Published on March 30th, 2008
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The top 10 headlines in international environmental news for the week of March 24 - 30.
1. World — Earth Hour 2008
As the clock struck eight in the evening, people across each time zone turned off their lights on March 29. It’s activism en mass and it’s called Earth Hour. The purpose: to inspire people to take action on climate change and to demonstrate that massive and immediate action is possible.
Earth Hour began as a city-wide voluntary blackout in Sydney, Australia, in 2007. This year, they’ve moved the date ahead two days and invited the world to join in. Even Google’s joined in. People from roughly 35 countries participated in this global event, which has become a yearly call to action. Read more: EcoWorldy, CNN.
2. Asia — Japanese Man Crosses Pacific with Wave-Powered Boat
A Japanese man named Kenichi Horie is attempting to be environmentally friendly by boating across the Pacific without sails and without fossil fuels.
How does he do it? With a wave-powered boat. Wave power has been discussed quite a bit recently, with a lot of applications including traditional grid energy generation. However, Kenichi is taking things to the next level by powering his ocean going vehicle with the very thing it bobs atop. Read more: Gas 2.0.
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Published on January 15th, 2008
Some environmentalists see palm oil, which makes up about one third of all vegetable oil, as a biodiesel blessing. Others blame palm biodiesel for deforestation and species extinction. The pros and cons make biodiesel one of the hottest environmental topics in Southeast Asia, where oil palms grow.
Together, the Southeast Asian countries of Indonesia and Malaysia control about 85% of the world’s crude palm oil market. In Indonesia, the biodiesel industry employs 1.5 million people and Malaysia has already approved 91 new biodiesel plants. Currently, about 30% of Malaysia’s total oil production is biodiesel from palm oil.
The pros of palm oil for use in biodiesel have drawn interest from the international business community. Finnish biodiesel mogul, Neste Oil, is working on opening the world’s largest biodiesel plant in Singapore using a palm oil feedstock. The plant is set to go online in 2009 with a production capacity of 800,000 metric tons per year of biodiesel–16,000 barrels, in oil terms. Neste is followed by many other companies, including Australian Mission Biofuels, which opened a new Malaysian plant in December and will produce 100,000 tons a year.
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Published on December 27th, 2007
The US decade-long boycott of international progress on climate change has finally come to an end. For ten years, the United States has sent diplomats to the United Nations Framework on Climate Change Conferences (UNFCCC) with the single goal of preventing progress.
At each meeting, US delegates historically demand that the convention abandon mandatory carbon emission caps and then make a big show of walking out of the convention when this doesn’t seem likely.
In Bali, it was starting to look like more of the same. With the US demanding that it be given weaker emissions targets than the other 186 countries at the table, time was running out and another stalemate looked likely. The scene was tense and in extreme frustration Yvo de Boer, UN Climate Chief, left the table in tears.
But finally the US felt the heat. Under intense pressure from the international community and US citizens themselves, the United States agreed to move ahead with the rest of the world. Read the rest of this entry »
