China aims to increase hydropower 50 per cent by 2015 

Business Green: The Chinese government has reportedly pledged to increase its hydroelectric power capacity 50 per cent by 2015 as it continues to accelerate efforts to boost its low-carbon energy supplies. According to local reports, officials said they were aiming to increase hydropower capacity from 200 million kilowatts currently to 300 million kW by 2015. The announcement came as China's largest hydropower station, the Xiaowan dam in Yunnan province, came online. State-backed news ...

Fast growing salmon cleared as fit for human consumption in US 

Independent: A genetically modified salmon which grows twice as fast as normal is completely safe for human consumption and poses little risk to the environment according to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The regulatory body's verdict paves the way for GM animals to be produced commercially for food for the first time. The creature, dubbed "Frankenfish" by critics, looks likely to be approved for human consumption later this month. Its developers, a Boston-based company called ...

Energy-harvesting technology lets the train take the strain 

Business Green: One of the oldest rail lines in the US will soon become home to a cutting-edge energy-harvesting technology that promises to recover the energy lost by braking trains and feed it into the grid. Philadelphia-based smart grid firm Viridity Energy and the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) announced last week that they have been awarded a $900,000 (£583,000) grant by the State of Pennsylvania that will allow them to complete an ambitious pilot ...

Diverse water sources key to food security: report 

Reuters: Increasingly erratic rainfall patterns related to climate change pose a major threat to food security and economic growth, water experts said on Monday, arguing for greater investment in water storage. In a report by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), experts said Africa and Asia were likely to be hardest hit by unpredictable rainfall, and urged policymakers and farmers to try to find ways of diversifying sources of water. The IWMI research estimates that up ...

A carbon border tax can curb climate change 

Financial Times: As global growth picks up after the economic crisis, carbon emissions are going back up too. With China and India back on track to double their gross domestic product every decade, and with coal providing nearly 30 per cent of global energy, the chances of stabilising and reducing emissions are low. Indeed, little progress has been made in the last two decades. Only recessions lower emissions – and then only for a short time. This is partly due to the failed strategy for carbon ...

Facing moratorium and criticism in Indonesia, Sinar Mas looks to Liberia for new palm oil opportunities 

Mongabay: Singapore's Golden Agri-Resources, a holding of the embattled Sinar Mas Group, said it will form a partnership with the government of Liberia to establish a 220,000-hectare plantation in the West African nation, reports the Jakarta Globe. The 25-year $1.6 billion joint venture will establish oil palm estates in southeastern Liberia. Golden VerOleum, a subsidiary of Golden Agri-Resources, is leading the project, which is seeking additional outside investors. The announcement ...

U.S. Plays Catch-Up on High-Speed Rail 

New York Times: Spanish trains whisk passengers from Madrid to Barcelona in little more than two and one-half hours. Japan has bullet trains. China is building a vast network of high-speed rail routes, including the recently opened line between Guangzhou and Wuhan, which covers 1,070 kilometers at the world's fastest average speed. Soon, perhaps, the United States, with the world's largest economy will also clamber on board. So far, the United States – in spite of or perhaps because of its vast ...

Is carbon protection the same as biodiversity protection? 

Mongabay: Protection of forests for their carbon value through Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) schemes has been increasing in recent years. These schemes concentrate on preserving forest cover, and thus have great potential for the conservation of natural biodiversity. Some (REDD+) initiatives already specifically take biodiversity protection into account. There has been debate about the potential impacts of REDD schemes on biodiversity, given its potential to ...

United Kingdom: Prince Charles blasted for using £100K Royal Train for just nine people - to promote cycling 

Sunday Mail: PRINCE Charles faced ridicule yesterday for taking the Royal train on a week-long nationwide tour to promote cycling. The prince has ordered the nine carriage train for a five-day, 1300-mile "green tour" of Britain, starting from Glasgow tomorrow. His trip is aimed at promoting environmentally friendly lifestyles and ethical modes of transport and he has boasted that the train will run on biofuels. But yesterday experts accused Charles of hypocrisy after it emerged the ...

Australia's 'Greenslide' may not help ease pollution 

AFP: Australia's environmental lobby is celebrating an unprecedented "Greenslide" in national elections, but it remains unclear whether new political power will translate into action on climate change. The Greens, a left-wing minority party, emerged as the big winners from the country's cliffhanger polls, doubling their share of the national vote to a record 11.5 percent and taking a critical seat in the deadlocked lower house. Jubilant leader Bob Brown called it a "Greenslide", ...

Water meet focuses on pollution and quality 

AFP: Increasing water pollution and dwindling water quality around the globe will be the main focus as around 2,500 experts begin gathering in Stockholm Sunday for the 20th edition of the World Water Week. "Driven by demographic change and economic growth, water is increasingly withdrawn, used, reused, treated, and disposed of," organisers cautioned in their introduction to this year's conference. "Urbanisation, agriculture, industry and climate change exert mounting pressure on ...

Migratory birds decline in UK due to low African rain 

Telegraph: Ornithologists have found that species including the turtle dove, willow warbler, tree pipit and redstart are struggling to find enough food in the weeks before they set off in the spring to fly to the UK. The scientists believe that years of poor rainfall in sub-Saharan Africa have reduced supplies of the seeds, fruits and insects which the birds rely on to build up vital energy supplies. The finding could explain a steep decline which has led to many migratory birds being ...

Italy: Mafia cash in on lucrative EU wind farm handouts - especially in Sicily 

Telegraph: They rise up high above the sun-scorched countryside, looking out over hilltop villages, palm trees, neatly-tended vineyards and olive groves. But for all their promises of a clean, green future, Italy's windfarms have now acquired a somewhat dirtier whiff - as the latest industry to be infiltrated by the country's mobsters. Attracted by the prospect of generous grants designed to boost the use of alternative energies, the so-called "eco Mafia" has begun fraudulently creaming ...

Disasters show need for action: UN climate chief 

AFP: UN climate chief Christiana Figueres has warned that a string of weather calamities showed the deepening urgency to forge a breakthrough deal on global warming this year. Speaking on Thursday before some 40 countries were to address finance, an issue that has helped hamstring UN climate talks, Figueres said that floods in Pakistan, fires in Russia and other weather disasters had been a shocking wakeup call. "The news has been screaming that a future of intense, global climate ...

Coal a 'driving factor' in U.S. Senate race 

Lexington Herald Leader: The landscapes of Eastern and Western Kentucky have little in common, but the areas share at least two things: an abundance of coal and a pivotal role in the U.S. Senate race. That means coal policies, such as the controversial "cap and trade" approach to cutting greenhouse gas emissions, are a key issue in the contest between Republican Rand Paul and Democrat Jack Conway. In Western Kentucky, one concern is that cap and trade would cause higher rates for electricity produced ...

Indian Ocean rising faster than others 

Asian Age: Newly detected rising sea levels in parts of the Indian Ocean have led Indian scientists to conclude that the Indian Ocean is rising faster than other oceans. Dr Satheesh C. Shenoi, director, Indian National Centre for Ocean Infor-mation Services, speaking at a workshop on "Coasts, Coastal Populations and their Concerns" o rganised by the Centre for Science and Environment, warned that sea surface measurements and satellite observations confirm that an anthropogenic climate ...

After 20 years of protection, owl declining but forests remain 

McClatchy: Twenty years after northern spotted owls were protected under the Endangered Species Act, their numbers continue to decline, and scientists aren't certain whether the birds will survive even though logging was banned on much of the old-growth forest in the Pacific Northwest where they live in order to save them. The owl remains an iconic symbol in a region where once loggers in steel-spiked, high-topped caulk boots felled 200-year-old or even older trees and loaded them on trucks that ...

Tiny solar cells fix themselves 

BBC: Researchers have demonstrated tiny solar cells just billionths of a metre across that can repair themselves, extending their useful lifetime. The cells make use of proteins from the machinery of plants, turning sunlight into electric charges that can do work. The cells simply assemble themselves from a mixture of the proteins, minute tubes of carbon and other materials. The self-repairing mechanism, reported in Nature Chemistry, could lead to much longer-lasting solar ...

New Farmlands Driving Out Forests Causes Climate Change Study Says 

AHN: More than 80 percent of new farmlands in tropical countries have come from the felling of trees, increasing the release into the atmosphere of carbon that causes global warming, a study has found. The expansion of farmlands is expected to increase due to growing global demand for agricultural products. More than half a million square miles of new farmland created in tropical countries, such as Brazil and Indonesia, between 1980 to 2000 was due to the felling of forests which in turn, ...

Rising wheat prices raise fears over UK commitment to biofuels 

Guardian: The soaring price of wheat has raised questions about the UK's commitment to biofuels as it attempts to wean itself from its dependence on oil. A network of biorefineries that convert wheat and other crops into bioethanol that can then be blended with petrol are being developed as the UK looks to meet its EU renewable transport fuels obligations. But the huge amounts of wheat that will be used in the process – up to a fifth of the UK's current annual production within four ...

Guatemala landslides kill dozens, toll seen rising 

Reuters: A massive landslide buried a crowd trying to dig out a bus from deep mud on Sunday, killing at least 22 people, with dozens more feared dead, as torrential rains battered Guatemala. Emergency workers recovered 22 bodies from the landslide on a major highway in Cumbre de Alaska northwest of the capital, and they warned it could take two days to dig out all the victims. "A wall of earth fell on a bus and around 100 local people organized themselves to dig out the victims," said ...

'Heavy price' on climate inaction 

BBC: World leaders may pay a heavy price in history if they fail to tackle global warming, Tony Blair has warned. He said politicians did not have to wait for chaotic climate change in order for them to act. The risks of not cutting emissions, given the potentially massive consequences, was enough to justify action, he told BBC Radio 4. The former prime minister added that it had always been a struggle to explain the uncertainties in climate science. He told Radio 4's ...

Voice From the Next Offshore Oil Frontier 

New York Times: A bone from a bowhead whale skull rests on the Arctic shore near Barrow, whose Inupiat residents center their culture around whaling and their livelihoods, often, around the oil industry. On Thursday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar had a meeting with the only people outside the gulf region whose waters had been opened to offshore oil exploration. He was in Barrow, Alaska, the capital of the North Slope Borough, where people have the same conflicted feelings about the oil industry as ...

Sceptical green urges smart billions to fight warming 

AFP: Bjoern Lomborg, the bad boy of the climate debate who has rejected for years "alarmist" prophecies from environmentalists, stresses in a new book the need to invest billions to fight global warming. In "Smart Solutions to Climate Change," Lomborg lashes out at current policies to curb greenhouse gas emissions but also highlights the need to spend 100 billion dollars a year on intelligent research and green technologies. By spending billions in a smart way, the world could ...

United Kingdom: US rig owner Transocean accused of compromising safety in North Sea 

Guardian: Transocean, the American rig owner at the centre of BP's Gulf of Mexico oil spill, has been accused of compromising safety in the North Sea by "bullying, harassment and intimidation" of its staff. The allegations, in a damning report by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) seen by the Guardian, will deeply embarrass Transocean, which on Tuesday appears before a House of Commons investigation into the lessons to be learnt from the Deepwater Horizon spill. The offshore and ...

From deep-fried delights to biofuel 

Grand Island Independent: The Nebraska State Fair is a lot of fun and a lot of food. Make that a lot of deep-fried food. Even the most health-conscious fair-goer is tempted by the many deep-fried food fancies offered at the fair. But that's all right with Robert Byrnes, owner of Nebraska Renewable Energy Systems. Robert Byrnes, owner of Nebraska Renewable Energy Systems, pours a jug of used fryer oil through a filter after collecting the oil from food vendors at the Nebraska State Fair in Grand ...

Australia: Brumby's call to arms on climate 

Age: PREMIER John Brumby has called on Victorians to support his landmark climate change law which, for the first time, has set a bipartisan, ambitious target to cut carbon pollution. ''They are big savings and will require a big community effort to achieve them,'' he told The Sunday Age after Parliament passed the bill on Friday afternoon. ''But the faster we achieve these savings, the bigger the benefits for the environment, but also people's household budgets.'' The ...

United Kingdom: Temperature records to be made public 

Telegraph: The UK Met Office is leading the project to create a new set of temperature records from around the world. The move is being seen as a response to criticism by global warming sceptics of the withholding of data used in climate change research. The records, taken from land-based temperature recording stations around the world, will be made open to the public and researchers to carry out analysis to help answer key questions about how climate change will affect individual ...

Making climate data free for all 

Nature: Meteorologists are meeting this week to hammer out a solution to one of the thorniest problems in climate science: how to make raw climate data freely available to all. The workshop, to be held in Exeter on 7-9 September, will be hosted by Britain's Met Office. It follows years of discussion within the climate-science community, which wants to draw disparate climate data together into a single, comprehensive repository to streamline research. But the effort has been given fresh ...

United Kingdom: War on the car 

Herald Scotland: Stricter and lower speed limits, higher parking charges and a five pence per kilometre road-pricing scheme are being proposed by the Scottish Government as part of a major new offensive to cut the pollution that is disrupting the climate. The sugestions, contained in a key policy report leaked to the Sunday Herald, are part of radical plans being drawn up to meet the ambitious target of a 42% cut in carbon emissions by 2020. The government's new package of 30 "proposals and ...

Kansas joins case to head off federal carbon regulation 

Wichita Eagle: Attorney General Steve Six has joined Kansas with 10 other states in an effort to head off federal regulation of greenhouse gases. They seek to block federal courts from proceeding with a trial that Six says could lead to more restrictions on carbon emissions by utilities and other industries. Six announced late last week that he has joined the state to a friend-of-the-court brief filed by Indiana in the case Connecticut v. American Electric Power Co. The brief asks the ...

Bangladesh dams to reclaim 600 square kms of land 

AFP: Bangladesh plans to build a series of dams to reclaim 600 square kilometres (230 square miles) of land from the sea over the next five years, officials said Sunday. The government has approved the ambitious project under which dams would be built in the Meghna estuary to connect islands and help deposit hundreds of millions of tonnes of sediment, project chief Hafizur Rahman said. "The project would cost only 1.20 billion taka (18 million dollars). The dams will expedite ...

Students design windmill designed for the Third World 

Chico Enterprise Record: In windy areas of California, motorists can drive past wind farms where towering structures with propeller-type blades capture the wind to generate electricity. But in poor and remote areas of the world, where energy is needed for the most basic of resources, it's not very likely trucks with windmill building supplies will be rapidly rolling in. Students from Chico State University had these realities in mind when they designed a 15-foot tall windmill that could be built in ...

10 of 18 penguin species experience further serious population decline 

Asian News International: Ten of the planet's eighteen penguin species have experienced further serious population decline, warn Penguin biologists from around the world. Among the major factors contributing to the decline are, climate change, over fishing, chronic oil pollution and predation by introduced mammals.ore than 180 penguin biologists, government officials, conservation advocates, and zoo and aquarium professionals from 22 nations have convened in Boston for the five day International Penguin ...

BRAZIL: Laws No Help to Amazon Animals, or People 

Inter Press Service: Every year, more than a million Amazonian turtle eggs do not make it to the hatching period, nor do they serve as food for humans in the Tabuleiro de Embaubal, a series of beaches along the final stretch of Brazil's Xingú River. Thousands of turtles lay 1.8 million eggs each year in Embaubal, in the eastern Brazilian Amazon. But about 70 percent are destroyed by flooding or by the mothers themselves, which dig up sand where eggs have already been laid, explained biologist Juarez ...

Engineer Predicted Deepwater Horizon's Oil Slick Spread 

LiveScience: As the Deepwater Horizon oil spill unfolded earlier this summer, a mechanical engineer helped cleanup crews keep up with the moving target by developing a steady stream of forecasts that predicted where the oil slick would spread several days in advance. The engineer's three-day forecasts successfully showed where and when oil would wash ashore in the Mississippi River Delta locations of Plaquemines Parish and Grand Isle, La., as well as on the white-sand beaches of Pensacola, Fla., ...

Final Plugging of BP Well Could Occur This Week 

NYT: Crews hoisted the blowout preventer that once sat atop BP's stricken well to the surface of the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday night, and the federal leader of the spill response said that there was no longer any risk that the well might leak again. "This well does not constitute a threat to the Gulf of Mexico at this point," the leader, Thad W. Allen, a former Coast Guard admiral, said during a conference call with reporters. "The well has been effectively secured regarding any potential ...

His Corporate Strategy: The Scientific Method 

NYT: THE scientific rebel J. Craig Venter created headlines – and drew comparisons to Dr. Frankenstein – when he announced in May that his team had created what, with a bit of stretching, could be called the first synthetic living creature. Two months later, only a smattering of reporters and local dignitaries bothered to show up at a news conference to hear Dr. Venter talk about a new greenhouse that his company, Synthetic Genomics, had built outside its headquarters here to conduct ...

Mozambique's food riots - the true face of global warming 

Guardian: It has been a summer of record temperatures – Japan had its hottest summer on record, as did South Florida and New York. Meanwhile, Pakistan and Niger are flooded and the eastern US is mopping up after hurricane Earl. None of these individual events can definitively be attributed to global warming. But to see how climate change will play out in the 21st century, you needn't look to the Met Office. Look, instead, to the deaths and burning tyres in Mozambique's "food riots" to see what happens ...

Google and Galaxy Zoo could aid global climate project 

Guardian: Climate scientists meeting in Britain this week hope to build a database to predict natural disasters precisely. And records of the voyages of the Bounty and Beagle will assist them in their task Leading climate scientists will gather in the UK this week to finalise plans for a revolutionary project aimed at transforming their ability to predict meteorological disasters. The goal is to create an international databank that would generate forecasts of unprecedented ...

United Kingdom: Tide goes out for Severn barrage energy project 

Guardian: The government will this month sound the death knell for the world's largest tidal energy project – to be built across the Severn estuary between Somerset and south Wales – when it rules out public funding for the controversial £20bn plan. The announcement will please some environmentalists, who were worried about the impact on bird life in the estuary, but others say such spending cuts will make a mockery of David Cameron's pledge to be the "greenest government ever". The ...

Ministers braced for animal-lovers' anger over badger cull plan 

Independent (UK): Farmers in England are to be issued with licences to cull badgers under plans to halt the spread of tuberculosis in cattle herds, which will spark a storm of protest from animal lovers. Caroline Spelman, the Environment Secretary, will risk legal action -- and the wrath of generations of Wind in the Willow readers -- to give the go-ahead for a cull in the areas worst affected by the disease. The coalition will launch a public consultation later this month on the precise details ...

United Kingdom: Miliband accuses coalition of 'greenwash' over North Sea oil 

Independent: David Cameron's claim to lead the "greenest government ever" was thrown into the heart of the Labour leadership contest last night, amid concern about plans for a deep-sea drilling operation in the North Sea. David Miliband, one of the candidates to succeed Gordon Brown as Labour leader, said the coalition's refusal to impose a moratorium on deep-sea drilling in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico disaster exposed its commitment to the environment as "nothing but spin". He said: ...

Key oil spill evidence raised to Gulf's surface 

AP: A crane hoisted a key piece of oil spill evidence to the surface of the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday, giving investigators their first chance to personally scrutinize the blowout preventer, the massive piece of equipment that failed to stop the gusher four months ago. It took 29 1/2 hours to lift the 50-foot, 300-ton blowout preventer from a mile beneath the sea to the surface. The five-story high device breached the water's surface at 6:54 p.m. CDT, and looked largely intact with black ...

Rampaging wild boar draw pleas for military response 

Independent: They are laying waste to crops in record numbers and their snouts are seriously damaging the autumn harvest. But soon the rampaging wild boar that have been causing havoc in rural areas of Germany could be gunned down by army marksmen, if farmers get their way. The call for a military response comes from landowners in the wine and crop-growing western Rhineland-Palatinate region, where boar have destroyed hundreds of hectares of maize and torn up the earth so badly with their snouts ...

BP hikes asset sale target after oil spill: report 

AFP: Oil giant BP has increased to nearly 25 billion pounds the amount it wants to raise from an asset sale programme in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the Sunday Times newspaper reported. The 25 billion figure is an increase from the previous goal of around 20 billion pounds. The target figure reportedly includes the planned sale of its 13- billion-pound, 26 percent stake in North America's largest oil field, Prudhoe Bay in Alaska, which is on the market. "They're ...

India: National project to help crops fight climate change 

Times of India: In the near future, Goa could avail of funds under the national agriculture innovation project to tide over instances of saline water entering agricultural land. The project, which is aimed at making farming more resilient to climate change, could also apply to the state as salinity in its seven major rivers is likely to increase due to a rise in temperatures. Anil Kumar Singh, deputy director general (NRM), ICAR, New Delhi, announced this to the press on the sidelines of a seminar on ...

Burger King to stop buying oil from Indonesian company 

Associated Press: Environmentalists on Saturday praised Burger King's decision to stop buying palm oil from an Indonesian company accused of destroying rainforests. The U.S. hamburger chain giant -- which recently sealed a deal to sell itself for $3.26 billion to 3G Capital -- said Friday that it was canceling its contract with PT Sinar Mas Agro Resources and Technology over concerns it had not adopted sustainable farming practices. It cited an independent audit that found the company's ...

BP Gulf well "secured," awaiting final kill: U.S. 

Reuters: BP Plc's ruptured Gulf of Mexico oil well is secure with no threat of spewing crude again, the top U.S. official overseeing the spill response said on Saturday. "We basically have secured this well," retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen said. "We have essentially eliminated the threat of discharge from the well at this point." A cap atop failed blowout preventer equipment on the Macondo well had sealed in all oil flow since July 15. On Friday, BP replaced the failed equipment ...

Indonesia: Scientist Watches Glacier Melt Beneath His Feet 

NPR: Earlier this summer, a group of scientists spent two weeks in Indonesia atop a glacier called Puncak Jaya, one of the few remaining tropical glaciers in the world. They were taking samples of ice cores to study the impacts of climate change on the glacier. Lonnie Thompson, a professor of earth sciences at Ohio State University, led the team and what he witnessed shocked him: The glacier was literally melting under their feet. Thompson tells NPR's Guy Raz he has conducted 57 ...