Australian: RENEWABLE energy won't save the planet so it's time to go nuclear, according to one of world's most high-profile climate scientists. "We should undertake urgent focused research and development programs in next generation nuclear power," said atmospheric physicist James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and adjunct professor at Columbia University's Earth Institute in New York. While renewable energies such as solar and wind were gaining in economic ...

Bloomberg: China and India signed on to the Copenhagen climate-change agreement reached in December in the Danish capital, meaning all the world's largest emitters have now agreed to the deal. Chinese lead negotiator Su Wei today wrote to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to add his country's name to the agreement. The letter was posted on the body's Web site. India Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh today told parliament that India had also signed up. "Our ...

Energy Bulletin: [Note: This presentation was developed for the Colorado Agriculture "Big and Small" Conference in Brighton, Colorado, on Feb. 26, 2010] Before I get into the presentation, a few words about where I'm coming from. As it happens, I grew up in a little farming community in northeastern Colorado--Yuma--where my family owned the local drug store (complete with soda fountain). I'm a journalist and communicator at heart, and I started working for the local newspaper in Yuma when I was ...

Reuters: President Barack Obama will corral on Tuesday key Republican and Democratic senators whose support is critical for passing a climate change law, seeking to jump-start stalled efforts to overhaul energy policy. Obama called the White House meeting with top lawmakers and members of his cabinet to reinvigorate one of his policy priorities, which even his advisers admit has suffered from the president's intense focus on healthcare reform. The House of Representatives has already ...

Business Green: The extent to which the UK and other industrialised nations are "outsourcing " their carbon emissions to developing countries was again highlighted today with the publication of a major new report revealing that goods and services imported into developed countries typically account for around a third of their total carbon footprint. The study from a team of researchers at the Carnegie Institution for Science used published trade data for 2004 to assess the global trade flows for ...

Reuters: Farm experts plan to track down wild relatives of crops such as rice or wheat with traits that make them able to resist global warming in a project costing perhaps $50 million, a leading expert said on Tuesday. "The wild relatives of cultivated crops ... are largely uncollected or conserved in gene banks," said Cary Fowler, head of the Rome-based Global Crop Diversity Trust which co-manages a "doomsday" seed vault on an Arctic island north of Norway. "We're at the early stages" ...

Independent (UK): The star of the BBC's Gardeners' World has been drafted in by the Government as they try to persuade the public to stop using peat compost. Ministers hope that Diarmuid Gavin will help them convince gardeners to stop using peat, which is present in almost half of all compost sold by garden centres. Yesterday the Environment Secretary Hilary Benn announced a new target to phase out the use of peat compost in amateur gardens by 2020 but shied away from imposing a ban, provoking ...

Press Trust of India: The US should not wait for India and China to act on climate change and should go ahead with its environmental protection activities in terms of legislation besides research and development, a top official of the Obama Administration has said. Lisa Jackson, Administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), also decried lawmakers of the opposition Republican Party who have been opposing the Climate Change legislation and asking the Obama Administration not to take any ...

Time Magazine: Popularly, China is a villain in climate change. Many people who attended last year's chaotic U.N. climate-change talks in Copenhagen -- especially those who belonged to the U.S. delegation -- singled out China as the main reason the summit nearly collapsed. Chinese diplomats fought hard against any form of emissions regulation, even though their country is now the world's No. 1 national carbon emitter, and will emit far more carbon in the future than any other. In Washington, opponents of ...

Associated Press: The European Union's climate change chief says a global deal on reducing greenhouse gas emissions may not be possible before 2011. EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard says it would be risky to expect a legally binding deal to emerge from the planned December U.N. climate summit in Cancun, Mexico. Hedegaard told the European Parliament on Tuesday that "remaining differences between parties may delay agreement on this until next year."

Agence France-Presse: Wealthy and developing nations should be able to seal an agreement this year on deforestation, unlocking a key part of the next treaty on global warming, Indonesian negotiators said Monday. At December's Copenhagen climate summit, six nations pledged a total of 3.5 billion dollars to help developing countries fight the loss of forests, seen as a leading cause of global warming along with industrial pollution. Basah Hernowo, a senior official in Indonesia's forestry ministry, ...

Reuters: Four environmental groups have sued the European Union's executive for withholding documents they say will add to a growing dossier of evidence that biofuels harm the environment and push up food prices. The lawsuit, lodged with the EU's General Court, the bloc's second highest court, alleges several violations of European laws on transparency and democracy. But the European Commission countered that the action was premature as it had not formally refused access and had already ...

Agence France-Presse: India has decided to formally back a climate change accord struck in Copenhagen last year that includes non-binding limits on global warming, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said Tuesday. Ramesh told parliament that India, the last major emitter yet to formally endorse the agreement, would join the more than 100 other countries that have already "associated" with it. "We participated in the negotiations on the Copenhagen Accord and we stand by the accord," Ramesh ...

Inter Press Service: As a wife of a rice farmer and mother of two children aged nine and two, Sanjeevani Bandara's days are packed with chores. Yet while she used to be able to keep up with all she has to do in a day, this Sri Lankan mother now finds herself struggling to accomplish even the most basic tasks. Blame it on the weather, which has been causing water shortages that force Bandara to spend more and more time fetching water for her family, farther away from home. While the volume of annual ...

Business Green: European biofuel developers are facing fresh uncertainty about the future of the industry, after four environmental groups yesterday launched legal action against the European Union, accusing it of withholding evidence that allegedly shows that current biofuel policies harm the environment and push up food prices. The lawsuit, filed on Monday by ClientEarth, Transport & Environment, the European Environmental Bureau and BirdLife International, will result in further investment ...

Houston Chronicle: The head of the Environmental Protection Agency on Monday pushed back against lawmakers' attempts to halt the EPA's regulation of greenhouse gases from power plants, refiners and other industrial facilities. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said the agency's proposed new rules, which would take effect next year, could help ignite new demand for clean energy technology. Instead of trying to block new rules, lawmakers should spend their energy focusing on "new legislation to do ...

BBC: Rich countries including several EU nations are "importing" about a third of their CO2 emissions, says a study. US-based researchers used a global trade database to track goods and services, and assigned emissions to the countries where they were used. Nearly a quarter of China's emissions come from goods exported to the West. Writing in the journal PNAS, the researchers say this is an ethical reason why rich countries should lead global attempts to cut ...

Xinhua: Nuclear power should be developed with due regulations and in an orderly way thanks to its strict requirement for human resources, technology, security and quality, a Chinese official said Monday here at the international conference on civilian use of nuclear energy. Nuclear power, a clean, safe and economic energy, "plays an important role in energy conservation, environment protection and the strive to cope with climate change," Deputy Director of China' s National Energy ...

Times (UK): A marine pest could be the key to a biofuel breakthrough, say scientists. Gribble, which resemble pink woodlice, plagued seafarers for centuries by boring through the planks of ships and destroying wooden piers. But now environmental scientists are taking a keen interest in the crustaceans. A team of British researchers has learnt that gribble have a gift for digesting wood not seen in any other animal. Enzymes produced by the tiny creatures are able to break down woody ...

Times of India: South Africa will pit its tourism minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk against Indian environment secretary Vijay Sharma for the key post of UN's climate change chief. Sharma will face competition from van Schalkwyk as the UN seeks a replacement for Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Van Schalkwyk's nomination was approved by the South African government after President Jacob Zuma met with him at the weekend to emphasise ...