More than half an inch of oil covered the sea when Dennis Kelso's boat, piled with a few newly dead birds, nudged up against the side of the Exxon Valdez on Friday, March 24, 1989.

Read full article

NAIROBI— Five hundred were expected but more than 1,000 private and public sector participants from Africa and elsewhere turned out for the second Africa Carbon Forum, all hoping to tap the potential of greenhouse gas emission offset projects on the continent.

Africa accounts for just under two percent of the 2,060-plus registered clean development mechanism (CDM) projects in 63 countries worldwide.

However, the continent has seen a strong g...

Here we go again. With the Obama administration's promise of federal loan guarantees to build two new nuclear power plants at a cost of $8.3 billion, the radioactive monster is rising from a long dormancy, pumped to life by the lobbyists for nuke designers, nuke contractors, nuke operators and nuke consultants and their generous spending.

Over the last decade, the nuclear industry has spent more than $600 million lobbying the federal government and another $63 million i...

 “Bryant Park has become the beacon of what New York fashion stands for—an industry that’s fearless, tireless and always moving forward.”

That’s what Anna Wintour has to say about the surprising and headlining news that New York Fashion Week will be moving out of its iconic tents in the park after this season. 

A less talked-about, but equally, if not more important, development is that the Mercedes-Benz-pre...

According to the South African authorities, there is not much to worry about. As Blessing Manale, chief director of planning and coordination and information for the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism said last year, "The games will not begin if they are not green. We ackn...

Google is a search engine, an advertising company and now a cellphone maker. But a green energy company? That too, said Bill Weihl, Google’s so-called green energy czar, in an interview with Jeffrey Marlow of The Times on the Green Inc. blog. He said:

Some people might look at that and say, ‘I don’t see any relationship between that and Google’s business.’ And then maybe five years later they’ll say, ‘Whoa, it’s a good...

The world's political leaders, not least President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Gordon Brown, are in a state of severe, almost clinical, denial. While acknowledging that the outcome of the United Nations climate-change conference in Copenhagen fell somewhat short of their demand for a legally binding, enforceable and verifiable global agreement on emissions reductions by developed and developing countries alike, they insist that what has been achieved is a breakthrough and a decisive...

COPENHAGEN — The most tangible outcome of the climate agreement announced here Friday turned out to be cash.

The Copenhagen Accord set no goal for conclusion of a binding international treaty, leaving months, and perhaps years, of additional negotiations before it emerges in any internationally enforceable form.

But money in notable quantities should, in principle, start flowing next year.

The accord was “a b...

Once upon a time it was feared that China and the US, which between them account for more than 40 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions would come to an understanding between themselves and coerce New Delhi to go along. But judging by proceedings so far at the Copenhagen climate change conference, the likely outcome is far worse. It's the rivalry between China and the US that's dominating the conference, scuttling the chances of arriving at a global agreement.

 

If negotiators reach an accord at the climate talks in Copenhagen it will entail profound shifts in energy production, dislocations in how and where people live ,sweeping changes in agriculture and forestry and the creation of complex new markets in global warming pollution credits.
 

So what is all this going to cost?
 

The short answer is trillions of dollars over the next few decades. It is a significant sum but a relatively small fraction of the...

by Abhishek Nayak

The biggest and the most important UN conference kicked off yesterday on an upbeat note with promises by leaders to achieve an agreement that would be adequate to prevent a climate change catastrophe. But day one also saw rifts appear in the G77, the largest bloc consisting of 130 developing countries.

The BASIC bloc- consisting of Brazil, South Africa, India and China- on Sunday pushed forward a proposal together to the G77 hoping to come up with a common declaration...

From the 7th of December to the 18th of December world leaders would gather for a summit in Copenhagen to thrash out an agreement on climate change. They would seek to put numbers and timelines on the table to cut their greenhouse gas emissions to levels that the world can sustain. These cuts would preferably be legally binding, but the prospect of that now looks dim.
 

If an agreement actually materializes it would be one of the defining agreements of this century, as it...

Tap water instead of fancy imported mineral water. Transit passes instead of chauffeured limousines. And absolutely no gift bags filled with key chains, Frisbees and souvenir trinkets.

Welcome to the 15th annual United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15) in Copenhagen, where 16,000 delegates, dignitaries and leaders from around the world will gather to come up with a plan to save the planet starting Monday.

When delegates arrive at the Danis...

No matter how hard you plead and beg, or whatever the latest scientific evidence may suggest, little success can be achieved in combating the threat of catastrophic climate change unless it makes economic sense for both individuals and businesses.

Governments can, as agent of change, induce incentives and disincentives to make existing businesses understand the i...

MAY: GREENHOUSE GAS GROWTH MUST STOP BY 2016

Today the 15th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will open in Copenhagen. By Dec. 18 (or if it runs late, Dec. 19), we will know the outcome.

There is always a certain amount of last minute media coverage about such events, but very little context setting. The fact is Canada and virtually every other nation on Earth signed and ratifie...

World politicians will toss around the best ideas they have to get us out of the climate change mess we're in when they meet at the U.N. Copenhagen summit next week. Many people have suggested novel ways to combat the water pollution, smog, mounds of trash and global warming facing Earth. Here are some of the wackier (or at least, wackier-sounding) solutions ever proposed to solve Earth's problems.

10. Ban Plastic Bags and Light Bulbs

It may sound like a rash de...

1894-95

Attempting to explain the ice ages, Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius theorizes that changes in carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere may alter our climate. "It is unbelievable," Arrhenius notes, "that so trifling a matter has cost me a full year."

1905

The word smog, an amalgam of smoke and fog, is coined in England. It doesn't achieve wide currency until after 1950, when motorized transport becomes common in cities.

Barack Obama

The proportion of Americans who say they believe in global warming has slid 20 points in two years.

Just 51% of Americans now say they believe that the release of carbon dioxide and other gases causes global warming. That's down from a high of 75% who said so in 2001 and down from the 71% who linked CO2 to global warming as recently as 2007, according to a Harris Interactive poll released this week.

The 51% who believe emissions lead to global w...

Perhaps it was when investigators realised that a mortgage had been given to an "M Mouse" that the depth of the banking crisis became apparent. Throwing money that didn't really exist, at cartoon characters that weren't real, meant something horrible was bound to happen. And if the old banking system was more vulnerable than people realised, what other things, built on fantasy foundations, might also be about to collapse?

But while analysis of how the world do...

Confirming yesterday what had already been apparent for some months,Barack Obama and other leaders  yesterday said that time had run out to secure a legally binding climate deal at Copenhagen. They said the 22 remaining days were just too few in number to secure binding emissions targets and overcome the divisions between the developed and developing world. This could be viewed as a realistic assessment. Mr Obama said that we must not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. The Briti...

I join Greenpeace in the "eye of the storm", in the final weeks before the crucial UN climate summit in Copenhagen.

It is the most important opportunity to tackle the greatest threat facing the planet: climate change.

I believe that the convergence of crises that we find ourselves in - food, fuel, poverty, financial and climate - have led to a "perfect storm" to which we can respond in one of two ways.

On...

As the leaders of the world prepare for the critical Copenhagen climate and environment summit in December, Michael Woelk has a message he'd like them to hear. You can't fix what you can't measure. And it won't cost that much to measure carbon emissions down to the factory smokestack. For the entire U.S., Woelk believes a carbon measurement network can be built for $300 million in less than five years. To build a global system? Less than $5 billion.

Considering that th...

Climate diplomacy peaked on Thursday with top leaders from Australia and France meeting Indian officials to reassure them on a host of issues. The end goal: an agreement at the Copenhagen summit next month.

US Secretary of Energy Steven Chu will be in Delhi on Friday for a similar climate discussion.

Rich countries such as the US and Australia have said a climate treaty would only be possible if India and China agree to take voluntary, but binding...

Solar power could be produced cheaply in specially designed optical fibres, according to research publicised by the BBC. The work, published in the journal Angewandte Chemie, makes use of nanometre-scale wires built around optical fibres like bristles. Those wires give the light much more surface area to interact with, leading to higher overall efficiencies.

However, only the ends of the fibres must be exposed - they funnel the light elsewhere for power generation. Inst...

It stares you in the face everywhere. Not just here in the Danish capital of Copenhagen but pretty much in all of Western Europe. The little green tag exhorting you to be a more conscientious consumer is stuck on everything — from airline boarding passes to the receipts handed out at cash tills. No, this green tag is no tangible sticker. But it is in the fine print on invoices and product packaging, it glints in the eyes of salespersons, is printed in bold colours on glossy leaflets han...

Toyota has gone to some extreme lengths to offset the carbon dioxide emissions produced by its Tsutsumi plant in Toyota City, Japan, where it builds the Prius hybrid.

The plant conserves electricity by using solar panels on its roof and reflective solar tubes inside the plant to beam reflected sunlight into rooms. The outside walls are painted with photocatalytic paint to absorb harmful airborne gases, like nitrous oxides and sulfur oxides. Toyota has planted 50,000 tre...

Ewoud de Kok is a fourth year student in econometrics at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) who won a competition to help make the place more planet friendly. After explaining his plan to cut carbon emissions he set about finding a few practical solutions.
 

Half the energy
The UvA’s new computer room features special lighting with LED bulbs, which use half the energy of the ones they replaced. But the other main change is what Ewoud calls ‘Pc pow...

source : Treehugger.com

We’ve got about five years to build a global low-carbon economy before holding global temperatures below the critical 2°C threshold becomes nigh impossible: That’s the word from WWF, in Climate Solutions 2. But the good news is that we still can make the transition, and the money it will bring in will far outweigh that going out:

Past 2014, More and More Direct Market Intervention Required to Control Temps

The report warns that if ...

source : Govtech.com

The IT industry accounts for 2 percent of the world’s carbon footprint — the man-made carbon dioxide emissions that are a contributor to global warming. By now, this statistic from the Environmental Protection Agency is familiar to those who work in IT.

Environmentalists have backed a variety of measures to mitigate the problem. They say the public should drive hybrid cars and switch their lighting fixtures at home to fluorescent bulbs, among other changes.<...

source : http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au

The intense debate about dealing with climate change has mostly taken place between powerful players in the rich world. The battles between coal and oil companies, whose products cause climate change, and environmentalists have largely been fought in rich countries. The United States, European Union and China have driven negotiations on the international stage. Every top-level conversation has been about what's thought to be possible - and often what's convenient - for these strong forces.

source : http://www.independent.co.uk

A frozen lake on a remote island off Canada's northern coast has yielded remarkable insights into how the Arctic climate has changed dramatically over 50 years.

Muddy sediment from the bottom of the lake, some of it 200,000 years old, shows that Baffin Island, one of the most inhospitable places on Earth, has undergone an unprecedented warming over the past half-century. Scientists believe the temperature ri...

The renewable energy industry and carbon markets represent the future of sustainable careers in financial services. Carbon offset pressures are being felt across the Australian market sooner than expected and December’s United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen is looming closer.

Read full article

source : tech.yahoo.com

One of the usual complaints about electric cars is how you handle long road trips. If an electric vehicle has a range of just a couple hundred kilomteres, and then requires eight hours plugged into the wall,.But what if you could charge your car while you were on the road? That's the idea behind Germany's IAV Automotive Engineering, which has patented a system that embeds charging electronics right into the roadway , juicing up cars as they merrily roll along.

The ...

source : mog.com

Since the financial crisis, Iceland has been forced to retreat back from high octane bubble living to nature.

Fortunately, there is a lot of that nature to retreat to.

Read full article

source : eturbonews

African governments, supported by the African Union (AU), are now in the process of drafting harmonized legislation in regard of the climate change presently sweeping the continent and giving Africa a common voice in the international arena of negotiations and compensations expected to come out of the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit in December.

Read full article

Watching his sons kick around a makeshift ball made from tightly bound plastic bags, Ugandan handyman Jackson Mawa marvels at the way business has improved since he bought a solar-powered mobile phone.

"I am self-employed. Sometimes people call me and they find my (cell) phone is off. I have been having that problem a lot due to battery charging. So when (Uganda Telecom) brought out the solar phones, since I got it, that very day, I have never had any problem with my phone,"...

sourced from reuters

It sounds almost too good to be true: new technology that would be better than carbon neutral — it would be carbon negative, taking more climate-warming carbon dioxide out of the air than factories and vehicles put in. It’s called air capture technology.

This technology is expected to help some of the world’s poorest countries capitalize on any global carbon market, which would put a price on carbon emissions and let rich companies that spew lots of ca...

source : advance materials

Scientists are closer to making eco-friendly 'magnetic' fridges and air conditioning systems a reality.Magnetic refrigeration technology could provide a 'green' alternative to traditional energy-guzzling gas-compression fridges and air conditioners.They would use 20 to 30 percent less energy than the most efficient systems currently available, nor rely on ozone-depleting chemicals or greenhouse gases.

...