Planetary Ruin

Just under half of China’s nearly 90,000 dams are dangerously unstable and need urgent repair, the government said on Tuesday, unveiling a three-year plan to do just that costing 27 billion yuan ($3.7 billion).

“Over the last several years, dams have had a very important effect on socio-economic development,” Deputy Water Resources Minister Jiao Yong told a meeting carried live on central government Web site www.gov.cn.

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PARIS (Reuters) – A French court is due to deliver a ruling on Wednesday on the 1999 sinking of the tanker Erika, a case in which oil giant Total is accused of responsibility for one of France’s worst environmental disasters.

Total, which chartered the tanker, has denied responsibility for a spill that poured 20,000 tons of toxic fuel oil into the sea, polluted 400 km (250 miles) of coastline and killed tens of thousands of sea birds.

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OSLO (Reuters) – Norway, which last year set what it called the world’s most ambitious target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, said on Thursday it aimed to go “carbon neutral” in 2030, which is 20 years earlier than its previous target.

The new target was set when the Labour-led coalition government reached agreement with three opposition parties to bring the goal forward from 2050.

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Water, our most basic need, is poised to be the most baffling challenge of the 21st century. It is being ignored wantonly at a time when more than 1 million people per year die from its scarcity and contamination. Children under age five account for at least 90 percent of water-related deaths. Meanwhile, economic productivity and educational opportunities are lost to illness, leaving millions more in an impoverished state even if they do survive their first five years of life.

Access to water is a human right. Yet that statement makes many people uncomfortable. Most in the developed world can hardly imagine water being anything more than a nominal expense that is easily drawn from a faucet. They think, “Surely it is a commodity to be bought and sold. It hardly costs anything, and it is even reusable, so what’s the big deal?”

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HONG KONG (Reuters) – Air pollution in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong increased markedly last year, with 27 major cities and counties suffering a record number of hazy days, Xinhua news agency said on Wednesday.

China’s industrial heartland of Guangdong, which borders Hong Kong, recorded an average of 75.7 days of haze in 2007, the highest level since the Communists came to power in 1949 and a “marked increase” over normal years, according to a new report released by Guangdong’s meteorological bureau, Xinhua said.

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An international team of scientists, led by Dr Edward Hanna at the University of Sheffield, has demonstrated that recent warm summers have caused the most extreme Greenland ice melting in 50 years. The new research provides further evidence of a key impact of global warming and helps scientists place recent satellite observations of Greenland’s shrinking ice mass in a longer-term climatic context.

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Plug-in hybrids – PHEVs – could revolutionize the impact cars have on the environment…if only they had the right battery.

General Motors, Toyota, and other auto manufacturers hope to put their first plug-ins on sales floors by the year 2010. When they do, all you’ll have to do is plug your vehicle into a regular 120-volt electrical socket, charge the car for several hours overnight, and drive away. You won’t need a single drop of gasoline! In fact, because electricity is cheaper than gasoline, the fuel cost is expected to be the equivalent of less than $1/gallon of gas.

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TROLL STATION, Antarctica (Reuters) – Atmospheric levels of the main greenhouse gas have set another new peak in a sign of the industrial rise of Asian economies led by China, a senior scientist said on Saturday.

“The levels already in January are higher than last year,” said Kim Holmen, research director of the Norwegian Polar Institute, during a visit to the Troll scientific research station in Antarctica by Norway’s Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.

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Finland insists the Nord Stream consortium conduct a thorough environmental impact study of an alternative, southern route for its planned gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea, the environment ministry said on Monday.

Nord Stream, majority owned by Russian gas export monopoly Gazprom, plans to start building the 1,200 km (750 mile) long gas pipeline from Russia to Germany in mid-2009 and begin deliveries in early 2011.

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HELSINKI (Reuters) – The European Commission will ask Finland to increase its renewable energy output by around a third to 38 percent in draft proposals to be unveiled next week, Finnish public broadcaster YLE said on Saturday.

The Commission is due to spell out on Wednesday how it intends to cut greenhouse gas emissions responsible for climate change, share out the burden of cuts in carbon dioxide (CO2) and increase the use of renewable energy sources.

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