The atmosphere is to the earth as a layer of varnish is to a desktop globe. It is thin, fragile and essential for preserving the items on the surface.150 years of burning fossil fuel have overloaded the atmosphere to the point where the earth is ill. It now has a fever. Read the detailed article, Soothing Gaia’s Fever for an evocative account of that analogy. The items listed here detail progress on coordinating 6.5 billion people in the most critical project undertaken by humanity.Â
A report commissioned by Greenpeace estimates that the hidden cost of coal exceeds $170billion every year. This includes the cost of respiratory diseases, and the contribution that burning coal makes to climate change. It notes that while coal is usually considered a cheap source of energy, this is largely because most of the costs of Continue Reading →
By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 25th November 2008
George Bush is behaving like a furious defaulter whose home is about to be repossessed. Smashing the porcelain, ripping the doors off their hinges, he is determined that there will be nothing worth owning by the time the bastards kick him out. His midnight regulations, opening America’s wilderness to logging and mining, trashing pollution controls, tearing up conservation laws, will do almost as much damage in the last 60 days of his presidency as he achieved in the foregoing 3000.
His backers – among them the nastiest pollutocrats in America – are calling in their favours. But this last binge of vandalism is also the Bush presidency reduced to its essentials. Destruction is not an accidental product of its ideology. Destruction is the ideology. Neoconservatism is power expressed by showing that you can reduce any part of the world to rubble.
The incoming administration of the US will not have sufficient time to get backing for a coherent position at the Copenhagen conference on Climate Change, and will postpone the landmark agreement for a year, according to director of the International Emissions Trading Association, Edwin Aalders. Speaking at a conference in Sydney, Australia, on November 18, Continue Reading →
From the United Nations Climate Change Convention Framework
The United Nations Climate Change Framework has observed that industrialised nations are threatening the emerging carbon market, which rich countries proposed, as well as the entire accord process designed to lead to a new treaty on climate change in Copenhagen next year, because of a lack of action over their own emissions.”The emission quotas laid down in Kyoto are no longer abstract numbers on diplomatic papers, they are commercial contracts that govern the carbon market,” said head of the UN’s Climate Change Secretariat, Yvo de Boer. In preparation for next week’s meeting in Poland, many developing countries have agreed to comply with the harsh restrictions on their economic growth demanded by the United States in Bali, in an attempt to see the conference succeed.
From The Australian
A THREE-kilometre thick cloud of brown soot and other pollutants hanging over Asia is darkening cities, killing thousands and damaging crops but may be holding off the worst effects of global warming, the UN says.
The vast plume of contamination from factories, fires, cars and deforestation contains some particles that reflect sunlight away from the earth, cutting its ability to heat the earth.
“One of the impacts of this atmospheric brown cloud has been to mask the true nature of global warming on our planet,” United Nations Environment Programme head Achim Steiner said at the launch in Beijing of a new report on the phenomenon.
In a move that signals the start of the our clean energy future, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Appeals Board (EAB) ruled today EPA had no valid reason for refusing to limit from new coal-fired power plants the carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming. The decision means that all new and proposed coal plants nationwide must go back and address their carbon dioxide emissions.
“Today’s decision opens the way for meaningful action to fight global warming and is a major step in bringing about a clean energy economy,” said Joanne Spalding, Sierra Club Senior Attorney who argued the case. “This is one more sign that we must begin repowering, refueling and rebuilding America.”