts told a Reuters summit. Many countries, including the United States and its main industrial allies in the Group of Eight, want a climate pact agreed by the end of 2009 to help slow warming that may bring more floods, droughts, heatwaves and rising seas. "There is a sense of urgency," Yvo ... |
United States: Green Doesn't Mean Sacrificing US Lifestyle - Crist (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 10-04-2007 at 09:00:34
| Reuters: Americans do not need to pare back their lifestyles to help protect the global environment but may need to use sugar or orange peel to power their energy-guzzling Hummers and Cigarette boats, Florida's governor said Tuesday. Gov. Charlie Crist, who in July signed executive orders setting new limits on greenhouse gas emissions in his state, said he did not believe the American lifestyle was incompatible with the need to address climate change and reduce fossil fuel consumption. ... |
Indonesia to plant millions of trees (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 10-04-2007 at 09:00:34
| Radio Australia: Indonesia is aiming to plant around 79 million trees in a day-long event ahead of a global climate change conference it will host in December. The forestry ministry spokesman, Ahmad Fauzi Mas'ud, says the nation's 71,000 villages, plus some 8,000other administrative areas, have each been ordered to plant 1,000 trees on November 28. Mr Mas'ud says says the tree planting is happening in tandem with efforts to reduce illegal logging. Indonesia has been criticised for its ... |
Rickshaws pick up speed in Europe's top cities (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 10-04-2007 at 09:00:35
| Reuters: They once seemed most at home on the bustling streets of Asian cities like Delhi, Bangkok and Kolkata but cycle-powered rickshaws can now be found ferrying folks across town in Berlin, London and Amsterdam. Whether futuristic fibre-glass pods or wooden carriages, rickshaws are a good way to experience a city and help cut down on congestion, as more and more European cities seek to promote environmentally friendly forms of transport. In Berlin, one of the first European cities ... |
Democrats eye key climate summit (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 10-04-2007 at 09:00:35
| BBC: A team of leading US Democrats is planning to send a delegation to a key UN climate conference to rival President Bush's official team. They are so frustrated by Mr Bush's refusal to support US emissions cuts that they will travel to Bali to set out their alternative vision. The UN summit in December is seen as a vital step towards a new global climate deal to replace the Kyoto Protocol. The delegation may be led by House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi. ... |
Power utility wants auctioning of CO2 permits by 2020 (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 10-04-2007 at 09:00:35
| Reuters: Power companies should by 2020 have to buy all their permits to emit carbon dioxide under the European emissions trading scheme rather than receiving them for free, the head of Germany's E.ON AG said on Thursday. Chief Executive Wulf Bernotat said he favored a gradual implementation of full auctioning or selling of carbon allowances from 2013, when the third phase of the scheme is slated to start, to 2020. He also called for a more harmonized way of distributing the permits ... |
United States: A congestion pricing plan can refuel this city's future (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 10-04-2007 at 12:00:45
| New York Daily News: This week, Mayor Bloomberg checked out London's road-pricing plan. Back in New York, he must persuade the City Council and the state Legislature to support his plan, which calls for charging drivers to enter Manhattan south of 86th St. on weekdays between 6 a.m. and 6p.m. The commission created to decide whether congestion pricing will work in New York has finished its first meeting, and it must not ignore the success seen in London. Four years into London's congestion pricing ... |
Canada: Climate dominoes tumble slowly (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 10-04-2007 at 12:00:46
| Toronto Star: The election campaign has entered the final stretch, and the leaders have taken repeated aim at one health-care issue: wait times, those troublesome lags between referral and medical procedure. But beyond the doctors' offices and hospitals, another kind of delay is affecting lives and refusing to budge. And these stubborn lags are not measured in days or months – but decades. Such is the tempo of the environment. It is the other big health-care provider, the source of vital ... |
Poll: Americans Would Pay Extra to Curb Global Warming (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 10-04-2007 at 12:00:48
| Environment News Service: A majority of Americans responding to a new survey of attitudes toward climate change policies support a variety of city and local measures to minimize the effects of global warming. The first results of a new quarterly survey called the GfK Roper/Yale Survey on Environmental Issues found that nearly three quarters of the Americans polled (74 percent) would support local regulations requiring all newly constructed homes to be more energy efficient. They supported this policy even ... |
A Swiftly Melting Planet (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 10-04-2007 at 06:00:25
| New York Times: THE Arctic ice cap melted this summer at a shocking pace, disappearing at a far higher rate than predicted by even the most pessimistic experts in global warming. But we shouldn't be shocked, because scientists have long known that major features of earth's interlinked climate system of air and water can change abruptly. A big reason such change happens is feedback – not the feedback that you'd like to give your boss, but the feedback that creates a vicious circle. This type of ... |
The Fight to Save Congo's Forests (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 10-04-2007 at 06:00:26
| Nation: At the heart of central Africa's great rainforests lies Kisangani, a small city in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) some 1,300 miles from the mouth of the Congo River. The town began as a Belgian trading post, Stanleyville, and was Conrad's model for Kurtz's inner station in Heart of Darkness. No roads connect Kisangani to the rest of the world; over the past two decades they have all collapsed and been retaken by the jungle. Even river navigation is blocked beyond here, as a massive ... |
The Making of a Climate Movement (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 10-04-2007 at 06:00:26
| Nation: Public awareness of the climate crisis has grown enormously in the United States over the past two years, but the government's response lags far behind. Now, however, Washington's sluggish pace is calling forth a surge of activism aimed at persuading the next President and Congress to be far bolder--to advocate and deliver solutions as big as the problem. "The general attitude in the country now and certainly in Congress is, 'Let's take some steps, make some progress and applaud ... |
US Energy official says US will regulate carbon emissions, but unclear how or when (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 10-04-2007 at 06:00:26
| Associated Press: The United States is moving toward the regulation of carbon emissions, a U.S. energy official said Thursday, even though the Bush administration adheres to a voluntary approach to controlling the primary gas blamed for climate change. "There will be carbon regulation of some sort," said Dan Arvizu, director of the National Renewable Energy Lab, speaking a week after he briefed U.S. President George W. Bush's global warming conference in Washington of major carbon-emitting ... |
Africa warned of looming flood threat (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 10-04-2007 at 06:00:26
| Business Daily Africa: Africa should prepare for a recurrence of severe floods that have killed dozens of people in the recent past, devastated crops and destroyed infrastructure leading to a surge in inflation rates, a new global environmental report warns. The report by a US environment lobby– International Rivers Network–said climate change, coupled with rapid population growth, deforestation and other forms of land degradationwere set to trigger a serious humanitarian crisis in the ... |
Corals May Have Defense Against Global Warming (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 10-04-2007 at 06:00:26
| National Geographic: Ancient corals may have been more adaptable to changing ocean chemistry than previously thought, a new study shows. The findings may offer hope that modern corals can adapt as global warming causes seas to become more acidic. These fossil corals in diverse reef communities adjusted to an acidic environment by altering the way they built their chalky skeletons. Modern hard corals–known as scleractinians–form reefs of thousands of tiny skeletons made from a calcium ... |
Environmental Group Questions Carbon Offsetting (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 10-04-2007 at 06:00:27
| Techworld: The environmental pressure group, FOE (Friends of the Earth), believes carbon offsetting tactics are a smokescreen to avoid real measures to counter climate change. With carbon offset tactics, an organization or an individual compensates for the carbon emissions they are going to make by paying for work which reduces the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by an equivalent amount. However, that carbon removal takes place over time -- twenty years or more with a planted ... |
Everyone to pay for climate change (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 10-04-2007 at 06:00:27
| Reuters: Climate change will likely cost every global citizen something in the years ahead, although the payback will be much greater, policymakers, scientists and officials told a Reuters summit this week. "I think it will be every citizen, (but) that bill may not in the end be as high for the individual as it's often made out to be," said Achim Steiner, head of the U.N. Environment Programme. Not overtly spending now on the fight against climate change would still cost ... |
E.ON takes first step into US renewables market (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 10-04-2007 at 06:00:28
| Reuters: Germany's E.ON (EONG.DE: Quote, Profile, Research), the world's largest utility, is taking its first step into the U.S. market for renewable energy with the takeover of wind farms there for $1.4 billion including debt. With the acquisition of the American division of Ireland's Airtricity, E.ON is buying current and future projects with a total capacity of more than 7,000 megawatts in the United States and Canada, the German company said in a statement on Thursday. "E.ON is ... |
Enel eyes EU backing for CO2 capture, storing plans (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 10-04-2007 at 06:00:28
| Reuters: Enel said on Thursday it hopes to win the European Commission's backing for projects to capture and bury heat-trapping carbon dioxide as it aims to reduce the environmental impact of its plants. Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) involves capturing CO2, widely believed to contribute to global warming, and burying it deep underground. CCS is still at the demonstration phase, with possible problems including gas leakage. Italy's biggest utility said it presented on Wednesday ... |
Biofuel Bandwagon Slows as Feedstock Prices Surge (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 10-04-2007 at 09:00:27
| Reuters: The biofuels bandwagon may be running out of gas with soaring costs for feedstocks like wheat and palm oil prompting producers to shelve planned plants and cut output at existing facilities. "There are lots of plans (for new plants) now but whether these are going to materialise we simply don't know," Robert Vierhout, Secretary General of the European Bioethanol Fuel Association, told a conference this week. "In the present circumstances of very high raw ... |
Australia: Climate inaction will hit output (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 10-04-2007 at 09:00:27
| Australian: SOME of Australia's biggest greenhouse polluting industries, such as coal, iron and steel, and agriculture, could see major cuts to their output by 2050 if no action is taken to contain global warming. The findings, from the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics, show that Australia's farming productivity is likely to be 10 per cent lower, iron and steel output 6 per cent lower, and coking and thermal coal output almost 8 per cent and 5 per cent lower respectively ... |
EPA on Track to Act on Calif Emissions Waiver (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 10-04-2007 at 09:00:27
| Reuters: The Environmental Protection Agency is on track to decide by year's end whether to let California set its own stricter vehicle emissions standards to fight global warming, but will not meet the state's demand for a decision this month, EPA's chief said on Wednesday. "We're on track to meet the commitment to make a decision by the end of the year on the California petition," EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson said in a telephone interview to this week's Reuters Global Environment ... |
Australia: Farmers face dramatic climate change woes (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 10-04-2007 at 09:00:27
| Herald Sun: The country's leading agricultural forecaster has for the first time revealed the possible impact of climate change on Australia's farm sector. According to the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics, dairy, rice, cotton and horticulture will suffer significant declines in the next few decades because of rising temperatures and reduced rainfall. In the Murray Darling Basin, a 10 per cent decline in irrigation water would cause: A 0.6 PER CENT decline ... |
Texas-Sized Sorghum to Fuel Future Ethanol Output (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 10-04-2007 at 09:00:27
| Reuters: At 6-feet-6, Richard Hamilton is taller than the average man, but the president and CEO of energy crop company Ceres, Inc. feels tiny next to the massive grain-free sorghum crops his company has helped engineer. Grain yield is not the goal with these crops. Scientists at Ceres and the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station (TAES) at Texas A&M University developed this sorghum to grow up to 20 feet tall and yield a massive amount of plant matter that the next generation of ethanol ... |
Australia: Drought future warning (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 10-04-2007 at 09:00:27
| Advertiser: THE failure of the cyclical spring rains southern Australian farmers rely on is another warning of what a changing climate will mean, CSIRO research has shown. Speaking at the Greenhouse 2007 conference in Sydney, CSIRO principal research scientist Dr Wenju Cai said there was "no longer any doubt" that climate change influenced seasonal rainfall patterns. "What we are seeing is really a taste of what we are going to see in the future," he said. ... |
Global carriers hit EU over emissions (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 10-04-2007 at 09:00:27
| Australian: INTERNATIONAL airlines have slammed the European Union for failing to accept a global approach to emissions trading after the International Civil Aviation Organisation last week rejected Europe's stance. Australia last week backed a resolution by the organisation rejecting European moves to place carbon quotas on airlines and include them in unilaterally imposed emissions trading schemes. The EU is planning to unilaterally impose quotas on all flights entering or leaving its ... |
Australia's farmers: Dried up, washed out, fed up (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 10-04-2007 at 09:00:28
| Economist: WHEN rains fell in May after 11 dry years in a row, Bruce Crafter borrowed from his bank to sow a wheat crop on the family farm where he grew up in western Victoria. Like thousands of Australian farmers who have watched their livelihoods wither away under the country's worst drought in a century, Mr Crafter was encouraged by forecasts of follow-up spring rains in September. He sold one-third of his expected bumper crop on the futures market. But the rains never arrived, and the crops that ... |
Guyana: Wai Wai choose conservation economy for traditional Amazon territory (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 10-04-2007 at 09:00:30
| Physorg.com: Three years after gaining formal title to their traditional territory in the northern Amazon, the Wai Wai people of Guyana have achieved another milestone when the region was declared the nation's first Community Owned Conservation Area. Under regulations passed by the Guyana parliament, the Wai Wai community formally designated their land a protected area and adopted a management plan, developed with the support of Conservation International (CI), for the 625,000-hectare ... |
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