Kyoto-Style pact seems not to be an option for Australia any more
AUSTRALIA'S chief climate change negotiator says a dramatic shift from the design of the Kyoto Protocol could be the best way to reach an international climate change agreement.
Sometimes you have to hand it to capitalism. It’s sheer magic, the way the system takes promising concepts, steeps them in the transformative power of the market – and turns them into howling social and environmental disasters.
In Brazil’s Amazon basin, farmers have long sought out a special form of fertiliser – a locally sourced compost-like substance prized for its amazing qualities of reviving poor or exhausted soils. They buy it in sacks or dig it out of the earth from patches that are sometimes as much as 6ft deep. Spread on fields, it retains its fertile qualities for long periods.
As they do every year, Greenpeace and nongovernmental organizations like “Eyes on the Forest,” which is supported by the WWF and other western environmental groups, have squarely blamed the plantation industry for the seasonal fires in Sumatra.
This generates sympathy for the anti-forestry campaign NGOs have been waging in Indonesia for many years, which pits economic development against the environment.
Fighting climate change might cost 300 billion USD a year from 2020
De Boer: Fighting climate change will cost a "phenomenal amount of money - 300 billion dollars a year from 2020. That is the cost for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to impacts from the changing climate, estimates the UN climate chief Yvo de Boer.
Prince Charles Gives $2.8b To Preserve Rain Forests
Karanganyar, Central Java. Britain’s Prince Charles has set aside 2 billion euros ($2.8 billion) to help Indonesia and other developing countries preserve their rain forests, State Minister for the Environment Rachmat Witoelar said on Thursday.
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.
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.
