Category: Archive

Archived material from historical editions of The Generator

Exxon Shareholders demand climate action

admin /14 June, 2007

Resolution Targeting Both Products and Operations Draws Unprecedented Vote

WASHINGTON (May 30, 2007) – In a startling rebuke to company management, an unprecedented number of ExxonMobil shareholders today voted in favor of a resolution that calls on the company to set global warming emission targets for both its products and its operations. Thirty-one percent of those voting at the annual shareholder meeting in Dallas said it was time for the company to start addressing the business and environmental challenge. 
 
“When nearly one-third of shareholders vote to tell management to develop a program to cut emissions, this is a strong signal of discontent with the company’s do-nothing posture on global warming,” said David Hawkins, director of the Climate Center at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). “ExxonMobil executives should be listening more carefully to their shareholders, and also paying closer attention to what their competitors are doing.”

Liberal campaigns against nuclear

admin /13 June, 2007

The federal Liberal Member for the south-eastern New South Wales seat of Gilmore, Joanna Gash, has started a petition against her own Government on nuclear power. Despite the Federal Government’s commitment to investigate the viability of nuclear energy, Ms Gash has started a petition for people opposed to a nuclear power plant in Jervis Bay. Continue Reading →

Al Gore back in Australia in September

admin /13 June, 2007

The Climate Project – Australia, Al Gore’s climate change leadership program with The Australian Conservation Foundation, is pleased to announce former US Vice President Al Gore will return to Australia to train 170 additional climate change presenters.

Mr Gore will conduct the second training session of The Climate Project – Australia in Melbourne, from 21–23 September. The aim of the training is to educate Australians on the issues and consequences of climate change using the material in Al Gore’s famous ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ slide show.

The Climate Project – Australia Manager Angela Rutter said: “It is excellent news that Mr Gore is returning to strengthen the numbers of presenters in Australia. His work and his message have provided the inspiration for much positive change.”

Trees can manage soil salinity

admin /13 June, 2007

Tree planting was a potentially effective salinity management strategy in parts of central-west NSW, but could be a significant threat to water yield if not well targeted.

Non-strategic planting could spell disaster: Non-strategic planting could lead to reduced water yield, increased stream salinity and economic disadvantages. Better spatial and productivity data were required to better predict local and regional impacts of tree planting.

Increase in forest cover to reduce dam inflows: Modelling work in the Macquarie catchment suggested a 10 per cent increase in tree cover in the catchment’s headwaters would reduce in-flows to Burrendong Dam by 17 per cent, with a further 5 per cent reduction by 2030 predicted from a 0.5 degrees celcius temperature increase from global warming.

Plantations tackle problem of high water salinity: Modelling and economic analyses for the Boorowa (Lachlan) and Little River (Macquarie) sub-catchments and for the region as a whole showed that salinity and economic benefits could result from targeting tree planting on lighter textured, high recharging soils in local groundwater systems with high salinity.

Adventures in the Smart Grid

admin /12 June, 2007

It’s the world’s largest machine — the interconnected network of power plants, transmission towers, substations, poles, and wires that make up the power grid. When you flip the switch you expect the juice to flow and don’t have much reason to think about it, except during the occasional blackout. Power engineers and energy wonks might get passionate about the grid, but for most people it’s just a background fact of life.

It’s time to bring the grid into the foreground, because it positions at the exact center of the world’s most crucial issue, global climate change. The power grid is the source of one-third of U.S. global warming emissions. Unless we clean it up we cannot avert severe climate change. The grid is also the key to electrifying transportation and making more effective use of heat generated for buildings and industry, source of the vast bulk of remaining emissions. The grid can be the ultimate climate saver.

But today’s power grid cannot do it. A system built on central generating stations, little changed from the first power grids deployed in the late 1800s, lacks flexibility and smarts. We need a new grid capable of networking millions of distributed energy devices such as solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, and smart appliances. We need an internet of energy that employs the latest in digital technologies. We need a Smart Grid.

Coke pollutes Ganges while promising ‘clean rivers’

admin /11 June, 2007

Aaron Glantz
OneWorld US

Thu., Jun. 7, 2007

LOS ANGELES, Jun 6 (OneWorld) – The Coca-Cola company has been charged with illegally seizing lands communally owned by small farmers and indiscriminately dumping sludge and other industrial hazardous waste onto the surrounding community. This comes as the multinational beverage giant announced a new effort Tuesday to protect rivers on four continents.

Sludge discovered at the Coca-Cola bottling plant by the India Resource Center fact-finding mission.
Sludge discovered at the Coca-Cola bottling plant by the India Resource Center fact-finding mission. © India Resource Center

The San Francisco-based India Resource Center, an environmental health non-profit, further charged Coca-Cola with releasing untreated wastewater into surrounding agricultural fields and a canal that feeds into the Ganges River in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.

The charges are based on the results of a fact-finding mission led by the group to a Coca-Cola bottling plant in the region.

"Access to potable water is a fundamental human right," said Amit Srivastava of the India Resource Center.

"The Coca-Cola company must acknowledge that it is part of the problem of water unsustainability in India and elsewhere," he added.

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