Britain's homes are responsible for 28% of our CO2 emissions. The average UK home emits more than a car a year. The government is embarking on a massive new house building programme over the coming years which presents a prime opportunity to reverse this trend. If the government is serious about tackling climate change, it needs to adopt tough new standards to make sure the nation's new homes are part of the solution, not adding to the problem.
Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth have joined forces to pledge their support for a proposed wind farm at Whinash in the Lake District. A planning inquiry into the scheme is due to begin on Tuesday (19th April) at Penrith in Cumbria.
Today Prime Minister Tony Blair announced the general election. Some party leaders have already hit the campaign trail, but the most important race we now face is tackling climate change.
UK aid money is creating an 'oil curse' for developing economies, according to Pumping Poverty, a new report [1], launched Thursday 17 March as G8 environment ministers meet in Derby to discuss the impact of climate change on Africa. Pumping Poverty finds that government aid is being spent on supporting energy projects which benefit UK and US oil companies, but which do little to help the countries where they are based.
Britain's Department for International Development and the oil industry
Summary
While the Department for International Development recognises that climate change hits the poor hardest, it refuses to address the effect of its promotion of oil development in contributing to climate change and locking poor countries into unsustainable development.
Posted by bex — 15 March 2005 at 9:00am
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Climate change is already killing 150,000 people a year. If the government takes climate change as seriously as it says it does, Gordon Brown will tax gas-guzzlers off our roads tomorrow when he presents the budget.
Earlier today the Chancellor made a keynote speech describing climate change as an issue of justice and recoginsed that the millennium development goals cannot be met without stabilising the climate. He also declared his ambition to make British business the world leaders in environmental productivity.
More than a hundred volunteers from Greenpeace and the Alliance Against Urban 4x4s took to the streets to poll Londoners about a proposal to increase the congestion charge to £20 for gas-guzzling vehicles like 4x4s. Of the more than 5000 people randomly polled throughout London, 85 percent agreed that the Congest Charge should be higher for gas-guzzlers.
Posted by bex — 16 February 2005 at 9:00am
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Today is a day for action. After a long and arduous process the Kyoto Protocol comes into force and business as usual is not an option.
Thirty-five Greenpeace volunteers halted trading on the global oil market by occupying the International Petroleum Exchange in London. They entered the high security building near Tower Bridge shortly before 2pm, just as the world market in Brent crude was about to switch to London.