Environment Forum
Global environmental challenges
Renewables investor Khosla: “I’m a Republican, but…”
Vinod Khosla is a card-carrying Republican. But, the billionaire venture capitalist and alternative energy entrepreneur said, Democrat Barack Obama would be better for green businesses.
“I am a Republican, but I do believe Barack Obama will be a much bigger supporter of clean tech and renewable energy than John McCain will,” Khosla said at the Reuters Global Environment Summit in San Francisco. To see a video of the interview, click here.
Khosla stopped short of saying whom he would be casting a ballot for on November 4th, but added of McCain: “Unfortunately over the election cycle he’s gotten very beholden to some of the traditional energy interests. ”
Still, Khosla said renewable energy and climate change legislation was slowly garnering support from his party, too.
Sarah Palin makes few friends among U.N. climate experts
U.S. Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin is making few friends among U.N. climate experts with her view that natural swings, along with human activities, may explain global warming.
Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the U.N. Climate Panel, says that evidence is mounting that human activities are the main cause of warming. The panel reported last year that it was at least 90 percent certain that human activities, led by burning fossil fuels, were heating the planet.
Will the financial storm blow climate action off course?
It took Hurricane Katrina’s battering of New Orleans in 2005 to alert many people to the risks of climate change. Will the storm in financial markets make them forget all about global warming again?
The financial crisis that may cost the United States $700 billion to fix is likely to shift actions to fight climate change towards cheaper, sure-fire winners such as energy efficiency — such as better insulation for buildings – rather than more exotic long-term projects such as trapping and burying carbon dioxide from power plants. Read the story here.
Save money, cut CO2 and lose weight cycling to work
By Peter Jebautzke
Getting caught speeding changed my life — for the better.
It inadvertently turned me into a devoted bike commuter, has saved me lots of money, aggravation — and even saved the world a little bit of carbon dioxide to boot. Since giving up the car for my daily commutes by bike to work in August, I’ve also lost about 2 kilos and now look forward to my daily 16 km journeys each way to and from the office.
Other colleagues who cycle to work had long tried to encourage me to try out commuting by bike. We’ve even got a little shower here where I work in the centre of Berlin. But it was always so much easier to jump into the car.
Carbon emissions soar, despite curbs
Emissions of the main greenhouse gas are rocketing — despite international efforts to slow them down, according to a study today.
Read my colleague David Fogarty’s worrying article about carbon dioxide emissions — China has definitely overtaken the United States as top emitter, India is catching up with third placed Russia.
Bush speech to U.N.: “terror” 32, “climate” 0
U.S. President George W. Bush upset some delegates by failing to mention “climate change” or “global warming” in his final speech to the United Nations — in which he referred to terrorism 32 times.
Exactly a year ago, the United Nations held a special summit about climate change – U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon calls fighting global warming his “signature issue” and many governments see it as the biggest long-term challenge.
Poor polar bears, but what about the people?
Native Alaskan artists visited New York this week with a message not so much about art, nor a species that’s struggling as rising temperatures melt its habitat from under its paws.
“With so much attention on polar bears, where’s the concern about the people? What about fellow Americans?” said Alvin Amason, an artist and member of the coastal Alutiiq people, who lives in Anchorage.
Sarah Palin: glaciers, wolves and global warming
A 1917 sign in Kenai Fjords National Park in Alaska shows where the end of the Exit Glacier used to be — a mile from the current edge of a receding wall of ice.
Read my colleague Ed Stoddard’s fascinating tale from the park about the U.S. ‘environmental wars’ since Republican presidential candidate John McCain picked Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate.
A Silver Bullet or just ‘Greenwash’?
Can carbon capture and storage (CCS) save the world?
Is this the silver bullet everyone’s been waiting for? Or just pie in the sky? Is capturing and storing carbon dioxide the technology breakthrough to cut greenhouse gas emissions without getting in the way of economic growth and industry’s “addiction” to fossil fuels? Or is it just a “greenwash” — a token gesture by some of the utilities responsible for so much of the world’s CO2 to try to persuade an increasingly green public that the great emitters are doing something to fight climate change?
Those are the questions that were hurled at Vattenfall executives on Tuesday when the Swedish-based utility opened the world’s first CCS plant in a small town south of Berlin called Schwarze Pumpe. The company believes it will be economically feasible before long to capture carbon, liquify it, and store it permanently on a large scale underground. This is only a small pilot plant producing enough power for a town of 20,000. But if it works, Vattenfall plans to build two conventional power plants 10 times larger in Germany and Denmark by 2015 and from 2020 they hope CCS will be a viable option for large-scale industrial use.
Rainier at the weekend than during the week?
It seems there may be some truth to the awful thought that it’s wetter at the weekends in summer than on weekdays — at least in Spain.
Many people know the feeling — after being stuck inside an office block at work during the week, you look forward to going outside or visiting the beach at the weekend….only to find it starts pouring.
