Sarkozy ups the ante against pollution |
Good News
- UN's special rapporteur on the right to food, is calling for a 5-year moratorium on the production of liquid biofuels made from food crops such as corn, wheat, palm oil and rapeseed. To be presented in his annual report to the General Assembly in New York. Not that this will actually change anything, but still...
- France has officially launched it's 'Green Revolution', with President Sarkozy endorsing a raft of proposals, including eliminating the waste of household energy by banning incandescent light bulbs and single glazed windows to halving France's heavy pesticide use. But they were also quick to declare that nuclear power (which provides 80% of French power) was not up for discussion. We have covered this topic in more detail here.
- Solar power could reach price parity with fossil fuels in 5 years, while other countries can expect to break even by 2020. Subsidies are needed because solar is still more expensive than conventional power sources like coal, but costs are dropping by around 5 percent a year.
- And for the first time, a coal power plant has been rejected in Kansas due to carbon dioxide emissions by Department of Health and Environment. It may be the first of a series of similar state actions inspired by a Supreme Court decision in April that asserted that greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide should be considered pollutants under the Clean Air Act.
- The massive wildfires assailing Southern California are consistent with what climate change models have been predicting for years, according to Oregon State University scientist. Not only that, they also predicted the drought affecting Southeast US.
- Research has shown North Atlantic uptake of carbon has slowed by half since the mid 90s. According to the researcher "the direction of the change was worrying, and there were some grounds for believing that a 'saturation' of the ocean sink would start to occur. " Uh-oh...
- Carbon Dioxide has grown 35 percent faster than expected since 2000. The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has found that inefficiency in the use of fossil fuels increased levels of CO2 by 17 percent, while the other 18 percent came from the decline in the efficiency of natural land and ocean sinks which soak up CO2 from the atmosphere.
- And if you thought energy efficiency would get us out of this mess... think again. According to historical research, restricting energy use is the only way to tackle climate change. "Although we are over three times more energy efficient than we were in the 1880s, we each consume about a third more energy, so carbon emissions keep rising", as we have discussed before.
- To add insult to injury, the White House is also defending the health benefits of global warming, declaring that experts were trying to determine what they would be. According to the spokesperson, " it is true that many people die from cold-related deaths every winter. And there are studies that say that climate change in certain areas of the world would help those individuals," she added. "I'm not an expert." No comment...
- This week's New York Times Magazine features a report on the drought assailing the American West, 'The Future is Drying Up', and global warming is only making matters worse.
- Check out the best eat-local cookbooks to get you well on the way of cooking delicious local meals, by the locavore experts of the Eat Local Challenge. The reason? "Those of us who love to cook may tend to go to the grocery store with a list of items we need for certain recipes. Eating local requires you to start from the other end of the equation: This is what I have--now, what in the world do I do with it?"
- UN's Global Environment Outlook Report (GEO4) just came out. Most environmental aspects are in decline, and the outlook is grim. So grim there is even talk of 'the future of humanity', as it has been put at risk by a failure to address environmental problems including climate change, species extinction and a growing human population. You can read the whole thing here.
