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		News Archive     24/07/2008 07:00 AM Invasion of the jellyfish: Mediterranean on alert as hundreds suffer from stings Independent: As thousands of tourists head to the Mediterranean, the spectre of jellyfish ruining holidays looms large after French emergency services received more than 500 calls for help in a single day along a 10-mile stretch of coast from Nice to Cannes. Paddlers suffered painful stings and wanted something to treat the pain while swimmers reported that they had found themselves totally surrounded by a species commonly known as the mauve stinger. It is a pattern being repeated along the ... read more 24/07/2008 07:00 AM Living Without a Car: My New American Responsibility New America Media: For the first time in nearly two decades, I am no longer a driver. A few months ago, facing spiking gas prices and much-needed repairs, I donated my car to an organization that takes care of foster kids. It's an odd feeling to be on this side of being green. Without a car, my sense of time and space have been immediately altered. What was once a matter of expediency is now an effortful navigation. "I'll be there in 15 minutes!" I used to tell a good friend who once ... read more 24/07/2008 07:00 AM Pedaling the Local Food Movement Washington Post: Where do gardening, small-scale agriculture and the future of planet Earth converge? For three Washington women, it's on a road less traveled, on byways unseen from the gotta-get-there, high-speed chaos of the interstate. It has been a year since Lara Sheets, 26, Liz Tylander, 25, and Kat Shiffler, 24, climbed on their bicycles in Mount Pleasant and pedaled north, eventually to Montreal. Along the way they visited thriving inner-city gardens, innovative suburban farms and rooftop ... read more 24/07/2008 07:00 AM Re-cycling effort Boston Globe: Getting on a bike for the first time since she was 16 years old, 42-year-old Priscilla Power rode 5 miles to her Wakefield office as part of her company's "Bike to Work Day" last month. Though she remembered how to pedal, the inexperienced biker detoured through a Dunkin' Donuts' parking lot to avoid a busy intersection. So last week Power took an hour away from her desk to attend a bicycle-commuting workshop offered by her employer, the Wakefield-based environmental ... read more 24/07/2008 07:00 AM Australian economy under threat as climate change bites Business Green: The economic risks presented by climate change have been further highlighted with the publication by the Australian government of a new report showing that drought was threatening the water supply of more than a million Australians. A six-year drought across the country has left its main water system – the Murray-Darling river system, which stretches across four states from southern Queensland to Victoria – severely depleted. Speaking at the release of the report, Australia's ... read more 24/07/2008 07:00 AM Britain tries to block green energy laws Guardian: Britain is trying to water down tough new European legislation to boost the uptake of renewable energy, despite a pledge by Gordon Brown last month to launch a "green revolution" based on clean technology. Documents obtained by the Guardian show the UK wants to block attempts to give renewable electricity sources such as wind farms priority access to the national grid. The European official who drafted the legislation accused Britain of "obstructing" EU efforts on ... read more 24/07/2008 07:00 AM Britain trying to water down EU green energy plans Agence France-Presse: British negotiators are trying to water down European Union plans to give priority access to green energy sources on national energy grids, The Guardian newspaper reported Thursday. Citing documents it had obtained, the daily said Britain had proposed amendments to an EU directive, from its original draft which says that the bloc's member states "shall" give priority to renewable energy, to saying instead that they "may" do so. The documents showed that ... read more 24/07/2008 07:00 AM Climate change will cost US billions of dollars: study Economic Times: Climate change will carry a price tag of billions of dollars for some US states, researchers have said. Combining existing data with new analyses, researchers at the University of Maryland studied some states in the US and projected the long-term economic impact of climate change on them. For example, the study said, Colorado would lose more than $1 billion due to the impact of a predicted drier and warmer climate on tourism, forestry, water resources and health. ... read more 24/07/2008 07:00 AM Canada: Culture of consumption Ottawa Citizen: You want a free cellphone? Take it. How about a gadget offering free broadband access for your laptop? It's yours. And if you desire a solar-powered wrist watch as well as enough books and DVDs to fill a huge suitcase, this is the place to be. Never have I seen hosts anywhere near as generous as the Japanese at this month's summit of the Group of Eight nations. You could barely move for gifts and glossy informational leaflets, which was great for all of five seconds, until you ... read more 24/07/2008 07:00 AM United Kingdom: Don't be fooled by the climate change bill. Carbon trading torpedoes it Guardian: For the past two years I have been fretting over a mystery. Although Labour seems to have done everything possible to ensure that it stays out of office, there remains a possibility that it might form another government at some point between now and 2050. This means that its climate change bill, which will become law in the autumn, could come back to haunt it. Despite its evident flaws, this is radical and unprecedented legislation. It imposes a legal obligation on future governments to cut ... read more 24/07/2008 07:00 AM Gassing Up With Garbage New York Times: After years of false starts, a new industry selling motor fuel made from waste is getting a big push in the United States, with the first commercial sales possible within months. Many companies have announced plans to build plants that would take in material like wood chips, garbage or crop waste and turn out motor fuels. About 28 small plants are in advanced planning, under construction or, in a handful of cases, already up and running in test mode. For decades scientists have ... read more 24/07/2008 07:00 AM Microgrid power stations can ensure uninterrupted supply Sify: Microgrid based power stations with their own energy source and independent control could ensure uninterrupted power supply even after hurricanes or natural disasters. Texas University professor Alexis Kwasinski has formulated a new plan to de-centralise power architecture that would have kept the lights and phones on in town and cities in such an eventuality. Kwasinski argued that microgrid-based power would be more dependable, efficient and cost effective than traditional ... read more 24/07/2008 07:00 AM Report: States ranked on 'oil addiction' Press Democrat: According a report by the Natural Resources Defense Council, California topped the list of states trying to reduce their oil dependency. The nonprofit's second annual report, "Fighting Oil Addiction: Ranking States' Oil Vulnerability and Solutions for Change," considered the implementation of alternatives to oil and solutions as well as states' vulnerability to high oil prices. Other states which made the top 10: New York, Connecticut, Washington, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, ... read more 24/07/2008 07:00 AM Democratic Republic of Congo: Southern African wetland region to become world's largest protected freshwater site WWF: An area of the Democratic Republic of Congo containing the largest body of fresh water in Africa has been added to the Ramsar Convention's list of Wetlands of International Importance, making it the largest region ever to be designated as such. At more than six-and-a-half million hectares, the Ngiri-Tumba-Maingombe area is twice the size of Belgium and has one of the highest concentrations of biodiversity anywhere in the world. It is also a major carbon sink. "WWF is ... read more 24/07/2008 07:00 AM Study warns of water problems San Jose Mercury News: A new study predicts that climate change will create devastating drought in this state and throughout the Southwest and continue to drop the levels of already low Lake Mead and Lake Powell, threatening the water supply for 2 million Nevadans. The prediction came as part of a study released Wednesday by the National Conference of State Legislatures and the Center for Integrative Environmental Research. The study, paid for in part by the Environmental Defense Fund, analyzed the ... read more 24/07/2008 07:00 AM UN database can aid climate, food issues United Press International: A new, downloadable database on the world's soils can help tackle climate change and food production, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome said. "The more information we have about soil properties, the more we can evaluate the quality of our natural resources all over the world and their potential to produce food now and in future scenarios of climate change," Alexander Muller, the Food and Agriculture Organization's assistant director general for natural ... read more 24/07/2008 07:00 AM US-Canada carbon trading group eyes 2012 start Reuters: A coalition of U.S. states and Canadian provinces that have banded together to cut greenhouse gases will launch their carbon cap and trade system in 2012, according to a draft plan released on Wednesday. The Western Climate Initiative's system will be phased in starting with industrial process emissions, with emissions from transportation and other fuels added to the system in 2015. It also will include emissions from electricity imported from sources outside of the group. The ... read more 24/07/2008 07:00 AM Western governors offer greenhouse emissions plan Associated Press: Seven Western states are joining four Canadian provinces to propose a plan to limit greenhouse gas emissions through use of a "cap and trade" system. The draft plan, made public Wednesday by Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski's office, is aimed at gradually reducing carbon emissions across Oregon, Arizona, California, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Washington. The plan, which also would extend to British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec in Canada, is keyed to a cap and ... read more 24/07/2008 07:00 AM Arctic holds up to 22 % of world's untapped energy reserves: U.S. study Canwest News Service: Nearly a quarter of the world's undiscovered petroleum resources lie in the Arctic, confirms a U.S. study that should only intensify pressure on countries such as Canada to stake their claims to the Far North. The U.S. Geological Survey has previously offered a rough estimate of the Arctic's vast oil and gas resources. On Wednesday, the state-funded agency released a study that refines its estimates for the entire Arctic region. According to the new assessment, the Arctic holds ... read more 24/07/2008 07:00 AM Coral grief Guardian: A climatologist who is trying to explain why even the most immediate and drastic steps to reduce carbon dioxide emissions may not save the coral reefs, has embarked on a metaphor for climate change. "The climate is like this big ship, right? We are all on this big ship and the problem is once you hit the brakes it takes a long time for the ship to actually slow down and stop," says Simon Donner of the University of British Columbia. "In our case the ship is the Titanic ... read more News Archive     Back to Homepage
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