Can the running shoes we buy really help protect the environment?

According to a new list by nonprofit group Climate Counts, Nike ranked first among the world’s most climate-friendly companies.

In its second annual report, Climate Counts ranked companies based on efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, support of global warming legislation, public disclosure of their efforts to address climate change, and whether they measure their impacts on the environment.

Nike ranked well in all those areas, garnering a score of 82 out of a possible 100 points. Stonyfield Farm, IBM, Unilever, Canon, General Electric, Toshiba, Procter & Gamble, Hewlett-Packard and Sony rounded out the list’s top 10.

Google, Anheuser-Busch and Levi Strauss logged the largest score improvements, each jumping over 20 points since last year. The average company score improved 22 percent over last year, when Canon was the top scorer.

Who were the losers? In a word, restaurants.

Olive Garden and Red Lobster owner Darden Restaurants, Wendy’s and Burger King each scored zero out of 100 points, while KFC and Taco Bell owner Yum Brands registered a single point for encouraging reduction of energy consumption.

Jones Apparel Group was the only other company to receive a score of zero.

For Climate Counts’ full list, click here.

It’s hard to imagine how big some of the cracks are on this link to satellite images of the Arctic ice during winter – dark lines hundreds of miles (km) long abruptly appear off the Canadian islands at the bottom right of the picture as the ice swirls through the winter.

At the top right, vast amounts of ice are flowing out of the Arctic basin southwards along the coast of Greenland.

“As of the middle of March, most of the basin, including the pole itself, appears to be covered only by seasonal ice,” it says. The image comes from Koji Shimada of the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, via a link supplied by Thomas Homer Dixon, an environmental expert at the Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Toronto.

The summer sea ice in the Arctic shrank to a record low extent in September 2007, outstripping the previous 2005 record, according to satellite observations since the 1970s. Dark water, once exposed, soaks up ever more heat than reflective ice and snow, accelerating the process. A less chill Arctic in turn would tend to heat the rest of the globe.

And some researchers say that the Arctic ice may have reached a “tipping point” because of global warming and that it is destined to vanish in summers within decades — earlier than projected by the U.N. Climate Panel.

What do you think?

Fewer cigarettes get lit indoors in bars and restaurants because of smoking bans from California to Ireland but something else is going up in smoke from a sidewalk in central Oslo – about $100,000 a year in extra outdoor heating bills.

The heated pavement, installed at a cost of about $400,000, may be the most extreme example of an environmental side-effect of smoking bans: rocketing power use.

“It’s warm out here even when it’s snowing and minus 10 (14 Fahrenheit) on the worst winter day,” said N. Virani, managing director of the Mona Lisa restaurant, which includes an outdoor section named after former health Minister Dagfinn Hoybraten who introduced the smoking ban in 2004.

Virani said he believed it was the only heated sidewalk in Scandinavia. And it’s true — today at a chilly 10 Celsius (50F) outdoors it felt like sitting at a warm outdoor cafe by the Mediterranean.

The strip of heated paving outdoors, and heaters in the roof, represent about 180,000 watts of electricity. Total electricity bills for the large business have almost doubled to 1.2 million crowns ($240,000) a year, Virani said.

 The restaurant had to close down an indoor ”cigar and cognac bar” with turnover plunging after the law entered into force. “Overall, turnover has recovered,” Virani said, even accounting for the extra bills.

In Norway almost all electricity comes from hydropower so the extra use is not doing much to stoke global warming, largely blamed on use of fossil fuels.

But think of all the thousands of extra gas and electricity heaters outdoors spurred by the smoking bans around the world…

I’m a big fan of the smoking bans overall as a way of protecting workers’ health and helping some people to kick the habit. But what can people like Mr. Virani do about the side-effect of soaring power use that in many countries is strengthening what U.S. President George W. Bush once called an ”addiction to oil”?

The Maldives has a dilemma — it fears that rising seas caused by global warming could wipe the country off the map but it doesn’t want to restrict tourists who visit the Indian Ocean coral islands in aircraft whose emissions are a cause of climate change.

Read Melanie Lee and Neil Chatterjee’s story about the problem faced by President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, who is writing a book about ”Paradise Drowning” but wants to keep the tourist-dependent economy going.

What should countries like the Maldives do?

Ending poverty is the overriding goal for developing nations, but how far should they take part in fighting global warming, caused by people in rich nations on the other side of the world?

Would high green taxes on visitors help? Or would that be just a symbolic pinprick in the problem of global warming that could drive holidaymakers to pick another tropical destination?

What do you think?

Puffins may look like clowns but have just proved once again that they’re excellent time-keepers.

April 14 is traditionally the day when thousands of the seabirds land on the cliffs at Lovund island off north Norway at the start of the mating season. They sometimes land a day or two on either side of the date, first gathering in vast flocks after the long winter spent out at sea, but April 14 is so reliable that it has become a tourist attraction.

“It’s just instinct,” says Torill Olaisen, who works at the local hotel on the island. “It could be the length of the day, it could be the amount of moisture in the air, it may be access to food. No one knows how they do it.”

She said that, once the eggs hatched, the puffin colony on Lovund could total 200,000 birds, one of the biggest along the coast.

This year they arrived like clockwork, at 7.15 p.m. in the evening on April 14 (I originally wrote this blog in the morning, wondering if they’d be arriving on time this year…I shouldn’t have doubted them: they were).

Warmer sea and air temperatures in the Arctic region in recent years, apparently part of global warming, do not seem to have disrupted their arrival date so it may be steered by other factors.

So how did they manage to figure out that 2008 is a leap year and humans have added an extra day to the calendar?

Any ideas how they do it?

Greens are seeing red this week after the World Bank approved partial financing for a $4.2 billion coal-fired power station in India.

   The 4,000 MW plant will provide crucial power for millions of Indians, prove a much-needed boost for industry and use “super-critical” technology that will make it India’s most-efficient coal-fired plant.

   The Bank’s board approved $450 million in loans through its International Finance Corp for the Tata Mundra project and the IFC said it looked at many alternative ideas, including wind and solar, but found the giant coal power station was the best solution.

   The volume of emissions from the plant will be about 40 percent less than existing coal-fired plants in India but it will still produce up to 23 million tonnes of carbon emissions each year.

   And that’s angered environmental groups who say the World Bank is failing to help fight global warming by backing polluting projects. The Bank said using solar or wind for the project instead of coal would have been just too expensive to meet India’s vast appetite for electricity.

  Greens say much more investment and willingness needs to go into clean energy to help poor nations prevent the polluting mistakes of richer nations. Otherwise we’re all doomed to face a warmer world with rising seas and more chaotic weather.

  But who’s going to take that chance and start backing giant renewable projects in poorer states to wean them off coal and oil? Or will the sharp rise in coal and oil prices generate the needed political and financial shift anyway?

   No one disputes India’s right to develop. But should lenders such as the World Bank impose a ban on involvement in future coal plants as a way to focus global investment on clean energy? For the Tata Mundra project, the IFC said coal was the least expensive option and that using solar or wind would have required billions in subsidies.

What’s in a name? 

Will the next international deal for combating climate change be called the “Copenhagen Protocol”, consigning the “Kyoto Protocol” to history?

Who would want the name of their favourite city linked to a treaty about global warming? It may be a momentous step towards a clean energy future but, if Kyoto is anything to go by, will also be hated by many. The poor “Little Mermaid” statue in Copenhagen harbour already suffers enough from protests, like red paint thrown by vandals last year (right).

A new U.N. pact for fighting global warming is meant to be agreed at the end of 2009 at a conference in the Danish capital and, by normal international practice, it would then be called the “Copenhagen Protocol”. 

Denmark has been adamant that a baby shouldn’t be named before it is born so I was surprised this week when Polish Environment Minister Maciej Nowicki, on a visit to Oslo, spoke repeatedly about the planned “Copenhagen Protocol” as if it were already decided.

The name “Kyoto” is badly tarnished by years of disputes between U.S. President George W. Bush, who dismissed the pact as “fatally flawed”, and his industrial allies who are implementing Kyoto’s curbs on greenhouse gas emissions running to 2012.

Of course Shakespeare wrote that “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”. And the U.S. Senate was not swayed by Kyoto’s name — it voted 95-0 in 1997 against key principles before the treaty was either named or agreed.

So the suggestion may make the world’s lawmakers sound daft but maybe, just maybe, small things like names do have an influence? 

Companies, after all, often carry out massive research before naming products to try to make them attractive. And how many oil companies have put their names on their tankers since the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska?

One leading environmentalist once said — only half jokingly – that the next climate deal should be called the “Los Angeles Protocol” to make it attractive to Americans and a follow-up around 2020, when more action to curb greenhouse gases will be expected of developing nations, the “Beijing Protocol”.

U.N. officials, meanwhile, prefer to say that Copenhagen will agree ”the second period of the Kyoto Protocol”, upset by the suggestion that Kyoto will somehow ”run out” at the end of 2012 or — even worse – “expire”.

So what should any new climate treaty be called? 

Maybe some corporate branding experts should be hired to come up with a name that perhaps has nothing to do with the city where it is agreed?

Or maybe the United Nations should have an international naming competition?

Perhaps most crucially, would a pact called something other than “Kyoto” have a better chance in the U.S. Senate?

Three giant wind turbines are helping the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific Ocean towards a goal of eliminating use of fossil fuels by 2015 — and no birds have been killed in a six-month pilot scheme despite worries in many nations that big blades and bird brains don’t mix.

The Galapagos are home to mocking birds, finches, petrels, blue-footed boobies, doves, albatrosses and other exotic species many of which only live on the islands. Studies of Galapagos birds helped British 19th century naturalist Charles Darwin work out his theory of evolution.

“In six months of pilot operations there have been no bird kills,” said Melinda Kimble of the U.N. Foundation, a sponsor of the $10.8 million project led by power producers including American Electric Power and also backed by Ecuador’s government.

Power producers studied birds’ flight paths and nesting habits to decide the siting of the turbines and reduce risks of collisions.

“There seems a very broad support for the project, right down to school kids,” said Kimble after attending an official dedication ceremony late last month on San Cristobal, the island with the biggest human population.

The turbines have a generating capacity of 800 Kwh and will provide up to about 80 percent of San Cristobal’s electricity needs in windy months, halving the need for diesel fuel to power the island.

The shift to renewable energy for the islands was spurred after the oil tanker Jessica ran aground with 160,000 gallons of diesel fuel in 2001 — some oil leaked but a catastrophe was narrowly averted thanks to favourable winds and tides.

Bird lovers say that turbines from California to Denmark often kill birds.

But are the turbines a threat — or is it just a case of siting them with care?

There are plenty of ways to get around New York City, not all of them savory — subway, bus, car, taxi, bike, shoe-leather — but few offer the environmental cachet of the plug-in electric motorbike. Sleek, slim and silent, the Vectrix two-seater owned by filmmaker Michael Bergmann is definitely preferable to rocketing around town under almost any other kind of power. The ride from the East Side to the West Side one recent evening was an absolute pleasure, with less ambient noise than a golf cart as we zoomed across Central Park.

“I’ve always felt that enjoying life in New York to the fullest requires a way to get around New York,” Bergmann said later in an e-mail. “A way that’s quiet and up on the surface so you can enjoy the varied life and changing neighborhoods as you travel. That requires a vehicle that’s street legal (so I don’t worry about being stopped or having it confiscated), always available, that isn’t hard to park, that doesn’t contribute to congestion or pollution (air or noise), that can carry the amount of stuff one ordinarily carries, and carry a passenger as well. So as soon as I found out about the Vectrix I wanted one.”

Vectrix, headquartered in Rhode Island, first started selling its electric plug-in motorbikes in Europe and is now expanding in the U.S. market. The company bills its plug-in model as “an advanced zero-emission, battery-powered motorcycle,” with comparable performance to a 400cc gas-powered motorcycle.

Bergmann and his wife Meredith, a sculptor, use the bike as their principal mode of transport around Manhattan. The Vectrix gets parked and plugged in in the underground garage at their apartment house, where they pay for half a parking space, with electricity included. It gets about 40 miles (65 km) to a charge, which is enough to get around New York’s five boroughs, and Michael figures the company’s claim that it can get up to 62 miles (100 km) per hour is accurate, since he’s been able to accelerate uphill on the FDR Drive, no mean feat.

Bergmann has always been an early adopter of new technology, and he’s no exception here. You can see what he’s done in the film world.

He admits there’s one drawback: the price. His model cost $11,000. But he reckons that, because of where and how he and his wife live, “it will pay for itself in taxis not taken in two years.”

Perhaps 50 million people took part in a global Earth Hour campaign to turn out the lights for an hour at 8 p.m. on Saturday to put attention on global warming, organisers said. Did you?

    In Australia, one survey showed that more than half the adults turned off the lights, they said. Bangkok saved 73.3 megawatts, or the equivalent of switching off 2 million fluorescent lights, and organisers said electricity use dropped 8.7 percent in Toronto, Canada.

    You don’t have to be a tree-hugging socialist to see that it makes sense to turn off unnecessary lights and electrical appliances, although it obviously only makes sense if you do so all the time and not as a gimmick one Saturday night a year.

     You can choose from many reasons - you may be worried about climate change, you may want to end a national addiction to oil with prices at $100 a barrel, or curb a dependence on foreign energy supplies.

    Still, I wonder how you estimate how much electricity was “saved” on Saturday. Electricity use typically declines as the evening goes on and people go to bed, starting with kids around 8 p.m., so it may be easy to overstate ”cuts” at 8 p.m. 

    I had a look at the power consumption figures from the Nord Pool exchange for Denmark, a country heavily involved in Earth Hour to try to find out: electricity use did seem to fall faster than normal.

     The Tivoli funfair, the royal palace and the opera house all turned off the lights at 8 p.m. for an hour — there were so many lights out that you could see stars shining from the centre of Copenhagen. The Danish capital will host of a U.N. conference at the end of 2009 meant to agree a new global climate treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, so many people got involved.

    The country’s electricity consumption fell 6.5 percent in the hour from 8 p.m. compared to use the previous hour, more than a decline of 4.7 percent the same hour a week earlier. And it then fell 5.5 percent in the hour from 9 p.m., faster than 5.0 percent on March 22. Less electricity was consumed from 8-9 p.m. than on any other Saturday night this month.

    OK, so there might have been other factors like the temperature steering power use over an evening but it surely indicates that every little bit does count?