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UN Security Council Urged to Punish CO2 Offenders |
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By Haider Rizvi
Inter Press News
Tuesday 12 February 2008
United Nations - The world's small island nations are calling for the U.N.
Security Council to help protect their lands and resources by using its authority
to demand reductions of carbon dioxide emissions, and to penalise those nations
that fail to comply.
"It is the obligation of the Security Council to prevent an aggravation
of the situation," Palau's ambassador Stuart Beck told delegates attending
a two-day General Assembly meeting on climate change that started here Monday.
Describing the devastating impact of changing climates on small islands of
the Pacific region, Beck said many people living along the coastlines are moving
out of their ancestral lands because they have lost their sources of livelihood
due to the rising water levels.
"While we do not have all the answers," said Beck, "we are not
unmindful of the scientific certainty that excessive greenhouse gas emissions
are the cause of this threat to international security and the existence of
our countries."
Speaking on behalf of small island nations, he urged the 15-member Council
to consider imposing mandatory emission caps on all states and use its power
to impose sanctions in order to encourage compliance.
"Larger countries can build dikes, and move to higher ground," he
said. "This is not feasible for the small island states who must simply
stand by and watch their cultures vanish."
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Billionaires Step Up at UN to Target Climate Shifts |
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By Stevenson Swanson
The Chicago Tribune
Tuesday 12 February 2008
Branson, Bloomberg bring ideas for action
to panel's green goals.
New York - Invoking symbols as varied as the Brooklyn Bridge and the Allied
war effort in World War II, two billionaires helped open a United Nations climate
change meeting Monday aimed at promoting global efforts by governments and businesses
to slow the gradual warming of the atmosphere.
Among the ideas proposed was the need for a "war room" to coordinate
actions against warming and replacing New York City's use of hardwoods with
plastics and other materials.
UN officials hope the two-day debate will build on the results of a December
conference in Bali, where nearly 190 nations agreed that by the end of 2009
they would come up with a new plan to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other
gases that scientists say are trapping heat and changing the Earth's climate.
"If the year 2007 was the year when climate change rose to the top of
the global agenda, 2008 is the time we must take concerted action," said
UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon.
Ban said an estimated $500 billion a year in "green" investments
such as alternative fuels is necessary to reduce levels of carbon dioxide in
the atmosphere.
To prevent rising sea levels, drought, species extinctions and other consequences
of rising temperatures, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has
said greenhouse gas emissions should be cut by 25 percent to 40 percent below
1990 levels by 2020.
Richard Branson, the head of Britain's Virgin Group, called for the creation
of a "war room" to coordinate the work of scientists, engineers, civic
groups and government agencies to come up with solutions. He likened the effort
that is needed to slow global warming to the intensive Allied research projects
in World War II that resulted in such innovations as radar, sophisticated code-breaking
techniques and the atomic bomb.
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Waxman Subpoenas EPA on California Waiver |
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By Erica Werner
The Associated Press
Friday 08 February 2008
Washington
- A House committee chairman subpoenaed the Environmental Protection
Agency on Friday seeking documents reviewed by the agency's
administrator before he blocked a California tailpipe emissions law.
More
than 16 other states were also blocked from implementing the
first-in-the-nation greenhouse gas emissions controls when the EPA
rejected California's waiver request in December.
In
the wake of the controversial decision by EPA Administrator Stephen L.
Johnson there have been indications he overruled EPA staff who
recommended granting the waiver. Congressional investigators have
released excerpts of an internal presentation made to Johnson that said
California had a compelling need for the waiver, and that EPA was
likely to lose in court if sued over denying it.
The
EPA has refused to release that presentation publicly although
congressional aides have reviewed it in private with agency staff
present. The subpoena issued Friday by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.,
seeks an unredacted version of the presentation. Waxman chairs the
House Government Reform and Oversight Committee.
EPA
spokesman Jonathan Shradar contended congressional investigators had
already seen the documents in question and said the agency had concerns
about releasing them publicly because of ongoing litigation. California
and other states have sued EPA over its decision to deny the waiver.
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Studies Say Clearing Land for Biofuels Will Aid Warming |
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By Juliet Eilperin
The Washington Post
Friday 08 February 2008
Clearing
land to produce biofuels such as ethanol will do more to exacerbate
global warming than using gasoline or other fossil fuels, two
scientific studies show.
The
independent analyses, which will be published today in the journal
Science, could force policymakers in the United States and Europe to
reevaluate incentives they have adopted to spur production of
ethanol-based fuels. President Bush and many members of Congress have
touted expanding biofuel use as an integral element of the nation's
battle against climate change, but these studies suggest that this
strategy will damage the planet rather than help protect it.
One
study - written by a group of researchers from Princeton University,
Woods Hole Research Center and Iowa State University along with an
agriculture consultant - concluded that over 30 years, use of
traditional corn-based ethanol would produce twice as much greenhouse
gas emissions as regular gasoline. Another analysis, written by a
Nature Conservancy scientist along with University of Minnesota
researchers, found that converting rainforests, peatlands, savannas or
grasslands in Southeast Asia and Latin America to produce biofuels will
increase global warming pollution for decades, if not centuries.
Tim
Searchinger, who conducts research at Princeton and the D.C-based
German Marshall Fund of the United States, said the research he and his
colleagues did is the first to reveal the hidden environmental cost of
producing biofuels.
"The
land we're likely to plow up is the land that we've had taking up
carbon for decades," said Searchinger, the lead author. Estimating that
it would take 167 years before biofuel would stop contributing to
climate change, he added, "We can't get to a result, no matter how
heroically we make assumptions on behalf of corn ethanol, where it will
actually generate greenhouse-gas benefits."
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To Save a Forest: World Eyes Grand Plan of Payoffs to Preserve Trees, Protect Climate |
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By Michael Casey
The Associated Press
Monday 04 February 2008
EDITOR'S NOTE - December's Bali climate
talks cleared the way for a last-ditch effort to preserve the world's rain forests,
by turning trees into tradable securities. This is the last in a three-part
series on the tropics' disappearing forests.
Bali, Indonesia - For decades, a flood of aid and an army of conservationists
couldn't save Indonesia's rain forests from illegal loggers, land-hungry peasants
and the spread of giant plantations. Now the world is looking at a simpler approach:
up-front cash.
Whether it was arming forest police or backing schemes to certify legal logs,
no tactic could silence the chain saws or douse the intentional fires that each
day destroy 20 more square miles (50 more square kilometers) of Indonesia's
rain forests, and an estimated 110 square miles (285 square kilometers) elsewhere
in the world's tropics.
The problem was pure economics: Neither local authorities nor the rural poor,
in Indonesia and elsewhere, have a material incentive to keep their forests
intact.
That could now change because of a decision at December's U.N. climate conference
in Bali, Indonesia, to negotiate a deal, as part of the next international climate
agreement, under which countries would be rewarded for reducing their galloping
rates of deforestation, a big contributor to global warming.
The cash might come directly from a fund financed by richer northern nations,
or through "carbon credits" granted per unit of forest saved. The
credits could be traded on the world carbon market, where a northern industry
can buy such allowances to help meet its own required reductions in emissions
of global-warming gases.
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Scientists Identify "Tipping Points" of Climate Change |
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By Steve Connor
The Independent UK
Tuesday 05 February 2008
Nine ways in which the Earth could be tipped into a potentially dangerous state
that could last for many centuries have been identified by scientists investigating
how quickly global warming could run out of control.
A major international investigation by dozens of leading climate scientists
has found that the "tipping points" for all nine scenarios -
such as the melting of the Arctic sea ice or the disappearance of the Amazon
rainforest - could occur within the next 100 years.
The scientists warn that climate change is likely to result in sudden and dramatic
changes to some of the major geophysical elements of the Earth if global average
temperatures continue to rise as a result of the predicted increase in emissions
of man-made greenhouse gases.
Most and probably all of the nine scenarios are likely to be irreversible on
a human timescale once they pass a certain threshold of change, and the widespread
effects of the transition to the new state will be felt for generations to come,
the scientists said.
"Society may be lulled into a false sense of security by smooth projections
of global change. Our synthesis of present knowledge suggests that a variety
of tipping elements could reach their critical point within this century under
anthropogenic [man-made] climate change," they report in the journal Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences.
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Banks to Weigh CO2 Emissions in Power Lending |
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By Lisa Lee
Reuters
Monday 04 February 2008
New
York - Three Wall Street banks said on Monday they will set
environmental standards that factor in risks posed by carbon emissions
when lending to power companies that seek to build coal-fired power
plants.
Citigroup
Inc, JP Morgan Chase & Co and Morgan Stanley will form "The Carbon
Principles," climate change guidelines for advisors and lenders to
power companies in the United States.
The
standards do not preclude bank financing for building traditional
coal-burning power plants, said Jeffrey Holzschuh, vice chairman at
Morgan Stanley. Instead, they set up a more rigorous evaluation
process, such as looking at the costs of storing carbon emissions and
other risk factors.
The principles are intended to be an industry-wide framework with more financial institutions jumping on board.
"I think there will be several other banks that will join in over the next few weeks," Holzschuh told Reuters.
Coal
generates about half of U.S. electricity, but is the dirtiest emitter
of the main greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Traditional coal-fired
plants have come under pressure from states and environmentalists,
while Congress considers several bills that would cap greenhouse gas
emissions. Presidential candidates also say they favor regulating the
gases.
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A Green Energy Industry Takes Root in California |
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By Matt Richtel and John Markoff
The New York Times
Friday 01 February 2008
San Francisco - The sun is starting to grow jobs.
While
interest in alternative energy is climbing across the United States,
solar power especially is rising in California, the product of billions
of dollars in investment and mountains of enthusiasm.
In
recent months, the industry has added several thousand jobs in the
production of solar energy cells and installation of solar panels on
roofs. A spate of investment has also aimed at making solar power more
efficient and less costly than natural gas and coal.
Entrepreneurs,
academics and policy makers say this era's solar industry is different
from what was tried in the 1970s, when Jerry Brown, then the governor
of California, invited derision for envisioning a future fueled by
alternative energy.
They
point to companies like SolarCity, an installer of rooftop solar cells
based in Foster City. Since its founding in 2006, it has grown to 215
workers and $29 million in annual sales. "It is hard to find
installers," said Lyndon Rive, the chief executive. "We're at the stage
where if we continue to grow at this pace, we won't be able to sustain
the growth."
SunPower,
which makes the silicon-based cells that turn sunlight into
electricity, reported 2007 revenue of more than $775 million, more than
triple its 2006 revenue. The company expects sales to top $1 billion
this year. SunPower, based in San Jose, said its stock price grew 251
percent in 2007, faster than any other Silicon Valley company,
including Apple and Google.
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The We Campaign is a project of The Alliance for Climate Protection
-- a nonprofit, nonpartisan effort founded by Nobel laureate and former
Vice President Al Gore. Our ultimate aim is to halt global warming.
Specifically we are educating people in the US and around the world
that the climate crisis is both urgent and solvable.
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