Planetary Ruin

The European Commission’s biggest-ever delegation to China heads for Beijing this week, hoping to progress from words to action on China’s soaring greenhouse gas emissions and its tense trade ties with Europe.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso will have to tread a careful line because he also intends to raise the handling of pro-independence unrest in Tibet and human rights in general in China in the meetings with the country’s leadership.

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PARIS (Reuters) – Major economies made progress in defining the building blocks of a new U.N. deal to fight climate change on Friday but ended split over whether to set a goal of halving world greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

The U.S.-led meeting of 17 nations accounting for 80 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, ended with common ground on sharing clean technologies, financing and possible sectoral emissions goals for industries such as steel or cement.

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Counties in the main U.S. petrochemical and driving hubs top the country’s output of the planet-warming gas carbon dioxide, emitting about three times more CO2 than the top county in New York does, researchers said on Thursday.

Harris County in Texas emitted more than 18.6 million tons of CO2 in 2002, the latest year for which data was available, according to Vulcan, a three-year project funded by NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy. The county is home to oil and natural gas plants and Houston, which has about 2 million people.

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Upon first glance you may think that a solar trash can is an extravagance municipalities can certainly do without, but perhaps we need to take a closer look. The BigBelly is a self-powered compacting trash receptacle. Instead of drawing electricity from the power grid this trash can uses solar power for 100% of its energy. From the company: “The unit takes up as much space as the ”˜footprint’ of an ordinary receptacle—but its capacity is five times greater. Increased capacity reduces collection trips and can cut fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions by 80%. BigBelly also provides cost efficiencies from labor savings, fuel cost and maintenance savings, as well as environmental benefits from reduced emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants.”

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A controversial, estrogen-like chemical in plastic could be harming the development of children’s brains and reproductive organs, a federal health agency concluded in a report released Tuesday.

The National Toxicology Program, part of the National Institutes of Health, concluded that there was “some concern” that fetuses, babies and children were in danger because bisphenol A, or BPA, harmed animals at low levels found in nearly all human bodies.

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PARIS (Reuters) – The world needs tougher action to combat global warming than a plan by President George W. Bush to halt a rise in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions only by 2025, delegates at a climate conference in Paris said on Thursday.

South Africa, one of 17 nations at the two-day global warming talks that started on Thursday, called Bush’s proposals “disappointing” and unambitious when many other industrialized economies are already cutting emissions.

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Wayne, N.J.—Changing your car’s motor oil is an important part of maintaining engine protection and performance. However, Earth911.com states most people do not realize that what is done after the oil change is just as important. With National Car Care month and Earth Week approaching in April, Castrol and Earth911.com are making sure the potential environmental impact of automotive maintenance is top of mind for car owners nationwide.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President George W. Bush plans to announce on Wednesday an intermediate goal to limit greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, but will not make specific proposals, the White House said on Tuesday.

Bush will “articulate a realistic intermediate goal for reducing greenhouse gasses” and press for incentives for technology aimed at cutting emissions, said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino.

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OSLO (Reuters) – The world’s top greenhouse gas emitters meet in Paris this week to work out ways to slow global warming with uncertainty about whether the U.S.-backed talks will help or hinder plans for a new U.N. climate treaty.

Washington says the April 17-18 meeting, with a workshop on sectoral industrial greenhouse targets on Wednesday, is a step towards agreement by the end of 2008 on curbs by countries that emit 80 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases.

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A new approach is able to create a dramatic improvement in cheap solar cells now being developed in laboratories.

By using a popcorn-ball design — tiny kernels clumped into much larger porous spheres — researchers at the University of Washington are able to manipulate light and more than double the efficiency of converting solar energy to electricity. The findings were presented in New Orleans at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society April 10.

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