I went to GreenBuildingsNY 2009 the other day and had a fine time. The show had everything from windows and doors, to toilets and garbage disposals, to solar PV and green roofs – and beyond. Knowledgeable vendors, great stuff. Green building, for my money, has nothing but upside. As I wrote in my article for […]
Access to food, restricted by conditions related to the Global Financial Crisis, has exacerbated the Global Food Crisis, says the UN Food and Agricultural Organization’s (FAO) new estimate. The full report will be released in October. With global food markets still recovering from the 2008 food crisis, lower incomes and unemployment have pushed more people […]
Deutsche Bank yesterday unveiled an enormous display outside New York’s Madison Square Garden/Penn Station complex. What’s it show? “The current quantity of long-lived greenhouse gases in the atmosphere as shown by the Carbon Counter is 3.64 trillion metric tons, increasing by approximately 2 billion metric tons per month,” according to DB’s release. “‘The Carbon Counter […]
We’ve been seeing a lot of activity in the past few months in the House of Representatives on climate and energy – see a number of blog items here on the Waxman-Markey bill. The Senate hasn’t been idle, certainly, but they’ve been flying a bit below the radar. Senator Boxer, chair of the Environment & […]
The European Union plans to announce today that it sees possible disruptions for its gas supplies from Russia via Ukraine, a liklihood we identified earlier this year. What’s worse, Gazprom is now demanding $230 in debt payments from Belarus, another key gas transit route to western Europe. The payments from Belarus may stem from a […]
Today the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted for an amendment, as part of a comprehensive energy bill, which would give the Secretary of the Interior Department flexibility in suspending mandatory royalty payments to companies for the production of oil and gas. The incentives, originally part of the 2005 Energy Bill, allow oil companies […]
The airline industry has an awful lot at stake in the debate about how to address the specter of climate change. I’ve written a few times about what they’re doing, here and here for instance, and in a magazine article I wrote on sustainability at the airports. Emissions caps seen costing airlines $7 billion a […]
As you no doubt know, the latest round of UNFCCC negotiations concluded in Bonn last week. UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer seemed generally pleased. The representatives had, for the first time, a negotiating text with which to work. It was delivered on schedule and that in itself was a significant achievement. The AP reported […]
I would like to note here that only one Republican on the House Energy & Commerce Committee voted for the Waxman-Markey bill. Mary Bono Mack from California deserves, in my opinion, a pat on the back. Here is an article from the “Press-Enterprise” about her vote and the political pressures on her. The article notes: […]
After China and the US, which together contribute 40% of the world’s burden of anthropogenic greenhouse gases, you come to Indonesia and Brazil. Why? In a word, deforestation. Japan, because of its industrial emissions, comes in 8th overall. So when there’s news on the intentions of these major economies on reducing their GHG, we should […]
I continue to be knocked out by all the innovation and hard-driving progress in building out a zero-carbon world. I was telling a young man today, a very smart carbon offset development consultant, that I truly never thought, 15 years ago, that I’d live to see the day when we would have the activity and […]
The Democratic-led Senate Energy and Natural Resource Committee supported legislation today that would allow for oil and gas exploration off the coast of Florida. In an ironic twist, this includes an area that Republican President George W. Bush took off limits in 2002. Far more Congressional action is needed before the legislation is past, but […]
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