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Climate change

Just think about forests and carbon markets...

How much pollution can a tree absorb? The question is at the center of a high-stakes fight over how much it will cost to curb climate change -- and who will foot the bill.

Trees are nature's antidote to smokestacks and tailpipes. Factories and cars cough out carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas produced when fossil fuel is burned. Trees inhale it. They store the carbon in their roots, trunks and leaves, and they send the oxygen back into the air.

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Carbon Cap and Trade - green gambling?

You've heard of credit default swaps and subprime mortgages. Are carbon default swaps and subprime offsets next? If the Waxman-Markey climate bill is signed into law, it will generate, almost as an afterthought, a new market for carbon derivatives. That market will be vast, complicated, and dauntingly difficult to monitor. And if Washington doesn't get the rules right, it will be vulnerable to speculation and manipulation by the very same players who brought us the financial meltdown.

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Issue date: 
May 18, 2009

A profitable rainforest!(?)

A MOST unusual document landed on your correspondent’s desk recently: a financial report from a rainforest. Iwokrama, a 370,000-hectare rainforest in central Guyana, announced that it was in profit. It added, more intriguingly, that rainforests had entered the “global economy”.

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Waxman-Markey: How US lobbying works

 

July 14, 2009: The landmark American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 that narrowly passed through Congress on June 26 has come under fire by environmental critics who see the pared down measure as too little, too late. Originally proposed by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Edward Markey (D-MA), the bill went through the wringer on the Hill, coming out with a number of amendments and omissions.

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UK: Woodland creation part of national Low Carbon transition strategy

Markus Sommerauer - Fri, 17/07/2009 - 07:35

July 15, 2009: The UK has released its Low Carbon Transition Plan. The Plan plots out how the UK will meet the cut in emissions set out in the budget of 34% on 1990 levels by 2020.

Climate change happens: beetles to destroy American forests

Markus Sommerauer - Mon, 13/07/2009 - 06:59

4.7.2009: America's 4 July bonfires served a dual purpose yesterday. They burned the wood of trees destroyed by a trio of bugs that are devastating parts of the nation's forests.

With 750 million acres of forests in the United States, the scale of the problem is massive. Since 1999, the country has lost, on average, 1 per cent of its tree cover per year. This means these small insects have killed about 10 per cent of all US forests in 10 years.

Issue date: 
Jun 29, 2009

Historical background of REDD

June 29, 2009: A New Idea to Save Tropical Forests Takes Flight and then in 2005, a small group of countries changed everything. Papua New Guinea teamed up with Costa Rica and a handful of other countries to make a formal plea to the United Nations.

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Implications of the Markey-Waxman bill

Implications of the American Clean Energy and Security Act for conservation

June 26, 2009:Following today's passage of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) by the House of Representatives, The Nature Conservancy released a set of questions and answers with Mark Tercek, its chairman and CEO.

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UK kicks Climate debate in front of Copenhagen

Gordon Brown puts $100bn price tag on climate adaptation. Prime minister attempts to move stalling political talks on global warming away from targets and towards the cost of mitigation.

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US Climate Change Bill on the way to support REDD

Markus Sommerauer - Sun, 28/06/2009 - 11:46

Friday, 26th of June 2009: The bill (HR 2454) passed 219-212, with eight Republican "yes" votes tipping the balance. Forty-four Democrats voted against the bill.

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by Dr. Radut