AFP: Prosecutors have called for French state energy giant EDF, accused of spying on environmental campaigners Greenpeace, to face criminal trial, EDF lawyer Alexis Gublin said Saturday. The energy company, and former executives Pierre Francois, who was the company's second highest security official, and his immediate superior Pascal Durieux, are also implicated, along with two other employees. It will now be down to the judge Thomas Cassuto to decide on whether or not the case ...

AFP: The French yacht Tara leaves Sunday on the second leg of a three-year voyage across the world's oceans to chart the effects of climate change on micro-organisms which produce half our oxygen. The 36-metre (118-foot) schooner will depart from Cape Town a year after leaving Lorient in western France to head across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans for New Zealand next August as part of a 150,000-kilometre (93,750-mile) journey. "Sunday ... will be the birthday of the Tara Oceans ...

AFP: China has ordered banks to stop new lending to companies that pollute excessively or consume too much energy, as part of a drive to make its economy more energy efficient, state media said Saturday. Shao Fujun, director of the People's Bank of China's credit department, said the central bank had established a database to help banks review companies' environmental records, the Shanghai Securities News reported. More than 30,000 pieces of information regarding companies' ...

Toronto Sun: They're in a fight that could shape wind power in Ontario, billions of dollars of investment and the green reputation of Dalton McGuinty's Liberals. Two UWO academics are clashing over wind farms, each accusing the other's followers of demonizing their cause and bastardizing science. A champion for those who believe wind turbines are making them sick, Dr. Bob McMurtry was dean of the medical school at the University of Western Ontario from 1992 to 1999. His wind ...

NPR: The government's "cash for clunkers" program boosted auto sales by 360,000 during the two months it was in place, according to a new study. But in the seven months that followed, sales were down by 360,000 compared with what they would have been without the program, the study found. The implication: The program didn't bring new buyers into the market. But it encouraged people who would have bought a car anyway to make their purchase a few months sooner. Under the ...

Nature: Rodolfo del Valle and his team are heading to the Southern Ocean to measure a methane leak. For three years, Rodolfo del Valle and his team will be probing the ice and seabed in the Erebus and Terror Gulf. Persistent bubbling is stirring the water's surface in the Erebus and Terror Gulf, a remote spot off the Antarctic Peninsula. When he saw the commotion in 2000, Argentinian geologist Rodolfo del Valle was intrigued -- despite 38 years' experience in the region. There was a ...

Pana: The world cannot afford escalating disasters of the kind recently witnessed in Pakistan and Russia, the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Christina Figueres, said Friday. At a press conference in Geneva, Switzerland, Figueres stressed the need for governments to take swift action to lead the world towards a low carbon future. 'Flooding in Pakistan and wildfires in Russia were so dramatic that many other major weather disasters in ...

NYT: A new report from a University of Michigan researcher estimates that, even without going electric, U.S. cars and trucks could achieve an average efficiency of 74 miles per gallon by 2035. Compared to a federal 2005 Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) baseline, that's a tripling of fuel economy. Under the researcher`s fuel economy projections, the average car in 2035 would save 5,254 gallons over its lifetime compared to a similar 2005 vehicle, and would emit 47 tons less carbon ...

LA Times: The fight over a November ballot initiative to suspend California's global warming law has escalated sharply with the Koch brothers, oil billionaires and "tea party" backers, making a million-dollar entry into the fray. The contribution to the campaign for Proposition 23 came Thursday from a subsidiary of Wichita, Kan.-based Koch Industries, the nation's second-largest private company (after the agribusiness giant Cargill). A spokeswoman for the subsidiary, Flint Hills Resources, said ...

Reuters: Europe's climate chief called on Friday for a major reform of the U.N.'s carbon crediting mechanism, including more money for the poorest countries as well as a number of new pilot projects. Connie Hedegaard said that U.N. talks in Cancun, Mexico, later this year should agree to reassure carbon markets that the current CDM mechanism would continue beyond 2012, when the first period of the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol climate treaty expires. "We want the CDM mechanism to be modernised, ...

Inter Press Service: Seen from up high, the route to Puente Inambari looks like a green serpent -- long, robust and sinuous. The Amazon jungle that dominates this landscape will be underwater if one of the largest hydroelectric dams in Peru (and all Latin America) is built. At Puente Inambari, the regions of Puno, Cuzco and Madre de Dios converge, in southeast Peru. Some 70 villages in these regions would have to be relocated if the Peruvian government approves the definitive concession to EGASUR ...

United Press International: A U.N. agency says the 2010 global wheat harvest is one of the largest ever but experts say a less stable climate will mean bigger food supply fluctuations. The United Nations reported a 5 percent rise in food prices in August, The New York Times said. Contributing factors included a Russian ban on wheat exports because drought has cut the harvest by 20 percent and flooding in Canada and Argentina. In Mozambique, 10 people died and 300 were hurt in recent riots at least partly ...

Age: TED Baillieu has committed a future Coalition government to ambitious cuts to Victoria's carbon emissions should he win at November's state election. The opposition has backed the government's target of reducing emissions by the 20 per cent of 2000 levels over the next decade, in stark contrast to the 5 per cent target of his federal Liberal counterpart Tony Abbott. Premier John Brumby announced the cut to greenhouse gas emissions during the recent federal election campaign, ...

Montreal Gazette: The mayor of Rosemont-Petite Patrie hopes a new bylaw requiring white roofs on homes and commercial buildings will make his borough the coolest in Montreal -literally. Francois Croteau says his proposed bylaw, which would require all new roofs in the borough to be white -or a colour or material that reflects rather than absorbs heat -makes environmental and economic sense for his constituents. "If in 20 years temperatures in Montreal are much hotter, and we wait until then to ...

ScotsMan: Investment in renewable energy and low carbon projects will help Scotland get out of the economic downturn, First Minister Alex Salmond has claimed. He also said Scotland's world-leading expertise and experience in financial services could help to fuel "green" growth during a speech in Aberdeen. The global low carbon economy was worth £3 billion in 2007/08 and is forecast to grow to £4.3by 2015. An estimated 60,000 green jobs could be created by 2020 in low carbon industries and ...

Independent: Since its establishment more than a decade ago, the reputation of the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) has been as spotless as the consciences of shoppers who buy fish bearing its blue "tick" logo in the expectation it has been sustainably caught. Until now. In a trenchant attack on the world's biggest certifier of ethical fish, a group of six marine experts have accused the MSC of giving in too readily to the demands of big trawler organisations and endorsing fisheries racked by ...

NPR: Bjorn Lomborg, the controversial Danish economist, has pushed his way back into the global warming debate with a book that proposes "smart solutions" to climate change. Those promised solutions rely heavily on R&D aimed at making clean energy cheap, rather than attempts to shut down dirty energy sources. Lomborg says his views haven't changed, but more people are willing to listen to him because international negotiations on limiting greenhouse emissions have accomplished so ...

New Scientist: The stalled weather pattern blamed for disastrous floods in Pakistan and a record heatwave in Russia may have averted disasters elsewhere by putting the North Atlantic hurricane season on hold. Forecasters had predicted that warm sea-surface temperatures and the onset of the weather pattern known as La Niña would make a busy Atlantic hurricane season this year. In June, Phil Klotzbach and William Gray of Colorado State University predicted 18 tropical storms, with 10 reaching ...

NYT: An oil rig caught fire in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday, forcing workers to dive overboard to escape the flames, and sending chills through a region just beginning to recover from one of the worst oil spills in history. For many, the images of smoke and flames engulfing the rig recalled the fire that sank the Deepwater Horizon rig back in April and set off an uncontrollable undersea oil leak that lasted for nearly three months. Yet despite some superficial resemblances to the ...

Reuters: Almost 50 nations made progress on Friday towards a "Green Fund" to help poor countries fight global warming but hosts Mexico and Switzerland said a full U.N. climate treaty was out of reach for 2010. Environment ministers and senior officials meeting in Geneva also examined how to raise a promised $100 billion a year in climate aid from 2020 -- perhaps from carbon markets, higher plane fares or taxes on shipping -- to be managed by the Fund. "We think we should be able to ...