Category: Archive

Harmless chemicals are poisonous in combination

admin /8 September, 2007

According to New Scientist, (01/09/2007, p.46), Earl Gray, an ecotoxicologist at the reproductive toxicology division of the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory (HEERL) in Research Triangle, North Carolina, and his team while exposing pregnant rats to vinclozolin and procymidone – in order to study the impact of the chemicals to the reproductive capacity – saw no effect when they exposed the animals to the compounds individually, however, when they combined the two, half of the males were born with hypospadia – a phenomenon called by Gray as "the new math – zero plus zero equals something".

Why it’s harder to enrol to vot

admin /8 September, 2007

Gary Nairn gets the facts on electoral reform Posted on the campaign blog , April 13th, 2007 It’s hard to see who wins from the changes to the Electoral Act, which effectively make it harder to vote. Surely a democracy is strengthened by the removal of obstacles that bar access to the ballot box. That’s Continue Reading →

WA outlines plan to surrender wood heaters

admin /8 September, 2007

Ongoing community education, incentives for heating replacement or wood heater surrender, and legislation to require the removal of non-compliant wood heaters when a house was sold were some measures to mitigate adverse health impacts from wood heater smoke, said Sally Talbot, Parliamentary Secretary representing the Minister for the Environment, in the Western Australian Legislative Council Continue Reading →

Iceland calls of whale hunt

admin /8 September, 2007

Reporting by Roddy Scheer The minke whale is one species that will be spared as Iceland has suspended its whale hunt. Responding more to economic realities than to political pressure, the government of Iceland last week announced that it is calling off its controversial whale hunt due to lack of demand for the product. Environmentalists Continue Reading →

Feds gut state emission controls

admin /8 September, 2007

States would lose their legal powers to make companies disclose data on greenhouse gas emissions and energy under a proposed Federal Government takeover that a constitutional expert said would undermine state-based climate change initiatives, reported The Age (30/8/2007, p. 5). Federal legislation overrides state and territory laws: In the first big step towards creating a Continue Reading →

EU to Fall Just Short of 2010 Renewable Target

admin /5 September, 2007

The European Commission says it’s on track to meet a key renewable energy objective and that 19% of the gross domestic electricity generated in the European Union’s (EU) 27 member states will come from renewable sources by 2010 at current rates of progress, falling just short of the target of 21% set in 2001.

Leaders of the 27 EU countries agreed in March 2007 to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 20% from 1990 levels by the year 2020. They also pledged to increase the total energy from renewable sources to 12.5% by 2010, and then to 20% by 2020.

According to the latest figures, only 6.4% of the EU’s energy is set to come from renewable sources in 2007, and analysts say it will be difficult for the EU to meet its target of getting 12.5% of its energy from renewable sources by 2010.

To date only three countries—Germany, France and Sweden—are set to meet the EU target of 5.75% biofuels used in road transport by 2010.