The letter has been arranged through the Prince of Wales Business and Environment programme. The business leaders say they are very concerned about the prospect of dangerous climate change and support the government's target of reducing CO2 emissions by 60% by 2050.
They regret that industry and government are currently caught in a Catch 22. Governments are nervous of clamping down on climate change emissions for fear of a backlash from business.
Today, with growing awareness in industry, academia and the general public of the need for sustainable development, the international chemistry community is under increasing pressure to change current working practices and to find greener alternatives.
In response, the Royal Society of Chemistry has produced Green Chemistry as a vehicle to inform all parties of the latest developments in the green chemistry revolution. Reporting on research activities and interests in chemical aspects of clean technology from academic, industrial and public sectors, Green Chemistry contains primary research papers, communications and reviews.
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Sweden's AB Volvo has unveiled a truck equipped with an engine powered by DME—an alternative fuel produced from biomass that is used today as gas in spray cans.
The truck is a standard Volvo FM model equipped with a 9-liter diesel engine adapted to run on DME. "We know that in 20 years, alternative fuels will successively become increasingly commercially available," said Volvo CEO Leif Johansson. "Energy efficiency will become decisive and DME is truly an energy efficient fuel."
Volvo said DME is energy efficient and produces low emissions of carbon dioxide and particles.
Local governments tell feeble lies
All local councils claim to want to encourage cycling. They read in a book somewhere that this is what you ought to say once you ascend into local office, like, "I've lived in this community all my life, and have a real commitment to the area." To this end, they put out measly leaflets telling you pig-obvious things like, "Avoid getting trapped between two articulated lorries." If you didn't know that, you'd already be dead.
The truth is, they hate cyclists with a passion. That's the only way you can possibly explain all the things they do to endanger us, like inventing giant buses that bend in the middle, and laughingly encouraging us on to cycle paths so badly maintained they look like a trap set by Wile E Coyote. When you hear anything from any official on this matter, never forget they lie. They lie, they lie, they lie. It's even possible that Steven Norris is lying about the helmets.
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A social observation
The kind of person who routinely prefixes "cyclist" with "kamikaze" is exactly the kind of person who prefixes "asylum seeker" with "bogus"
The fact is that, to my eyes at least, this report is full of holes. Why are its findings based on an assumption that washable aficionados use 47 nappies, whereas we had easily got by on 20? Why did the Environment Agency survey 2,000 parents using disposable nappies compared with just 117 using washables, meaning that (taking into account the weighting towards those using older-style nappies which use more cloth), many of the assumptions are based on the habits of just 32 people? Why does the report include the energy used to iron nappies? Who on earth irons their nappies? Why was it assumed that people environmentally conscious enough to be using washable nappies would automatically want to tumble dry them?
CarFree City, USA's goal is to provide Americans with an alternative: carfree cities. By creating new neighborhoods and cities or redeveloping existing areas on a scale that is for people and not cars, yields a host of personal, community and global benefits. It's an ambitious task, but not mere wishful thinking. It doesn't require futuristic technologies, just common sense and a willingness to try something new. And it's no more expensive than traditional development. The pages of this website describe how carfree districts work and the benefits and challenges of creating them. We hope that you will join with us in creating the first carfree city in the United States of America.
Earlier this year, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said his country would become the world's largest producer of renewable energy. Brazil generates 43.8 percent of its power from renewable energy sources, including hydroelectricity, ethanol and biodiesel, according to Agencia Brasil, a government communications division. By contrast, the United States produced only 6 percent of its power from renewable sources in 2003, according to the Department of Energy's Annual Energy Outlook 2005.
According to the CIA's World Factbook, Brazil's economy is one-eighth the size of the United States', yet the country produces more ethanol, mostly from sugar cane.
With Tony Blair having made climate change one of the two major themes of his presidency of the G8 and the EU in June, it is a serious embarrassment to be told by the country's top scientific body that his claimed international leadership in the field is false, and that he needs to announce immediate action in the Queen's speech tomorrow to address the problem.
In fact. the scientists emphasise that most of the gains the UK has made in reducing emissions are nothing to do with Mr Blair, and happened because of the switch to gas before he came to office.
"We deliberately chose Romblon because it is an island province and it is coconut-producing. This being an island economy, diesel prices in the region are higher because of cost of transporting the fuel so it makes sense that the province look for an alternative fuel using the raw materials available, which is copra," [DOST Secretary Estrella] Alabastro said.
The mayors, from cities as liberal as Los Angeles and as conservative as Hurst, Tex., represent nearly 29 million citizens in 35 states, according to Mayor Nickels's office. They are pledging to have their cities meet what would have been a binding requirement for the nation had the Bush administration not rejected the Kyoto Protocol: a reduction in heat-trapping gas emissions to levels 7 percent below those of 1990, by 2012.
On Thursday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg brought New York City into the coalition, the latest Republican mayor to join.
NativeEnergy, a leading national renewable energy company, is supplying Renewable Energy Credits or "Green Tags" to neutralize all carbon dioxide (CO2) pollution generated by travel and venue energy use for the 2005 Institutional Investors Summit on Climate Risk, the first "climate neutral" event ever held at U.N. Headquarters. Throughout the day today top institutional investors representing more than $5 Trillion in assets will discuss the financial risks and the investment opportunities posed by global climate change during an invitation-only summit at U.N. Headquarters in New York City. The Summit was organized by Ceres, the coalition of investor and public interest groups, who is co-hosting the event with the United Nations Fund for International Partnerships.
One of the most anticipated uses for the new technology is among the blossoming hydrogen-powered automobile industry. The development of the Rand Cam(TM) engine has sparked considerable interest among environmentalists and eco-friendly manufacturers because of its ability to operate using a clean-burning hydrogen fuel cell. "Hybrid electric vehicles and engines that run using cleaner-burning fuels such as hydrogen, propane and natural gas are the future of the automotive industry," said John Robertson, CEO of Reg Technologies and its US subsidiary, REGI US. "Our society has recognized the benefits of exploring hydrogen-based technologies, and we are happy to be contributing towards the development of more sophisticated engines that operate using hydrogen and other clean burning fuels."
Earth Shakers: The Counter-Enviro Power List
With "the death of environmentalism" being debated across the land—and with the mainstream movement under siege from without and within—it's time to meet the winning side in America's new green wars. Here they come, ready or not: the 20 most powerful voices leading the environmental counterrevolution.
"The potential for environmental science is amazing," said Dr. Alexandra Isern, a program director at the National Science Foundation. "With this technology, we can start to understand what is an event and what is normal. We're recognizing more and more how different processes in the environment operate at different frequencies. To comprehend that, you need to take measurements all the time."
If I appear to have no sympathy for this, it's because I don't. For a minimum of 30 years, we've known the energy crisis was the coming state of things, not just a brief blip during the Carter years.
This is also why I have no sympathy for tobacco companies or tobacco growers. There's an 1888 medical textbook that directly links tobacco to cancer, specifically lung cancer so the terminal health risks of the weed were known long before the '50s. Did tobacco companies expand into other areas and divest themselves of tobacco? No. Did tobacco farmers phase out tobacco crops in favor of other cash crops? No. If you have decades to deal with a problem, and you don't, when someone comes along and says "Take care of it right now!" do you have the right to bitch there's not enough time? Of course not.
Gillian Bishop, a spokesman for Views of Scotland, an umbrella organisation representing wind farm protesters, said the devices would achieve little and could be more controversial than satellite dishes.
“It seems so much effort for so little power,” she said. “They are just twiddling around the edges and I think if these things are spinning around all over the place it could drive neighbours crazy.”
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The government has made this market profitable by giving a tax rebate of 20p on every litre sold compared with commercial diesel. Tesco has begun selling a form of bio-diesel in some garages. It contains 5% bio-diesel and costs 2p a litre more than the 100% petrol version giving Tesco a substantial profit on each litre.
"Zoos are about conservation and stemming the loss of animals and habitat," Baker said. "But conservation also is about how people use natural resources. This is an opportunity to give visitors the whole picture."
