Independent body to review UN climate panel
Huge water bill stays
Legal action launched over Xstrata discharge
Labor pledge to extend tank rebate
Allendale wind farm wins approval
I'm still a 'conservative', Labor minister assures voters
EU to push for Atlantic bluefin tuna ban
Bligh rejects water charge windfall claims
Costings and data: SA election stoush continues
Spring rainfall at record low levels
NASA gets a rocket for risk
Humans to blame for melting Antarctica
DNA shows Otzi the Iceman has kin
Expert warns on recycled sewage
Flush then drink in the Sunshine State
Research funds wasted: scientist
Poisoning risk in meat and dairy
Danger in horse vaccine, vet says
Canada is trading in its paper currency for plastic. No, not credit cards, actual plastic money.
Sometime late in 2011, the Bank of Canada will replace the nation's traditional cotton-and-paper bank notes with currency made from a synthetic polymer. Canada will purchase its plastic money from a company in Australia, one of nearly two dozen countries where plastic currency is already in circulation.
Plastic Money to Replace Paper Currency in Canada originally appeared on About.com Environmental Issues on Friday, March 5th, 2010 at 18:18:52.
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"Cash for Caulkers" HOMESTAR Program to Help U.S. Businesses and Homeowners
U.S. President Barack Obama yesterday laid out the details of his new HOMESTAR program, nicknamed "Cash for Caulkers," which would provide on-the-spot government rebates to homeowners who make their homes more energy-efficient by installing new windows, doors, insulation and other materials from an approved list.
"Cash for Caulkers" HOMESTAR Program to Help U.S. Businesses and Homeowners originally appeared on About.com Environmental Issues on Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 at 16:38:38.
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Massive Earthquake Hits Chile, Triggers Tsunamis
A massive earthquake occurred off the coast of Chile early this morning, killing dozens of people, causing buildings, bridges and highway overpasses to collapse, knocking out telephone, electricity and water services in many cities, and raising tsunami warnings all along the Pacific Rim, as far away as New Zealand, Japan and California.
Massive Earthquake Hits Chile, Triggers Tsunamis originally appeared on About.com Environmental Issues on Saturday, February 27th, 2010 at 14:47:46.
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China Rejects Hummer Sale on Energy and Environmental Grounds
In China, the Hummer is called Han Ma, which translates as "fierce horse," but when General Motors came calling with an offer to sell its Hummer division to the Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery company, Chinese officials slammed the barn door.
It seems GM's gas-guzzling military-vehicle-turned-status-symbol doesn't fit China's new focus on fuel-efficient cars and renewable energy. And those are pretty much the same factors that caused Hummer sales to tank in the United States--a drop of 67 percent in 2009--and sent GM looking for a buyer. The Hummer's 10 miles per gallon is out of sync with the new fuel economy standards passed by Congress.
China has pledged to get 15 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020, and is expected to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in clean energy within the next few years. Those are serious commitments designed to position China to dominate the emerging clean-energy economy. But while China is on the move, U.S. lawmakers are still talking.
China Rejects Hummer Sale on Energy and Environmental Grounds originally appeared on About.com Environmental Issues on Friday, February 26th, 2010 at 02:20:06.
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California Approves New Environmental Curriculum for K-12 Students
Beginning this spring, schoolchildren in California will be learning more about the environment than ever before, thanks to a new state-approved environmental curriculum for students from kindergarten through 12th grade.
The state Board of Education signed off on 76 sections of a proposed 85-part curriculum that integrates environmental education into science, history and social science classes and is designed to meet and fulfill state academic standards, according to a report on Mercury News.com. The board is expected to review the other nine sections later this year. Teachers should be able to access the curriculum online this spring at no charge. Meanwhile, state officials are trying to find money for printing costs and teacher training.
California Approves New Environmental Curriculum for K-12 Students originally appeared on About.com Environmental Issues on Saturday, February 20th, 2010 at 12:13:28.
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Commerce Secretary Plans to Establish New Climate Service at NOAA
U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke this week announced his intention to create the NOAA Climate Service to bring together and integrate all of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's climate capabilities, science and services and to make them more accessible to scientists, businesses, educators, other federal agencies and the public.
NOAA responds to millions of requests every year for climate information that helps businesses, federal agencies, and state and local governments make informed decisions about planning, operations and infrastructure. At the same time, Locke said, Americans are witnessing the impacts of climate change in their own communities and seeking relevant and timely information that can help them make decisions about "virtually all aspects of their lives."
"By providing critical planning information that our businesses and our communities need, NOAA Climate Service will help tackle head-on the challenges of mitigating and adapting to climate change," Locke said in a press release. "In the process, we'll discover new technologies, build new businesses and create new jobs."
Read more...Commerce Secretary Plans to Establish New Climate Service at NOAA originally appeared on About.com Environmental Issues on Thursday, February 11th, 2010 at 15:30:48.
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San Francisco Launches Program to Help Property Owners Pay for Green Living
San Francisco has been out front on a lot of green issues--from banning plastic bags to transforming pet feces into energy--and now the City by the Bay is leading the way in helping property owners go green, by allowing them to add the cost of various eco-upgrades to their property taxes and pay them off over a couple of decades.
Today, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom signed legislation to establish GreenFinanceSF, a new program designed to help tens of thousands of San Francisco homes and businesses become more water- and energy-efficient, use more renewable energy, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions while creating local green jobs.
San Francisco Launches Program to Help Property Owners Pay for Green Living originally appeared on About.com Environmental Issues on Monday, February 8th, 2010 at 22:36:25.
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New Public-Policy Show Opens Two-Way Street Between Viewers and Pundits
Do you ever watch television pundits discussing important public policy issues and wish you could cut through the sound bites and talk back, or maybe just hear from real people instead of a bunch of talking heads? Now you can.
Two-Way Street--a new commercial-free program distributed by American Public Television and shown on various PBS stations across the United States--invites viewers to debate critical issues with a panel of top-notch experts that may range from Nobel Prize-winning economists to best-selling authors.
Each episode of Two-Way Street will focus a full hour of audience/expert debate on a single topic such as drug use and its decriminalization, the effect of corporate farming on public health, the costs of U.S. military presence abroad or the future of journalism in the Internet age. Two-Way Street is taped before a live studio audience whose members engage the expert panelists in an interactive debate about the issue chosen for each episode. Other viewers can join in by using webcams to submit questions and comments over the Internet.
"We wanted to create a show where the audience is part of the debate, posing questions and comments on an equal footing with the pundits," said Bob Bowdon, host and executive producer of Two-Way Street. "We're giving a voice to the viewers that is usually unheard."
Bowdon is a good choice to host the new program. He is a veteran television producer, reporter and commentator and also runs Bowdon Media, an Internet marketing firm in New Jersey. Bowdon's former on-camera work includes six years as a news anchor and reporter for Bloomberg Television's World Financial Report and a recurring role as reporter Brian Scott in satirical news videos for The Onion. He also hosted Café Digital, a half-hour nationally syndicated program on technology and culture.
Two-Way Street debuts tomorrow [Saturday, February 6, 2010] with two four-hour marathons on station WETA in Washington, DC. Over the next week, PBS stations in California, Michigan, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Kentucky will start airing the program. Check your local listings or contact your local PBS station for possible show times in your area.
New Public-Policy Show Opens Two-Way Street Between Viewers and Pundits originally appeared on About.com Environmental Issues on Friday, February 5th, 2010 at 14:54:47.
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Osama bin Laden Blames United States for Global Warming
Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden recently took a break from planning terrorist attacks and encouraging suicide bombers to blast the United States and other developed nations for "the global warming crisis" and to call for a worldwide boycott of American products and the U.S. dollar.
""Speaking about climate change is not a matter of intellectual luxury--the phenomenon is an actual fact," said bin Laden, according to a report on the English-language Web site run by Al Jazeera, which released the full audiotape on Friday [January 29, 2010]. "All of the industrialized countries . . . bear responsibility for the global warming crisis."
Obama singled out the United States for failing to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, a climate treaty that was established in 1997 and later ratified by 187 other nations.
After calling on the global economy to boycott American goods and abandon American currency, bin Laden summed up by saying: "I am certain that such actions will have grave repercussions and huge impact."
Earlier in the week, bin Laden had another message for the world. In that previous audiotape, bin Laden praised the attempt to crash an airliner bound for Detroit on Christmas Day, and he promised more terrorist attacks against the United States unless U.S. President Barack Obama takes steps to resolve the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.
Neither Al Jazeera nor U.S. intelligence services could confirm whether the voice on the tape was really Osama bin Laden, so there's some chance that the message may be a hoax. If not, then the terrorist leader complaining about U.S. handling of environmental issues is a little like Prohibition kingpin Al Capone chastising the FBI for leaving the lights on.
It doesn't really matter whether the message is justified in some sense, in this case "shooting the messenger" seems like the right idea. Sorry, Osama. If you plan, finance and carry out the murders of hundreds of innocent Americans--and repeatedly announce your intention to murder more--then you lose the right to offer us constructive criticism. That's just the way it goes.
Osama bin Laden Blames United States for Global Warming originally appeared on About.com Environmental Issues on Saturday, January 30th, 2010 at 02:29:04.
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Obama Tells Government Agencies to Cut Greenhouse Emissions 28 Percent by 2020
U.S. President Barack Obama today ordered the federal government to conserve energy and reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 28 percent by 2020, a "lead by example" move that could save $8 billion to $11 billion over the next 10 years and cut greenhouse gas emissions by 88 million metric tons--equivalent to taking 17 million cars off the road for one year.
The executive order, which covers 35 government agencies, came just two days after Obama urged Congress to pass clean energy and climate legislation during his first State of the Union address, and less than two months after he brokered an agreement in Copenhagen that could lay the groundwork for an international treaty to address climate change.
The affected federal agencies have until June to submit their plans to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), showing how they will meet Obama's new emissions target. OMB will score each agency on its annual performance and progress toward meeting the goal, and will release that information to the public so we can all play along.
The federal government is the nation's largest single energy consumer--the government operates about 500,000 buildings and 600,000 vehicles nationwide and spent more than $24.5 billion on electricity and fuel in 2008. That may seem like a big dollar figure, and it is, but it represents only 1.5 percent of total annual energy spending in the United States.
Obama stopped short of requiring federal contractors and suppliers to trim their emissions as a condition of doing business with the government, and he didn't apply any emissions reduction goals or energy conservation conditions on how federal employees commute.
A few oil industry representatives and conservative pundits took potshots at Obama for promoting clean energy and cutting greenhouse gas emissions while continuing to ride in cars and planes that run on fossil fuels, but suggesting that doing nothing is somehow preferable to honest efforts that fall short of perfection is tiresome as well as ridiculous.
Also Read:
- 10 Ways You Can Reduce Global Warming
- The Truth About Global Warming
- What is the Greenhouse Effect?
- State of the Union: Obama Urges Clean Energy Economy, Plus Nuclear Plants and Offshore Drilling
Obama Tells Government Agencies to Cut Greenhouse Emissions 28 Percent by 2020 originally appeared on About.com Environmental Issues on Friday, January 29th, 2010 at 02:30:27.
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Food labelling review false and misleading on GM
NSW Labor Govt betrays working families
NSW Gov?t paves the way for 30 years of pollution
Long overdue changes to Renewable Energy Target essential to clean energy future
Broad coalition launches No New Coal campaign
Whaling Commission promotes return of commercial whaling
Australians believe the Government has a responsibility to prevent illegal logging imports: Newspoll
India GM outrage exposes Australian Government?s failure on food security
GUILTY! UN finds Japanese authorities violated human rights of Greenpeace anti-whaling activists