News

A new EDM has been tabled on the Climate Change Bill. It welcomes the Bill, but points out that the United Nations Development Programmes has pointed out the targets are not ambitious enough and that leaving out international aviation and shipping weaken the Bill considerably, and calls for the Bill to be amended.
EDM 736: CLIMATE CHANGE BILL Nigel Griffiths
http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=34898&SESSION=891

Britain's leading environmental scientists call on the UK Government to commit to tougher carbon emission cuts in the Climate Change Bill in an open letter to the Government in five major UK newspapers.
http://www.wwf.org.uk/filelibrary/pdf/science_ad.pdf
The open letter to the leaders of the main political parties was published on January 21 in The Times, The Guardian, The Telegraph and The Independent.

Energy Transformed: Sustainable Energy Solutions for Climate Change Mitigation (Freely Available 620 page Online Textbook)
http://www.naturaledgeproject.net/Sustainable_Energy_Solutions_Portfolio...

The news of Antarctic ice loss reinforces this urgency
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-01/uob-ail011108.php

The report pulls together evidence on public understanding, attitudes and behaviours and draws conclusions on the potential for behaviour change among members of the public. http://www.defra.gov.uk/evidence/social/behaviour/index.htm
Defra's environmental segmentation model is also included in the research. It divides the public into seven clusters, each sharing a distinct set of attitudes and beliefs towards the environment and is based on people's responses to a broad range of attitudinal questions as part of the 2007 Defra attitudes and behaviours survey.

"Europe's environment chief has admitted that the EU did not foresee the problems raised by its policy to get 10% of Europe's road fuels from plants."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7186380.stm
Also Royal Society report on the potentials and problems of biofuels.
http://royalsociety.org/news.asp?id=7367
full report: http://royalsociety.org/document.asp?tip=0&id=7366
video at: http://royalsociety.org/biofuels/video.html

A new generation of nuclear power stations has been given the formal go-ahead from the government. The Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, said the UK needed a more secure and independent power supply, but critics say new stations are dangerous, will harm the environment and will be expensive.
Two Chatham House experts assess both sides of the argument. Malcolm Grimston says that the case for nuclear investment is now strong whilst Antony Froggat says that nuclear power is not necessary.
http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/media/comment/

Interesting article on Fox News (Good old Rupert Murdoch).
http://discuss.epluribusmedia.net/node/446

The United Nations General Assembly has proclaimed the year 2008 to be UN International Year of Planet Earth. The Year's activities will span the three years 2007-2009. The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has been designated to organize activities during the Year, in collaboration with UNEP and other relevant United Nations bodies, the International Union of Geological Sciences and other Earth sciences societies and groups throughout the world.
http://www.yearofplanetearth.org/

Dan Bednarz, Ph.D. and Kristin Bradford, M.D., M.P.H. are US-based public health specialists. This recent article, (from the Energy Bulletin) describes the risks our western health care systems, so reliant on highly serviced hospital complexes, face from rapidly escalating energy costs. They also explain why, despite executives knowing what needs to be done to reduce energy usage and increase resilience, so little has been done. A thoughtful, well-argued paper, with 33 references.