Monthly Archives: April 2009

A New Grid May Be Needed, But So Are New Habits

By | Published: April 30, 2009
iNational Public Radio: Power companies are planning to beef up the nation’s electricity transmission grid. At the same time, conservationists are trying to reduce the vast amount of power wasted in Americans’ homes and offices. That raises a question: If we simply used energy more efficiently, would we need to spend billions of dollars on [...]
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As California aims at carbon, Canada sees itself in bull’s-eye

By | Published: April 30, 2009
New York Times: Canadian oil exporters fear that a low-carbon fuel standard adopted by California last week threatens to upset a thriving North American trade in petroleum if the regulation spreads throughout the United States. The California Air Resources Board’s (ARB) low-carbon fuel regulation — the first of its kind in the world — [...]
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Canada: Ottawa’s CO2 rules would hurt Alberta: TransAlta

By | Published: April 30, 2009
Reuters: Canadian government plans to impose stringent new climate-change rules targeting coal-fired power plants would hit Alberta hardest and not necessarily cut carbon emissions sharply, TransAlta Corp’s chief executive said on Thursday. TransAlta CEO Steve Snyder, whose company runs Canada’s largest fleet of coal-fired generation plants, he was surprised when Environment Minister Jim Prentice [...]
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Obama opposition to nuclear waste site questioned

By | Published: April 30, 2009
Reuters: Republican lawmakers in the U.S. Senate are demanding the Obama administration provide scientific and legal evidence to support its decision not to store nuclear waste at the long-planned Yucca Mountain depository in Nevada. U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu testified at a congressional hearing in March that Yucca Mountain was no longer an option [...]
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A move to make the insurance industry part of a post-Kyoto approach to climate risks

By | Published: April 30, 2009
iClimateWire: Imperiled people worldwide might be saved financially from rising climate risk by "a little paragraph" in the global framework on climate change being drafted this December in Copenhagen. The blurb could give insurance a formal role in international efforts to confront increasing threats related to drought, flooding and growing storms. That could spark [...]
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Climate Adds Fuel To Asian Wildfire Emissions

By | Published: April 30, 2009
ScienceDaily: In the last decade, Asian farmers have cleared tens of thousands of square miles of forests to accommodate the world’s growing demand for palm oil, an increasingly popular food ingredient. Ancient peatlands have been drained and lush tropical forests have been cut down. As a result, the landscape of equatorial Asia now lies [...]
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Rain Forest Residents, Texaco Face Off In Ecuador

By | Published: April 30, 2009
National Public Radio: A judge is preparing to render a decision in a long-running, multibillion-dollar lawsuit filed by residents of Ecuador’s Amazonian rain forest against Texaco for fouling their land. In the lawsuit, filed in 1993, the plaintiffs charge that, throughout the 1970s and ’80s, the American oil company so polluted a swath of [...]
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Time to act

By | Published: April 30, 2009
iNature: Nature 458, 1077-1078 (30 April 2009) | doi:10.1038/4581077a; Published online 29 April 2009 Without a solid commitment from the world’s leaders, innovative ways to combat climate change are likely to come to nothing. It is not too late yet — but we may be very close. The 500 billion tonnes of carbon [...]
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Ireland: Economy will pay high price as ESB turns to wind power

By | Published: April 30, 2009
iIndependent: THE ESB’s position as the dominant force in the Irish energy sector has come under sustained attack in recent years as a combination of regulation and green policies eat into its core business. Earlier this month the company announced a major jobs initiative, most of it under the banner of green technologies. The [...]
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Bringing efficiency to the infrastructure

By | Published: April 30, 2009
iNew York Times: IN the mid-1990s, the Internet took off because its technological time had come. Years of steady progress in developing more powerful and less expensive computers, Web software and faster communications links finally came together. A similar pattern is emerging today, experts say, for what is being called smart infrastructure – more [...]
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Two-Degree Rise Ever More Likely, Scientists Warn

By | Published: April 30, 2009
Inter Press Service: Climate scientists are calling for a phase-out of fossil fuels because humans are now pumping so much carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere that the ‘2-degree-C climate balloon’ will burst otherwise, new studies show. That 2-degree C climate balloon has a maximum capacity of less than 1,400 gigatonnes of CO2 total [...]
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Japan and China talk up cooperation, sidestep tensions

By | Published: April 30, 2009
iReuters: Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso held out agreements on fighting the financial crisis, global warming and swine flu as evidence of deepening ties with sometime rival China Thursday, sidestepping tensions over the past. At the end of his two-day visit to Beijing, Aso told reporters he and China’s leaders also agreed on seeking [...]
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Scientists reframe carbon target debate

By | Published: April 30, 2009
iBusiness Green: A new scientific study published today in Nature could serve to simplify the debate surrounding carbon targets, by warning that the world can only afford to burn another half a trillion tonnes of carbon if it is to prevent potentially catastrophic increases in average temperatures of more than 2°C. The research calculated [...]
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United Kingdom: Met Office: Warm summer on the way

By | Published: April 30, 2009
iGuardian: Cash-strapped Britons planning to holiday at home this year can expect to enjoy a warm and dry summer after two successive years of wash-outs, the Met Office said today. The forecast for a "barbecue summer" will cheer thousands of people planning to stay in the UK because of recession-hit finances and the weak [...]
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ETS a ‘black hole of uncertainty’

By | Published: April 30, 2009
iAustralian Broadcasting Corporation: As Prime Minister Kevin Rudd sits down with premiers to talk climate change today, the Opposition has released the report it commissioned into Labor’s emissions trading scheme, saying it confirms all of its fears. The Pearce Review is an independent economic study commissioned to help finalise the Coalition’s climate change position. [...]
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