Corporations and shoppers in the United States spent more than $54 million last year on carbon offset credits toward tree planting, wind farms, solar plants and other projects to balance the emissions created by, say, using a laptop computer or flying on a jet.
But where exactly is that money going?
Researchers at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) argue that American biofuel subsidies are boosting deforestation in the Amazon. How? STRI's staff scientist William Laurance explains the cascade of effects that occur as the result of $11 billion per year in corn subsidies.
Sometimes, nothing gets the message through as a barrage sometimes. The guys at Popular Technology have collected a barrage of videos on climate change, so check it out when you have time.
Dr Grainger does not claim that tropical deforestation is not occurring, as there is plenty of local evidence for that. But owing to the lack of frequent scientific monitoring, something for which he has campaigned for 25 years, we cannot use available data to track the long-term global trend in tropical forest area with great accuracy.
“The picture is far more complicated than previously thought,” he said. “If there is no long-term net decline it suggests that deforestation is being accompanied by a lot of natural reforestation that we have not spotted.”
The European Union's emissions trading scheme, seen as the bloc's trump card in reducing greenhouse gases, allocated several companies higher emissions quotas than they actually needed, it was learned Monday.
A new generation of nuclear power stations will be encouraged to supply unlimited amounts of electricity to the national grid, The Times has learnt.
The Cabinet will give the go-ahead for the new building programme today and John Hutton, the Business Secretary, will announce the decision on Thursday.
On Wednesday, January 2, California, along with 15 other states, sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, alleging EPA unlawfully rejected California's request to regulate automotive greenhouse gas emissions more stringently than national standards.
In rejecting California's request, EPA noted greenhouse gas emissions do not have any state-specific qualities and are best addressed through national and international policy. Accordingly, California failed to show the "compelling and extraordinary" circumstances required for states to obtain an EPA waiver.
First the credit crunch, now the energy crunch. Just as household electricity bills go stratospheric the first coal-fired power station to be built in Britain for more than 30 years has been approved by Medway Council in Kent. The £1 billion plant at Kingsnorth, near Ashford, will be coal-burning – and carbon-producing – so is hardly an example to India or coal-rich China on how not to overheat the planet. But it will be built if only for one reason – to keep the lights on in the south of England.
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