Posted by jamie — 26 September 2008 at 10:57am
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Some great news has come in from Greenpeace
lobbyists at the European Parliament, where the EU environment committee have
given the thumbs up to reducing CO2 emissions produced by cars.
The group of MEPs resisted efforts by German
car manufacturers to weaken down the proposals and have recommended that by
2012 all new cars should emit no more than 130g of CO2 per km (the current EU
average is 158g). Even those this doesn't match the 120g level we and other
groups were proposing, this is a big turnaround as when the committee went into
session, it seemed certain a compromise package riddled with loopholes would
get the nod.
Posted by bex — 26 September 2008 at 10:06am
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Just under a year ago, we revealed that Gordon Brown was planning to scupper the vital, and binding, European climate change deal to generate 20 per cent of energy from renewable sources by 2020.
A brouhaha ensued; EU leaders were so furious at the UK's underhanded shenanigans that a red-faced Brown had to explicitly re-commit to the target soon afterwards.
Posted by jamie — 25 September 2008 at 9:55am
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This is short notice but climate change minister Joan Ruddock will be taking questions today between 12.30pm-1.30pm on the Guardian website. Post your queries in the comments on this page and hopefully the lovely Joan will provide a response.
There are so many things to ask, but top of my list is how the government plans to meet any of its emissions targets when it's so keen to expand airports and build new coal power stations. Even though the question has already been asked, it certainly won't hurt to ask it again.
Posted by bex — 24 September 2008 at 10:44am
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Yesterday: "I want British companies and British workers to seize the opportunity and lead the world in the transformation to a low carbon economy and I believe that we can create in modern green manufacturing and service one million new jobs" - Gordon Brown.
Today: British Energy is sold to French nuclear company EDF for £12.5 billion, exporting thousands of potential UK jobs to France, dealing a hammer blow to our chances of meeting our legally binding Renewables Obligation.
Posted by bex — 24 September 2008 at 10:21am
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In this special edition of our podcast, we take a behind the scenes look at the
extraordinary events that have already gone down in legend here at the
Greenpeace office. This month, six Greenpeace activists were acquitted of causing criminal damage to
Kingsnorth coal-fired power station, because they were acting to
prevent greater damage caused by climate change. The verdict has been hailed by some of the world's more hysterical media pundits as the official start of a state of anarchy in the UK.
I spent ten days with the defendants, finding out what was really happening, and how they were coping with the emotion, stress and drama of being at the centre of it all.
Today might be your run-of-the-mill Tuesday with nothing more remarkable than the news that a rover on Mars will take two years to travel 11km, plus a slight smattering of rain. But according to the New Economics Foundation (NEF), today is more significant than you might expect because it's the point in the year when we've used up all of the resources the Earth can produce and we start going into ecological debt.
"No coal plus no
nuclear equals no lights," said Business
Secretary John Hutton (pictured above, proving he really has heard of climate
change, honest) today.
Bearing in mind the findings
of leading energy consultants Pöyry (pdf) that we don't need new nuclear or
new coal to keep the lights on - we just
need the government to meet its own, existing targets for energy efficiency and
renewables - he might better have said "no vision plus no guts
equals no chance of averting catastrophic climate change". Which at least
has some basis in fact.
Posted by jossc — 16 September 2008 at 1:55pm
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Wake Up, Freak Out, Then Get a Grip is a short animated film about the feedback loops likely to lead to catastrophic climate change, by Leo Murray.
It
turns out that the way we have been calculating the future impacts of
climate change up to now has been missing
a really important
piece of the picture. It seems we are now dangerously
close
to the tipping
point
in the world's
climate system;
this is the point
of no return,
after which truly
catastrophic changes
become inevitable.
The script, with extensive peer-reviewed references and additional information and links, is available at wakeupfreakout.org.
Some great news has come in from Greenpeace
lobbyists at the European Parliament, where the EU environment committee have
given the thumbs up to reducing CO2 emissions produced by cars.
