Chinese premier: Will honor climate commitments

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has defended his country's climate commitments at the U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen, saying "we will honor our word with real action."
Wen says China's voluntary targets of reducing its carbon intensity by 40 to 45 percent will require "tremendous efforts."
He spoke after a meeting with President Barack Obama and 19 other world leaders.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091218/ap_on_sc/climate

Zenawi's African Group statement to COP15

Allow me to first of all thank our gracious hosts, the people and government of Denmark for the warm reception we have enjoyed since our arrival and for the excellent facilities put at our disposal. I would like to take this opportunity to thank our overworked and under appreciated experts and ministers who have, through their dedication and hard work, kept the hope of a global treaty on climate change alive.
Global warming is happening. The rise of catastrophic climate change is very real. The science is as clear as it could ever be as to what the causes of such change are. It is no exaggeration to say that this is our best and perhaps our last chance to save our planet from destructive and unpredictable change. This is a test as to whether we as a global community are able to rise over our parochial interests to protect our common destiny.
http://www.africaclimatesolution.org/news.php?id=6133

Copenhagen summit: Fighting for survival

Does the human race deserve to survive? It has been a tempting question to ask this week, as the talks designed to prevent the rise in the planet's temperature developing into a life-threatening fever ground to a standstill over what were – on the face of it – arcane procedural issues. The middle of the final week of the Copenhagen conference was characterised by blame games rather than dialogue, as negotiators engaged in a stale standoff about the rules for writing the first draft of the text to haggle over. By yesterday morning almost all hopes of a deal had been scuppered, but by the afternoon – as ever more leaders arrived – meaningful conversations were once again taking place.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/dec/18/copenhagen-summit-climate-change

Copenhagen - final day live blog

On the final day of the summit world leaders are still trying to thrash out a last minute compromise climate deal, but will it be worth it? The emissions cuts offered so far would still lead to a 3C rise in global temperatures, according to leaked UN analysis.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/dec/18/copenhagen-climate-change-summit-liveblog

Leadership needed

Copenhagen offers the prospect of a robust political deal, endorsed by the world’s leaders and witnessed by the world’s people, that sets out clear targets and a timeline for translating it into law. To be a truly historic achievement, such a deal must do two things. First, it must lay the basis for a global regime and subsequent agreements that limit global temperature rise in accordance with the scientific evidence. Second, it must provide clarity on the mobilization and volume of financial resources to support developing countries to adapt to climate change. The stakes are enormous. Economic growth has been achieved at great environmental and social cost, aggravating inequality and human vulnerability.
http://www.businessdayonline.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6647:leadership-needed&catid=138:commentary&Itemid=358

Copenhagen: World leaders 'face public fury' if agreement proves impossible

World leaders arriving at the Copenhagen climate change summit today and tomorrow face public "fury" if they fail to inject crucial new momentum into the talks, according to climate secretary Ed Miliband.
Talks resumed late last night following many hours of delay as negotiators wrangled over the form a treaty to fight global warming should take. "People will find it extraordinary that this conference is being stalled on points of order," said Miliband. "People will be rightly furious if agreement is not possible."
The row centres on the draft treaty texts the Danish presidency of the summit must produce for leaders to finalise and whether they end the existing Kyoto protocol, signed in 1997. Rich nations want a new treaty to reflect a much-changed world economic order, while poorer nations insist the legal demands Kyoto makes on industrialised polluters must be preserved.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/17/copenhagen-climate-change-ed-miliband

Africa not prepared to accept empty words in Copenhagen: Ethiopian PM

Africa is not prepared to accept empty words and agreements that undermine its fundamental interest, state media reported Wednesday, citing Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.
"Africa loses more than most if there is no agreement on climate change," the official Ethiopian News Agency quoted Meles as saying at the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit.
"We are determined to make sure that in Copenhagen we will have an agreement that all of us, Africa included, are happy with," he declared.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-12/17/content_12658854.htm

Odds against Africa’s united bid for carbon justice

Only a day before the curtains fall on the two-week UN climate talks in Copenhagen, Africa seems certain to come out empty-handed.

Despite a rare show of force and unity in any global negotiations, Africa, together with other developing countries, is at the precipice of seeing her efforts evaporate into thin air.
Over 45,000 delegates have converged in the Danish capital, hoping to strike a new deal to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol which comes to an end in 2012, but so far the talks have been an anti-climax.
Developed countries are doing everything to prematurely end the Kyoto Protocol which requires 37 of them, excluding the US, to cut down on their carbon emissions while sparing the developing nations such a requirement.
http://www.nation.co.ke/News/-/1056/824086/-/vo4cdm/-/

I'm Laughing Not to Cry, Says Brazil's Lula After Failed Last-Minute COP-15 Meeting

I'm laughing to keep from crying," was the reaction of Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva after leaving the meeting with major stakeholders in the carrying out of a climate agreement at the COP-15, the UN Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen.
Asked by reporters what had happened during the meeting he merely responded: "I will not talk about it now."
The so-called COP-15's "rescue operation" was interrupted this Friday, December 18, around 1:40 am local time and the heads of state taking part in the encounter went to their hotels to have a little sleep.
http://www.brazzilmag.com/content/view/11583/1/

CLIMATE CHANGE DOUBTERS ARE DISHONEST SAYS BROWN

GORDON BROWN yesterday branded global warming doubters “dishonest” in a desperate attempt to stop the collapse of climate change talks in Copenhagen.
In a rallying cry to the United Nations summit, the Prime Minister called for “a new alliance for the preservation of our planet”.
But his plea for cooperation appeared to make little impression as world leaders struggled to reach an agreement.

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/146662/Climate-change-doubters-are-dishonest-says-Brown

Efficiency the key to ‘greening’ Kenya

Green energy should be viewed as an economic necessity for Kenya, not an effort to appease Copenhagen.
As long as Kenya remains a net importer of oil with a huge fraction of electricity generation based on fuel, and as long as this imported oil remains expensive, Kenya has an economic incentive to emphasize measures that reduce its oil intake.
This can come about through conversion to non-petroleum energy and through efficiency measures that reduce oil intake.
The lead times for the planned green electricity projects (Geothermal, etc) are said to be long and we are likely to remain incrementally dependent on oil generated electricity for a long time to come.
http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Opinion%20&%20Analysis/-/539548/818944/-/sxgm76z/-/index.html

Despite its challenges, climate change opens a window for economic growth

As leaders from around the world continue their deliberations in Copenhagen, they do so against the background of one of the most profound economic crises of our times.
What we have been experiencing is a fundamental reset of the global economy and the dismantling of an economic model that has been proven to be unsustainable.
What seems incredible to many people is the fact that the intensity of this crisis was not widely foreseen or predicted. ‘Hindsight is indeed a great master’.
http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Opinion%20&%20Analysis/-/539548/824504/-/swwxswz/-/index.html

Forests are part of the solution

Many delegates at the Copenhagen Climate Change conference hope that reforestation, reduced deforestation and forest degradation (popularly known as REDD +) will be incorporated into the agreement that comes out of Copenhagen and help restore, conserve and protect forests of the world.
Forests are important because science informs that almost 17- 20 per cent of greenhouse gases (ghs) especially CO2, come from deforestation and forest degradation.
Delegates hope that they can agree that temperatures should not be allowed to rise by more than 1.5 C.
There seems to be a consensus that forests be part of the solutions to climate change.
But forests are important to us for many other reasons besides carbon.
For example, forests generate essential environmental goods and services such as water, food, fuel, income and medicine.
In Africa, poverty is one of the drivers of deforestation and forest degradation.
http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Opinion%20&%20Analysis/-/539548/823860/-/swxkmiz/-/

Thugs in Copenhagen

One of the reasons some Americans become wary of the United Nations is that it gives a platform to obnoxious bores, several of whom have taken the podium this week at the UN climate-change conference in Copenhagen . Among them was Hugo Chavez , who paraphrased Marx in assigning blame for climate change: "A ghost is stalking the streets of Copenhagen...it's capitalism, capitalism is that ghost." That's from the leader of a country whose economy is based largely on the export of particularly dirty oil. Awkward.
"The destructive model of capitalism is the eradication of life," Chavez also said. Tell that to the millions of Chinese that Mao killed in the fight against capitalism, or the millions more recently pulled out of poverty because of market-liberalizing reforms.
Even worse was the performance of Zimbabwean strongman Robert Mugabe. "When these capitalist gods of carbon burp and belch their dangerous emissions, it's we, the lesser mortals of the developing sphere who gasp and sink and eventually die." Zimbabwe, of course, used to be one of the most developed countries in Africa -- until Mugabe's thugs pillaged the economy and tortured the population.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2009/12/thugs_in_copenhagen.html

Copenhagen: Desperately seeking a strong deal

Will Friday be the day that politicians in Copenhagen save humanity, an Africa delegate asked on Thursday night. At the beginning of the last day of climate-change talks in Copenhagen, analysts at the conference believed a strong deal at this stage was merely pie in the sky and a new Climategate questioned the political will of leaders.On Thursday there were signs of progress, although this was smaller than baby steps. Many delegates were still holding out for a strong political agreement in the absence of a legally binding one, but there were fears that the world could end up with a "greenwashed" deal.
http://www.mg.co.za/article/2009-12-18-copenhagen-desperately-seeking-a-strong-deal

From Nairobi to Copenhagen

African leaders have declared their commitment to address climate change, but they will need the help of key partners: the United States, Europe and China.

A recent meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, represented an important attempt to forge an African continental front ahead of the December climate-change talks in Copenhagen, Denmark. Environment ministers and civil society representatives from over 30 African countries met in the Kenyan capital, with representatives of relevant United Nations agencies, the Chinese government and development partners from the west. Although this was essentially an African meeting, the presence of these non-African participants was crucial, given their economic and humanitarian engagement on the continent.

The Nairobi declaration –acknowledged that climate change is fundamentally different from the conventional environmental agenda – the typical approach to which is to react, then correct. The participants seemed unanimous about the need to enhance Africa’s capacity to adapt; and to strengthen local agricultural innovation systems, particularly in high-potential areas. Ministers agreed that adaptation is not just an option, but a policy imperative. Without such a strategy, Africa will be far worse off.

http://www.chinadialogue.net/author/show/104-Godwin-Nnanna

Nigeria's oil pollution stark example of resource curse: Amnesty

The pollution caused by half a century of oil extraction in Nigeria is one of the world's most disturbing examples of the curse of natural resources, a global rights lobby group said Tuesday.
Amnesty International said environmental pollution in Nigeria's southern oil region, the Niger Delta, had deprived tens of millions of people of their basic rights to safe food, clean water and good health.
In a damning report released Tuesday, Amnesty described the situation in the Niger Delta, home to 31 million people, as a "human rights tragedy" which had fuelled anger and conflict.
"People living in the Niger Delta have to drink, cook with, and wash in polluted water; they eat fish contaminated with oil and other toxins -- if they are lucky enough to still be able to find fish," said the report.
Farmland in the region, one of the most important wetlands on earth, is being destroyed by oil spills.
"After oil spills the air they breathe reeks of oil, gas and other pollutants; they complain of breathing problems... but their concerns are not taken seriously," the report added.
Amnesty blames both the government and multi-national oil giants for the rights abuses in the south of Africa's most populous country.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090630/wl_africa_afp/nigeriaoilenvironmentrights3rd

CLIMATE CHANGE: 'We Have Run Out of Time'

New scientific research suggests that climate change is taking place faster than foreseen in studies considered so far, according to environmental experts at a forum on climate change called by the Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment (GLOBE)."We have run out of time," Ashok Khosla, president of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the world's largest environmental association, told IPS. "Climate change is happening at a swifter speed than we thought so far."
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47215

Green Energy for All by 2030?

While industrialised countries struggle to switch from climate-damaging, carbon-based energy to greener energy sources, much of the world is desperately energy poor, with 1.6 billion people having no access to electricity and 2.4 billion relying on wood and dung for heat and cooking."Over 1.6 million deaths a year are attributed to indoor use of biomass for cooking and heating," Kandeh Yumkella, director-general of the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO), told more than 600 participants from 80 countries at the Vienna Energy Conference this week in Austria's capital city. The conference concluded with a recommendation to create a 20-year plan to end energy poverty by 2030
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47378

New Report Says World Is Warming Faster than Thought

Is climate change beyond our control? Respected geo-researchers have presented a new prognosis for the global increase in temperature. Yesterday's worst-case scenario is becoming today's reality.


Two degrees -- that value has long been the guideline for international climate policy. Were the increase in average global temperatures held below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), then drastic climate change and long-term irreversible damage -- like the melting of Greenland's glaciers -- could still be avoided. Or so it was thought.
But a new study by an international research team has determined that the two-degree goal is no longer achievable.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,631262,00.html

New emissions rules seen driving "green" success

Chrysler is bankrupt, General Motors is on the verge of bankruptcy and the broader auto industry is in a financial mess. But there are winners emerging from the debris of the industry's implosion. Thanks partly to new standards on emissions, those companies are of a familiar hue: green.
Start-up makers of electric car components, lithium batteries, smart technologies and other products designed to help the United States and other developed countries reduce dependence on gasoline are generating a lot of buzz these days.
http://www.reuters.com/article/smallBusinessNews/idUSTRE54Q31L20090528

Africa plans new strategies to combat climate change

Six months before the crucial negotiations on climate in Copenhagen, African Ministers of Environment meeting here Friday attained a major milestone on the road for combating climate change on the continent.The Nairobi Declaration adopted at the just-ended special session of the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN) on climate change highlighted major challenges and opportunities in the negotiations for a more equitable climate regime.
http://www.afriquejet.com/news/africa-news/africa-plans-new-strategies-to-combat-climate-change-2009052928664.html

New Study Shows Climate Change Largely Irreversible

A new scientific study led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reaches a powerful conclusion about the climate change caused by future increases of carbon dioxide: to a large extent, there’s no going back.
The pioneering study, led by NOAA senior scientist Susan Solomon, shows how changes in surface temperature, rainfall, and sea level are largely irreversible for more than 1,000 years after carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are completely stopped. The findings appear during the week of January 26 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2009/20090126_climate.html

Man and His Endangered Home

Man – supposedly the most intelligent creature of a species-rich biosphere – has collectively painted himself into a corner: a problematical future of existential dimensions.
Human activities disrupt the life-critical ecological balances. All human life needs food, which in turn requires earth, water, energy and air. In essence, human beings need the earth, but earth actually does not need us.
http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=8225

How to Prevent Climate Change Summit from Failure

In December 2009, the parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change will meet in Copenhagen. Their aim will be to conclude an agreement that will succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which terminates in 2012. Given the abysmal failure of Kyoto one may be permitted to ask, Will Copenhagen succeed any better? The answer depends on expectations of what can be achieved in this short amount of time; the answer depends on how “success” is defined.
It is easier to define failure. Most climate watchers would define failure to mean lack of an agreement by states to “commit” to limiting their emissions dramatically. I would define failure to mean repeating the mistakes made in Kyoto in 1997. The worst outcome would be for the United States to “commit” to meet quantitative targets and timetables of emission reduction without being sure that these obligations will be approved by Congress.

http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=12318

Another Blow to Ethanol: Biolectricity Is Greener

Once touted as an environmental and economic cure-all, corn ethanol has had a rough year. The collapse in grain and oil prices, preceded by overinvestment in refineries over the past few years, badly hurt ethanol producers. Meanwhile, environmentalists have steadily chipped away at ethanol's green credentials. Far from being better for the planet than gasoline, many scientists now argue that ethanol actually has a sizable carbon footprint, because when farmers in the U.S. use their land to grow corn for fuel rather than food, farmers in the developing world end up cutting down more forests to pick up the slack.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1896813,00.html?xid=newsletter-daily

The guilty secrets of palm oil: Are you unwittingly contributing to the devastation of the rain forests?

It's an invisible ingredient, really, palm oil. You won't find it listed on your margarine, your bread, your biscuits or your KitKat. It's there though, under "vegetable oil". And its impact, 7,000 miles away, is very visible indeed.
The wildlife-rich forests of Indonesia and Malaysia are being chain-sawed to make way for palm-oil plantations. Thirty square miles are felled daily in a burst of habitat destruction that is taking place on a scale and speed almost unimaginable in the West.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/the-guilty-secrets-of-palm-oil-are-you-unwittingly-contributing-to-the-devastation-of-the-rain-forests-1676218.html

Climate Change: Case Closed

The debate on global warming is over.
That's the ultimate message from the report released in Paris today by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the U.N. body of leading researchers charged with analyzing climate science and producing the final word on what is happening — and will happen — to our planet. IPCC scientists now say that it is "very likely" that global warming is chiefly driven by the buildup of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases caused by human activity, and that dangerous levels of warming and sea rise are on the way.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1584992,00.html

Cellulosic ethanol suffers in down economy

The economic downturn that has slowed the ethanol industry also is putting the brakes on the next generation of biofuels.Making ethanol from plant cellulose - such as crop residue and wood chips - could help reduce the nation's use of gasoline.Refiners are required by law next year to start using at least 100 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol. But industry officials acknowledge they will not come close to providing enough of the fuel to meet that target or the targets for subsequent years.
http://bioenergy.checkbiotech.org/news/cellulosic_ethanol_suffers_down_economy

Do the emerging biofuel technologies offer a way around the food-versus-fuel dilemma?

In the struggle to eliminate the possibility of creating a food supply crisis by producing an alternative fuel source from biofuels, scientists and biologists are seeking other sources, so-called ‘second- and third-generation’ biofuels.The development of first-generation biofuels from food sources, such as maize and sunflower oil, was initially hailed as a lower-carbon, renewable fuel source but not long afterwards caused something of a worldwide backlash as the food- versus-fuel debate emerged.
http://bioenergy.checkbiotech.org/news/do_emerging_biofuel_technologies_offer_way_around_food_versus_fuel_dilemma

Turning waste into green energy

A wish for a greener world through sustainable energy prompted Allan Lim, chief executive officer of Alpha Biofuels, to find a viable way to produce energy from community waste.Liquid waste - such as used vegetable oil from restaurants and homes - can be converted into bio-diesel through Alpha's technology and used to power vehicles.
http://bioenergy.checkbiotech.org/news/turning_waste_green_energy

Novel Technology Turns Garbage into Ethanol

Imagine using a dump site to produce a fuel resource. Due to a novel technology developed by a company called BlueFire Ethanol, the cellulosic ethanol within municipal and other waste products could be transformed into an alternative fuel resource. The company has patented a process dubbed “Arkenol” that currently stands as the sole viable cellulose-to-ethanol technique. According to BlueFire, production could be implemented with ethanol coming from wood wastes, urban trash (post-sorted municipal solid waste), rice and wheat straws, and other agricultural residues.
http://bioenergy.checkbiotech.org/news/novel_technology_turns_garbage_ethanol

Industry Ignored Its Scientists on Climate

For more than a decade the Global Climate Coalition, a group representing industries with profits tied to fossil fuels, led an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign against the idea that emissions of heat-trapping gases could lead to global warming.
“The role of greenhouse gases in climate change is not well understood,” the coalition said in a scientific “backgrounder” provided to lawmakers and journalists through the early 1990s, adding that “scientists differ” on the issue.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/science/earth/24deny.html?_r=1&em

Clean coal is future for energy supplies

Any new coal-fired power stations built in Britain will have to be fitted with cutting-edge technology to capture their carbon emissions, the Government announced yesterday in a revolution in energy policy.
The announcement, by the Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband, outlined the first practical programme in the world to deploy carbon capture and storage, or CCS – the technological "fix" on which the world's chances of fighting climate change may come to depend.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/clean-coal-is-future-for-energy-supplies-1673412.html

SOUTHERN AFRICA: Climate Change to Shrink Agricultural Production by Half

Environmental researchers predict Southern Africa will be hit heavily by climate change over the next 70 years. Agricultural production is projected to be halved - a development that will threaten the livelihoods of farmers in a region where 70 percent of the population are smallholder farmers."We will be seriously affected by climate change in Southern Africa. Agriculture and biodiversity will experience a particularly negative impact," Dr Constansia Musvoto, researcher at South Africa’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), told members of the Southern African Confederation of Agricultural Unions (SACAU) at the organisation’s policy conference in Durban on Apr. 15 and 16.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46582

SENEGAL: Can "green charcoal" help save the trees?

An environmental NGO in northern Senegal is about to go to market with "green charcoal" – a household fuel produced from agricultural waste materials to replace wood and charcoal in cooking stoves.
Given that Senegal's trees are disappearing, finding viable alternatives is a must, a Ministry of Energy official says. At least half of Senegal's 13 million people rely on wood and charcoal for household fuel, while 40 percent relying on petrol products like butane gas, the ministry says.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/f7f65f55ddbf83ae5c5f151e122fe86a.htm

Climate change will overload humanitarian system, warns Oxfam

Emergency organisations could be overwhelmed within seven years by the rising number of people in poor countries affected by floods, droughts, heatwaves, wild fires, storms, landslides and other climate hazards.
Analysis by Oxfam International of the 6,500 climate-related disasters recorded since 1980 show that the numbers of people affected by extreme weather events, many of which are linked to climate change, has doubled in just 30 years and is expected to increase a further 54% to more than 375 million people a year on average by 2015. The figure does not include people hit by other disasters such as wars, earthquakes and volcanoes.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/21/climate-change-natural-disasters

A movable border

ONCE frontiers were changed by armies. Now the job is done by global warming. Italy and Switzerland are preparing to make—or rather to recognise—alterations to the border that runs through the Monte Rosa massif of the Alps. Despite what romantically minded locals may say, the name of the massif has nothing to with the pink blush its peaks acquire at sunset. It comes from a dialect word meaning glacier.
http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13496212

Going green: Algae viewed seen promising input for alternative fuels

As director of the National Algae Association, he is a leading advocate of curbing U.S. dependence on oil by harnessing the power of tiny, green waterborne plants known to most as pond scum.Though it may sound far-fetched, the idea has gained momentum in recent years.After decades of research, algae now is viewed as one of the most promising inputs for alternative fuels like biodiesel, as well as a potential way to capture carbon emissions from polluting factories.“No one has really looked at algae as a business opportunity until recently,” said Cohen, who runs the association from a home office in The Woodlands.
http://bioenergy.checkbiotech.org/news/going_green_algae_viewed_seen_promising_input_alternative_fuels

West Africa faces 'megadroughts'

Severe droughts lasting centuries have happened often in West Africa's recent history, and another one is almost inevitable, researchers say.
Analysis of sediments in a Ghanaian lake shows the last of these "megadroughts" ended 250 years ago.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8003060.stm

The World's Cleanest Countries

The declining health of Mother Earth has drawn growing attention over the last two decades, with countries coming together to fight a range of environmental threats, from declining fishing stocks to global warming.
Witness the Kyoto Protocol, the first widely adopted set of environmental protection guidelines, which emerged during the 1990s and took effect in 2005. Kyoto led to the development of the first large-scale emissions trading market, Europe's Greenhouse Gas Emission Trading Scheme, which puts caps on carbon dioxide pollution. A similar carbon market, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, began operating at the start of this year in 10 Eastern U.S. states.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/194082

WEST AFRICA: Parliamentarians take on climate change

Some of the 50 parliamentarians from across West Africa attending a conference on climate change, and food and water security held in Dakar on 25 and 26 March, looked uncomfortable when presented with a picture of a banana with a watermelon-coloured peel and an elephant with a cabbage head. “This is what you think genetically modified organisms (GMO) look like, right?” asked the plant breeding expert, Marcel Galiba. “I want you to reconsider,” he challenged the lawmakers.
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=83659

Study Finds a Pattern of Severe Droughts in Africa

For at least 3,000 years, a regular drumbeat of potent droughts, far longer and more severe than any experienced recently, have seared a belt of sub-Saharan Africa that is now home to tens of millions of the world’s poorest people, climate researchers reported in a new study.
That sobering finding, published in the April 17th issue of Science, emerged from the first study of year-by-year climate conditions in the region over the millenniums, based on layered mud and dead trees in a crater lake in Ghana. Although the evidence was drawn from a single water body, Lake Bosumtwi, the researchers said there was evidence that the drought patterns etched in the lakebed extended across a broad swath of West Africa.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/science/earth/17drought.html?ref=science

‘‘Climate Change Does Not Wait For Recessions’’

Lack of money and technical know-how makes it difficult for poor farmers to participate in the Kyoto Protocol’s carbon trading mechanism aimed at reversing global warming. Meanwhile, the global economic crisis may further undermine investment in carbon trade in African countries.The Kyoto Protocol, signed in 1997, allows for carbon trade which involves industrialised countries lowering their greenhouse gas emissions by financing emission reduction projects in developing countries where investment is cheaper. This is called the clean development mechanism (CDM).
http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=45957

Third-World Stove Soot Is Target in Climate Fight

“It’s hard to believe that this is what’s melting the glaciers,” said Dr. Veerabhadran Ramanathan, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, as he weaved through a warren of mud brick huts, each containing a mud cookstove pouring soot into the atmosphere.
As women in ragged saris of a thousand hues bake bread and stew lentils in the early evening over fires fueled by twigs and dung, children cough from the dense smoke that fills their homes. Black grime coats the undersides of thatched roofs. At dawn, a brown cloud stretches over the landscape like a diaphanous dirty blanket.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/science/earth/16degrees.html?_r=2&ref=world

Carbon trading won't stop climate change

ONE day renewable energy looks like a sunrise industry, the next, tumbleweeds are blowing around a setting solar panel. What has changed? The price of emitting carbon dioxide.
In 2005 the European Union created the world's first proper carbon market, the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), which compels highly polluting industries to buy permits to emit CO2. The number of permits is limited, so the idea is that supply and demand set a price that encourages the development of a low-carbon economy. A rising price with no wild fluctuations sends an economic signal to invest in clean energy. But it's not working.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227046.200-carbon-trading-wont-stop-climate-change.html

CLIMATE CHANGE: Going Beyond the Carbon Market

With an incisive report in hand about what awaits Latin America and the Caribbean in the future if action is not taken to fight climate change, economist John Nash defends the role of the World Bank and underscores the need to expand the so-called "clean development mechanism".Nash, the World Bank's lead economist for the region, sets out a dramatic scenario for what lies ahead if no agreement is reached to replace the Kyoto Protocol on climate change - a treaty that has been in force since 2005 and expires in 2012. A new treaty is the goal of the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, a 10-day event to take place in December in Copenhagen.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46363

ICT industry offeredacommon aproach to reporting greenhouse gas emission

Standardized methodologies for calculating the impact of information and communication technologies (ICT) in terms of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have been proposed by an ITU Focus Group meeting in Hiroshima, Japan.
The ITU-T Focus Group on ICTs and Climate Change, a global group comprising of some of the world’s leading ICT players, has developed a method for calculating two elements:

• Energy usage and carbon impact arising from ICT lifecycles
• Decrease in GHG emissions that can be achieved with ICTs, such as substituting ICT services and devices for intensive fossil-fuelled activities for travel and transport and by replacing atoms with bits (buying an MP3 file instead of a CD), also known as "dematerialization".
  http://www.itu.int/newsroom/press_releases/2009/09.html
  
  

The green issue

It seems a poisonous nut may be an effective way to reduce the aviation industry’s enormous carbon footprint. The Jatropha plant, as it is officially known, is one of several substances that can be used to create new carbon reducing biofuels suitable for use in aircraft. At present, the aviation industry produces 670 million tonnes of CO2 per year, 2% of the world’s total manmade carbon emissions.
http://bioenergy.checkbiotech.org/news/green_issue

Future Oil

The latest crop of biofuel pioneers are looking past corn and french fry grease to microscopic organisms which they hope to coax into producing fuels to power planes, trains, and automobiles. At first, biofuel experts focused their attention on ethanol from the sugars in corn kernels; next, heads turned to second generation biofuels, such as ethanol from the cellulose in non-food plant parts. Now the next, or third, generation is here.
http://bioenergy.checkbiotech.org/news/future_oil

10 Next Generation Green Technologies

Last year, renewable energy technologies like wind and solar were the fastest growing new sources of electricity in the U.S. — and though the recession has slowed down expansion, green power is still set to take off under President Barack Obama. But if America is ever going to truly run on renewable energy — less than 12% of U.S. electricity currently comes from alternatives sources, and most of that from older types like nuclear and hydro — we'll need to embrace next-generation technologies.
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1874933_1874925,00.html?xid=newsletter-daily

How Green Is My Orange?

How much does your morning glass of orange juice contribute to global warming?
PepsiCo, which owns the Tropicana brand, decided to try to answer that question. It figured that as public concern grows about the fate of the planet, companies will find themselves under pressure to perform such calculations.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/business/22pepsi.html?_r=1&ref=earth