div class="track"img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.24.1.1/36279?ns=guardianpageName=France+plans+to+revive+EU+carbon+tariff%3AArticle%3A1747607ch=Environmentc3=GU.co.ukc4=Environment%2CFrance%2CWorld+news%2CEurope+%28News%29%2CCarbon+emissions+%28Environment%29%2CClimate+change+%28Environment%29%2CEmissions+trading+%28Environment%29%2CCarbon+tax+%28environment%29c5=Unclassified%2CClimate+Change%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CEthical+Livingc6=Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric+Simon+for+%3Ca+href%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.euractiv.com%2Fen%2Fclimate-environment%22%3EEurActiv%3C%2Fa%3E%2C+part+of+the+%3Ca+href%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Fenvironment%2Fnetwork%22+title%3D%22Guardian+Environment+Network%22%3EGuardian+Environment+Network%3C%2Fa%3Ec7=12-May-18c8=1747607c9=Articlec10=Newsc11=Environmentc13=Guardian+Environment+Network+%28series%29c25=c30=contentc42=Environmenth2=GU%2FEnvironment%2FEnvironment%2FFrance" width="1" height="1" //divp class="standfirst"Minister of Industrial Renewal weighs up long-standing idea of carbon tax on goods imported from outside Europe/ppArnaud Montebourg, the newly-appointed French minister for "industrial revival" who has built a reputation for his fierce attacks against globalisation, has promised to revive old plans by Nicolas Sarkzoy for a carbon tariff at the EU's borders, an idea previously rejected as protectionist among France's European partners./pp"We must demand reciprocity," Montebourg told French public television during his a href="http://www.francetv.fr/info/montebourg-notre-responsabilite-est-de-reorienter-la-commande-publique-vers-nos-pme_96159.html"first interview as minister/a, saying he will revive plans for a carbon tariff at the EU's borders to protect local industry from unfair competition./pp"This is an external tax," he explained when asked whether this would mean imposing tariffs on products imported from China, where industries are not subject to CO2 emission limits./ppThe plan was "already on the agenda of the European Commission," Montebourg claimed./ppBrussels indeed floated the idea in 2008 when it presented its climate change and energy package of legislation. Joseacute; Manuel Barroso, Commission president, said China and other exporting countries with lax climate policies could be forced to buy EU pollution permits if they want to trade with Europe./ppBut the idea gained few supporters. a href="http://www.euractiv.com/climate-change/britain-us-arms-eu-carbon-tax/article-169790"UK officials immediately responded/a saying they would fight any move to impose a 'carbon tax' on imports from non-EU countries./ppa href="http://www.euractiv.com/climate-environment/italy-joins-french-calls-for-eu-carbon-tariff-news-450643"Only Italy/a has officially supported the idea while Germany, a href="http://www.euractiv.com/en/climate-change/france-germany-call-eu-border-tax-co2/article-185580"which had initially backed it/a, later showed hesitation overa href="http://www.euractiv.com/climate-environment/france-renew-calls-eu-carbon-tariff-news-290621"nbsp;fears it could lead to a trade war/a that would damage its export-dependent economy. Matthias Machnig, a former German environment minister, famously called the French idea "a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/07/24/us-germany-tariffs-idUSTRE56N1RJ20090724"eco imperialism/a"./ppThe Commission since retracted its plans, with Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht taking a firm position against carbon tariffs on the grounds that it a href="http://www.euractiv.com/en/climate-environment/eu-trade-chief-designate-rejects-carbon-border-tariffs/article-188796"could trigger a trade war with China/a, a concern echoed by the EU's climate action commissioner, Connie Hedegaard./ppThe idea, in fact, is hardly new. Former French President Nicolas Sarkozynbsp;campaigned for safeguards to prevent industries from relocating abroad due to the EU's stringent climate rules, a href="http://www.euractiv.com/climate-change/sarkozy-renews-pressure-co2-border-tax/article-185387"calling for a CO2 border tariff in 2009/a, ahead of the Copenhagen climate summit./ppSweden, which held the rotating EU presidency at the time, rejected the idea, saying it would undermine Europe's negotiating position in Copenhagen./ppa href="http://www.euractiv.com/climate-environment/france-details-plans-carbon-inclusion-mechanism-news-494220"France tried pushing the issue back on the agenda after the failure of the Copenhagen climate summit/a, arguing that the measure could be used only as a last resort and serve as a lever to force emerging economies like China, India and Brazil back on the negotiating table./ppIn a rare move, the French Permanent Representation to the EU in Brussels circulated a detailed a href="http://www.euractiv.com/sites/all/euractiv/files/climat%20-%20MIC%20-%20version%20anglaise%20%282%29.pdf"briefing note/anbsp;explaining how the system would work./ppRebranded the 'carbon inclusion mechanism', the schemenbsp;would require importers of goods manufactured outside Europe to buy pollution permits from the EU's emissions trading scheme for carbon dioxide (EU-ETS)./ppEmerging economies would be offered a partnership covering industrial sectors such as steelmaking, aluminium and cement which suffer the most from foreign competition linked to the EU's environmental rules. Those that sign up to the agreement would win access to low-carbon technologies and an exemption from the ETS. Those that do not would have to pay for the equivalent EU pollution permits./ppTo prove the proposal is not intended as a protectionist measure, Paris even said the money could be reserved to fund low-carbon technologies in developing countries./ppWhether Montebourg will prove more successful than Sarkozy in pushing those ideas at the EU level remains to be seen./ppIn his TV interview, the newly-appointed minister expressed confidence that mind sets were changing in Europe following the financial and sovereign debt crises./ppThe European Commission indeed seemly bowed to French pressure, when it a href="http://www.euractiv.com/innovation-enterprise/brussels-seeks-reciprocity-trade-deals-news-511665"tabled plans earlier this year requesting "reciprocity" in trade deals/a with foreign nations such as China./pp"The European Union will have to revise its totally liberal doctrine which is to say that it is forbidden to favour local industry," Montebourg said./pdiv class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/france"France/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/europe-news"Europe/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/carbon-emissions"Carbon emissions/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change"Climate change/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/emissionstrading"Emissions trading/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/carbon-tax"Carbon tax/a/li/ul/divbr/div class="terms"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds"More Feeds/a/divp style="clear:both" / pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/N5xZTHhaAFPuvN-jvFT2x03GVrc/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/N5xZTHhaAFPuvN-jvFT2x03GVrc/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/N5xZTHhaAFPuvN-jvFT2x03GVrc/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/N5xZTHhaAFPuvN-jvFT2x03GVrc/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

div class="track"img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.24.1.1/49659?ns=guardianpageName=Flash+floods+are+on+the+rise%2C+while+the+budget+to+tackle+them+sinks+%7C+Bo%3AArticle%3A1747479ch=Environmentc3=GU.co.ukc4=Flooding+%28Environment%29%2CClimate+change+%28Environment%29%2CNatural+disasters+and+extreme+weather+%28News%29%2CUK+news%2CEnvironment%2CWorld+news%2CClimate+change+%28Science%29%2CScience%2CLondon+School+of+Economics%2CPhotography+%28Art+and+design%29%2CMeteorologyc5=Not+commercially+useful%2CClimate+Change%2CEthical+Living%2CHigher+Education%2CCharities%2CPhotographyc6=Bob+Wardc7=12-May-18c8=1747479c9=Articlec10=Blogpostc11=Environmentc13=c25=Environment+blogc30=contentc42=Environmenth2=GU%2FEnvironment%2FEnvironment%2FFlooding" width="1" height="1" //divp class="standfirst"The Environment Agency has warned the UK to expect more floods but its advice seems to be falling on deaf ears/ppA moving a href="http://www.somersethouse.org.uk/visual-arts/world-stages-london/drowning-world" title=""new exhibition of photographs at Somerset House/a shows the human impact of flooding around the world over the past five years and provides an insight into how climate change may already be disrupting lives and livelihoods./ppThe images from major flooding events in the UK, Pakistan, Australia and Thailand feature victims and survivors as they cope with the inundation of their homes and the aftermath. The photographer, Gideon Mendel, a href="http://gideonmendel.com/drowningworld/" title=""says his intention is "to depict them as individuals/a, not as nameless statistics". He adds: "Coming from disparate parts of the world, their faces show us their linked vulnerability despite the vast differences in their lives and circumstances."/ppOne of the most striking exhibits shows Margaret Clegg standing knee-deep in water in the living room of her house in Toll Bar, Doncaster, which was flooded when the River Don overtopped its banks in June 2007, following a record downpour./ppIt is not clear to what extent, if any, climate change contributed to the occurrence or intensity of the summer 2007 floods in England and Northern Ireland, which cost the UK economy more than £3bn. A single extreme weather event cannot be definitely attributed to climate change, the influence of which can only be detected and measured through the analysis of statistical trends looking back over many decades. That means we will not be certain for many years to come about how flood risk is being affected./ppWe know from basic physics that a warmer atmosphere can become more humid and holds more water vapour, theoretically increasing by about 7% for every extra centigrade degree. As a result climate change is expected to increase the intensity of the water cycle in many parts of the world, causing both more droughts and more floods./ppa href="http://ukclimateprojections.defra.gov.uk/media.jsp?mediaid=87933filetype=pdf" title=""An analysis/a of UK weather trends between 1961 and 2006, during which the average temperature increased by about one centigrade degree, indicated that although our winters have not become significantly wetter, the number and severity of heavy rainfall events has increased. Meanwhile, summers have become drier and heavy summer downpours have decreased in all parts of the UK, except in north-east England, where some of the 2007 flooding occurred, and north Scotland./ppClimate change is expected to increase the risk of flooding in many parts of the UK. a href="http://ukclimateprojections.defra.gov.uk/media.jsp?mediaid=87868filetype=pdf" title=""Projections published by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) in 2009/a suggested that, under a "medium emissions scenario", overall winter precipitation should be higher in the 2080s, while summer rainfall should generally be lower, particularly in the south./ppThe UK climate change risk assessment, a href="http://www.defra.gov.uk/publications/files/pb13698-climate-risk-assessment.pdf" title=""published by Defra earlier this year/a, calculated that these potential trends mean the annual damage from coastal and river flooding in England and Wales could increase from about £1.2bn today a href="http://randd.defra.gov.uk/Document.aspx?Document=CCRAfortheFloodsandCoastalErosionSector.pdf" title=""to as much as £12bn/a in the worst case scenario over the next 80 years./ppSuch an increase in the risk of damage would have major consequences, not least in terms of the affordability and availability of flood insurance for homes and businesses. Indeed, a crisis is already approaching, with a href="http://www.abi.org.uk/Media/Releases/2012/01/FROM_ABERCONWY_TO_YORK_BOSTON_TO_WINDSOR__ABI_HIGHLIGHTS_THE_SERIOUS_FLOOD_RISK_FACING_COMMUNITIES_IN_ENGLAND_AND_WALES.aspx" title=""insurers warning/a that from next year they may not continue to offer cover for 200,000 high-risk properties, exposed to a greater than 1 in 75 annual risk of flooding./ppUnder a href="http://www.abi.org.uk/content/contentfilemanager.aspx?contentid=24982" title=""an arrangement dating from 2000/a, insurance companies have subsidised flood cover for those in high-risk properties in return for greater government investment in coastal and river defences./ppAt present, the Environment Agency is responsible for building and maintaining these defences. The agency has told the government it needs to increase its annual flood risk management budget by 9% by 2014-15. However, the a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmpubacc/1659/165903.htm" title=""House of Commons public accounts committee has highlighted/a government plans to reduce the agency's flood risk funding by 10% over this period, and to shift more responsibility on to local authorities, even though their overall budgets are shrinking./ppPerhaps even more worrying is the neglect of the risk of flash flooding, caused by heavy downpours from often very localised storms that can inundate poorly drained areas, particularly in cities. Of the six million properties in the UK that are currently exposed to some degree of flood risk, four million are threatened by surface water flooding./ppYet when the a href="http://www.defra.gov.uk/publications/files/pb13698-climate-risk-assessment.pdf" title=""climate change risk assessment/a, upon which the government is basing its national adaptation plan, was published earlier this year, scientists warned that it was flawed because it had neglected possible future changes in flash flooding and other important threats./ppThe assessment a href="http://randd.defra.gov.uk/Document.aspx?Document=CCRAfortheFloodsandCoastalErosionSector.pdf" title=""stated/a: "Whilst the number of properties at risk from surface water flooding is similar to the number at risk from tidal and river flooding, suitable information for analysis were not available at the time of writing this report."/ppIn his official review of the assessment, Prof Martin Parry of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College a href="http://randd.defra.gov.uk/Document.aspx?Document=Peerreviewercomments.pdf" title=""expressed/a "concern that the risks identified do not necessarily represent the full range of potential risks, and the metrics were selected not on the basis of importance but on the availability of evidence". However, Defra ignored his advice, surprisingly admitting that "the risks provided in this report are not intended to be a full range of risks"./ppThis lack of attention to flash flooding could make it much more difficult to implement an important part of the government's national planning policy framework, a href="http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/planningandbuilding/pdf/2116950.pdf" title=""which states/a that local plans "should apply a sequential, risk-based approach to the location of development to avoid where possible flood risk to people and property and manage any residual risk, taking account of the impacts of climate change"./ppThe likely increase in the risk of flooding is just one of the many ways in which unmitigated climate change will significantly affect homes and businesses, and will create larger societal and economic costs for the UK. These serious long-term impacts are often overlooked by those who complain about the cost of reducing emissions of greenhouse gases to limit the future impacts of climate change, yet they are just as important./pp/pp• Bob Ward is policy and communications director at the a href="http://www.lse.ac.uk/grantham" title=""Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment/a at the London School of Economics and Political Science. The a href="http://www.somersethouse.org.uk/visual-arts/world-stages-london/drowning-world" title=""Drowning World/a exhibition is showing at Somerset House until 5 June./pdiv class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/flooding"Flooding/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change"Climate change/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/natural-disasters"Natural disasters and extreme weather/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/scienceofclimatechange"Climate change/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/londonschoolofeconomics"London School of Economics and Political Science/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/photography"Photography/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/meteorology"Meteorology/a/li/ul/divdiv class="author"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/bob-ward"Bob Ward/a/divbr/div class="terms"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds"More Feeds/a/divp style="clear:both" / pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/ZFI7Dax8BmdfO9_Xk4-B_ytry5Y/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/ZFI7Dax8BmdfO9_Xk4-B_ytry5Y/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/ZFI7Dax8BmdfO9_Xk4-B_ytry5Y/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/ZFI7Dax8BmdfO9_Xk4-B_ytry5Y/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

div class="track"img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.24.1.1/752?ns=guardianpageName=Will+3D+printers+make+food+sustainable%3F%3AArticle%3A1747274ch=Environmentc3=GU.co.ukc4=Environment%2CFood+%28impact+of+production+on+environment%29%2CClimate+change+%28Environment%29%2CTravel+and+transport+environmental+impactc5=Climate+Change%2CEthical+Living%2CFood+and+Drinkc6=Andrew+Purvis+for+%3Ca+href%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.forumforthefuture.org.uk%2Fgreenfutures%2F%22%3EGreen+Futures%3C%2Fa%3E%2C+part+of+the+%3Ca+href%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Fenvironment%2Fseries%2Fguardian-environment-network%22%3EGuardian+Environment+Network%3C%2Fa%3Ec7=12-May-18c8=1747274c9=Articlec10=Featurec11=Environmentc13=Guardian+Environment+Network+%28series%29c25=c30=contentc42=Environmenth2=GU%2FEnvironment%2FEnvironment%2FFood" width="1" height="1" //divp class="standfirst"Andrew Purvis investigates whether 3D printers, artificial meat and GM can reduce food's future environmental footprint/ppBefore the end of the year, if Professor Mark Post of Maastricht University gets his way, the world's first test-tube burger will be flame-grilled by Heston Blumenthal at The Fat Duck in Bray and served to a celebrity guest. Meals at this restaurant don't come cheap, but this one will be the climax of a euro;250,000 research project ndash; and a milestone in Post's quest to find new ways of feeding the world, without destroying the planet./ppHis petri-dish patty will be made from a mixture of fat and cow muscle grown from stem cells in a culture of foetal calf serum (that's blood plasma without the clotting agents) ndash; a technology trialled in February. It may sound less appetising than a Big Mac ndash; but it could bring huge environmental benefits. Producing beef this way results in a 96% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared to rearing animals, and uses 45% of the energy, 1% of the land and 4% of the water associated with conventional beef production./ppMeanwhile, at Cornell University in New York, PhD candidate Jeffrey Lipton has developed a 3D food printer that lays down liquid versions of foods, dot by dot and layer by layer, to build up edible meals. "So far we have printed everything from chocolate, cheese and hummus to scallops, turkey and celery", he says. At present, the technology uses liquid or melted versions of conventionally produced ingredients, but the aim is to create a range of 'food inks' made from hydrocolloids ndash; substances that form gels with water. Homaru Cantu, a chef who has used the printer to make sushi, thinks this could have big implications for sustainability, not least because there would be no prepping of fresh ingredients, and therefore no food waste. "Imagine", he says, "being able to grow, cook or prepare foods without the negative industrial impact ndash; from fertilisers to packaging. The production chain for food would nearly be eliminated."/ppIt's a brave new world of scientific endeavour, but are these technologies sustainable? Will they deliver food that is better for us, produced at lower cost to the environment, and distributed more efficiently or traded more equitably? As Western-style diets become more popular in growing economies, can they help us meet demand without further depleting our resources? And on a practical note, can they be scaled up in an affordable way ndash; enough to make a real difference?/pp"Technologically, it will be possible to replace all conventional meat production with cultured meat", says Hanna Tuomisto, the Oxford University researcher who analysed the environmental benefits of Post's method. "However, there are political, funding and regulatory issues. Livestock farmers don't like it because it threatens their jobs, but we're not going to get rid of all conventional production overnight. Global demand for meat is rising all the time, so this cultured meat might help satisfy only that additional demand."/ppDr Lipton's food printer could also go global; he believes it will become as commonplace in kitchens as the food mixer. Kathy Groves, a consultant microscopist at a href="http://www.leatherheadfood.com/"Leatherhead Food Research/a in Surrey, can see the appeal. "It would save us an awful lot of hassle in product innovation, manufacture and troubleshooting", she says. "It's efficient, and you get a consistent product ndash; but food is nicely variable, that's the point, so I'm not sure it will take off./ppIn her view, the advance most relevant to sustainable development is nanotechnology ndash; using tiny particles, less than a billionth of a metre across, to engineer everything from packaging and agrochemicals to health foods. In Germany, the RD firm a href="http://www.aquanova.de/"Aquanova/a has developed a nano-based carrier system, called NovaSOL, for introducing nutrients into foods and drinks in a way that makes them more absorbable. Chemical company a href="http://www.basf.co.uk/ecp1/UK_Ireland/en/"BASF/a is doing the same with lycopene from tomatoes, known to combat cancer. In Australia, 'micro-encapsulation' ndash; surrounding tiny particles or droplets with a coating ndash; has been used to mask the taste and odour of tuna fish oil added to the 'UP' bread range sold by brand Tip Top, boosting omega-3 intake./ppBut where nanotechnology has the biggest potential, Groves reckons, isn't in nutritional benefits, but in 'smart' packaging that promises to cut food waste. The packaging changes colour when food deteriorates, taking the guesswork out of shelf life. Smarter still is a label with an invisible X printed in a nano-silver compound. "When food, especially meat, starts to deteriorate due to microbial activity, hydrogen sulphide is released", says Dr Qasim Chaudhry, Principal Research Scientist at the Food and Environment Research Agency. "This reacts with silver and the X becomes visible." The a href="http://www.wrap.org.uk/"Waste and Resources Action Programme/a (WRAP) estimates that 800,000 tonnes of food, worth pound;2 billion, is thrown away in Britain each year in the mistaken belief that it has gone off. Smart labelling could prevent that./ppEqually promising are nano-formulated pesticides and fertilisers which could, paradoxically, reduce pollution. Nano-sized particles have a much larger surface area, per weight equivalent, than conventional materials, making then more reactive. "You need less, and a smaller amount [of agrochemical] can cover a much larger area", Chaudhry says. Similarly, nano-sized additives in animal feed could improve the absorption of mineral supplements such as copper and zinc, meaning less would be excreted to pollute land and water./ppOne drawback is uncertainty over safety. "Relatively little is known about the way nanomaterials behave when ingested as food", says Dr Sandy Lawrie, Head of Novel Foods at the Food Standards Agency. "Nano-forms of a given substance may behave differently to other, larger forms of the same thing." Before products could be marketed in the EU, they would have to undergo a thorough safety assessment on a case-by-case basis ndash; though materials in packaging, which do not migrate into food, would be treated more leniently./ppAnother drawback is the likelihood of public opposition, as with genetic modification (GM). Research carried out by the Food Standards Agency in 2010-11 showed that people are more accepting of nano-foods with a clear health benefit than they are of applications such as improving texture or flavour, which they see as trivial./ppHowever, it is the tried and tested methods of plant genetics and husbandry, practised over centuries, which have paid most dividends for the environment. At the a href="http://www.niab.com/"National Institute of Agricultural Botany/a (NIAB), trait identification work and 'pre-breeding' (incorporating those traits into new breeding materials) have produced a wheat variety that flowers earlier in the year. This means grain takes root when there is moisture around ndash; a boon in drier, warmer climates, and potentially in Britain, too, where drought could spell disaster for farmers this summer./ppTrials conducted with the a href="http://www.jic.ac.uk/corporate/index.htm"John Innes Centre/a in Norwich have shown the benefits. "They are significant", says Ros Lloyd of NIAB, "delivering yield increases of up to 33% in southern Europe" ndash; with a corresponding decrease in GHG emissions per tonne. Since the 1960s, wheat yields have risen from 1,400kg to 6,000kg per hectare, even without GM. "It's very important," Lloyd says, "that we improve awareness among policy-makers, researchers, agri-food businesses and consumers of the enormous benefits on offer from harnessing [through innovative breeding programmes] the genetic potential of plants."/ppCertainly, no innovative approach to the future of our food will reach any scale without successful campaigns to engage everyone from policy-makers to consumers. For Dan Crossley, an expert on sustainable food systems at Forum for the Future, the risk is that some technologies erode the value of food and make people even more disconnected from their dinner. "We shouldn't underestimate the power of vibrant food cultures", he says. "I'm very open to the idea that some of our ingredients might come from Petri dishes or printers in the future, but I'd shy away from believing these sorts of technologies will solve our global food crisis on their own. That's why I'd like to see technology used to emreconnect/em people with what they eat."/ppThis is exactly what Ed Dowding has set out to do with a href="http://www.sustaination.co.uk/"Sustaination/a ndash; a web and smartphone platform that puts producers in touch with local buyers. To his mind, "If lots of change is necessary, the one thing everyone is going to need is information." Dowding's idea is to build up a network of growers, distributors and community centres based on a local hub model. "We have a browsable map", he explains, "so you can see not only who a business trades with, but who [their] connections trade with as well."/ppThe efficiency gains will be impressive, with more food going where it's wanted, and less waste all along the supply chain. Add open sourcing (so that people can share their top finds), live status updates ('I'm cropping 20kg of peppers this week, at pound;1 a kilo') and fair market prices ndash; based on data, not guesswork ndash; and it's a potent tool for getting fresh, locally grown food on the shelf and the table. Which may well be one of the most appetising items on our future menu./ph2Try these at home/h2pAnyone who's failed to keep a basil plant alive by a kitchen window will know the challenges of indoor gardening. Urban homes just don't seem well suited to growing food, but two low-tech, yet innovative, ideas aim to solve that problem.br / br /a href="http://www.windowfarms.org/"Windowfarms/a, which raised $250,000 on a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/windowfarms/learn-to-grow-and-share-with-new-windowfarms"Kickstarter/a, is a hydroponic system you can install at home. Plants are stacked vertically by windows in recycled plastic bottles, while a pump circulates nutrients directly to their roots, which are suspended in clay. The system is automated, and so your basil faces much better odds of becoming pesto.br / br /Windowfarms kits are available to buy from $99, but plans to help you build your own are also freely available. That's because Windowfarms is also an experiment in open-source research and development.br / br /Dubbed 'RD-I-Y', the Windowfarms design evolves through versions, which feature contributions from a community of more than 28,000 globally. Much like software, this crowd-sourced approach rapidly increases the rate at which the design improves through innovation and testing.br / br /The community itself is self-organising, and encourages testing of others' ideas. As Britta Riley, Founder of Windowfarms, says in her talk to the TEDx Manhattan conference: "In our culture, it is better to be a tester who supports someone else's idea than it is to be just the idea guy."br / br /That said, being 'the idea guys' hasn't gone badly for former UC Berkley students Alex Velez and Nikhil Arora, who developed a way to grow (edible) mushrooms from waste coffee grounds. Their business, a href="http://www.backtotheroots.com/"Back to the Roots/a, collects waste from coffee shops and then sells kits to grow these mushrooms at home. Each $20 kit can produce up to one and a half pounds of gourmet mushrooms.br / br /The secondary waste created by producing these kits ndash; a mix of coffee grounds and mushroom roots ndash; has value of its own, as Velez and Arora discovered when they tried to give away their increasing piles of it on Craigslist. On quizzing recipients on their need for this 'waste', Back to the Roots discovered it could be used as a high-quality soil enhancer, so they now sell that, too. One source of 'waste' has become two valuable products. strongndash; Michael Ashcroft/strong/pdiv class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/food"Food/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change"Climate change/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/travel-and-transport"Travel and transport/a/li/ul/divbr/div class="terms"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds"More Feeds/a/divp style="clear:both" / pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/jYGtFrs-LbxbQyla6umVwoPGUl8/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/jYGtFrs-LbxbQyla6umVwoPGUl8/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/jYGtFrs-LbxbQyla6umVwoPGUl8/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/jYGtFrs-LbxbQyla6umVwoPGUl8/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

pThe government should do more to help green industries boost economic growth, says foreign minister in letter to prime minister/pbr/p style="clear:both" / pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/zMthqmxfYCjycQdVbDRJYe-TZzs/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/zMthqmxfYCjycQdVbDRJYe-TZzs/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/zMthqmxfYCjycQdVbDRJYe-TZzs/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/zMthqmxfYCjycQdVbDRJYe-TZzs/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

div class="track"img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.24.1.1/4332?ns=guardianpageName=Canada+axes+green+advisory+body%3AArticle%3A1747111ch=Environmentc3=GU.co.ukc4=Climate+change+%28Environment%29%2CCanada+%28News%29%2CEnvironment%2CAmericas+%28News%29%2CWorld+news%2CCarbon+tax+%28environment%29%2CCarbon+emissions+%28Environment%29c5=Unclassified%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CClimate+Change%2CEthical+Living%2CNorth+America+Travelc6=Felix+von+Geyer%2C+in+Montrealc7=12-May-17c8=1747111c9=Articlec10=Newsc11=Environmentc13=c25=c30=contentc42=Environmenth2=GU%2FEnvironment%2FEnvironment%2FClimate+change" width="1" height="1" //divp class="standfirst"The Canadian government is to mark the 25th anniversary of its green business advisers by shutting the agency down/ppThe Canadian government is to mark the 25th anniversary of its green business advisers by closing the agency down./ppJohn Baird, Canada's foreign affairs minister and pointman for next month's Rio+20 Earth summit in Brazil, said this week that the a href="http://nrtee-trnee.ca/" title=""National Roundtable for the Environment and Economy (NRTEE)/a would have its funding cut in 2013 because of the availability of information from thinktanks, the internet and universities./ppBaird told reporters that Canadian taxpayers should not have to pay for an organisation that has produced 10 reports promoting a carbon tax – "something that the people of Canada have repeatedly rejected"./pp"But that's not correct," the Roundtable's CEO, David McLaughlin, told the Guardian on Thursday, adding that it had never advocated a carbon tax but had looked at cap and trade for regulating Canada's greenhouse gas emissions in a 2009 report commissioned by the government. "Which was government policy at the time," said McLaughlin./ppMcLaughlin, a former chief of staff to federal finance minister Jim Flaherty, stressed there was always original analysis in its reports, making available information that would not otherwise be in the public domain. McLaughlin also pointed to the Roundtable's ability to combine research while convening people from industry as well as the environmental sector together./ppOnly on Wednesday the NRTEE provided an environmental life cycle analysis commissioned by the federal environment minister, Peter Kent, and a climate change report is due out next month that will look at provincial emissions reduction plans./ppThe C$5.2 million funding for the NRTEE will cease as of 31 March next year under a wide-ranging omnibus budget bill C-38 that is currently before Canada's House of Commons. The legislation seeks to speed up natural resources projects such as oil and gas pipelines, and repeal the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act./pdiv class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change"Climate change/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/canada"Canada/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/americas"Americas/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/carbon-tax"Carbon tax/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/carbon-emissions"Carbon emissions/a/li/ul/divbr/div class="terms"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds"More Feeds/a/divp style="clear:both" / pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/n3XepVVlGAr1PLfTk8mc3_HRheU/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/n3XepVVlGAr1PLfTk8mc3_HRheU/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/n3XepVVlGAr1PLfTk8mc3_HRheU/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/n3XepVVlGAr1PLfTk8mc3_HRheU/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

div class="track"img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.24.1.1/52296?ns=guardianpageName=Don%27t+dismiss+geoengineering+*+we+may+need+it+one+day+%7C+James+Wilsdon%3AArticle%3A1746853ch=Environmentc3=GU.co.ukc4=Geoengineering+%28environment%29%2CClimate+change+%28Environment%29%2CMeteorology%2CEnvironment%2CHigher+education+%28Universities+etc.%29%2CEducation%2CScience%2CClimate+change+%28Science%29%2CClimate+change+scepticism+%28environment%29%2CSussex+Universityc5=Not+commercially+useful%2CClimate+Change%2CEducation+Weekly+Education%2CEnergy%2CEthical+Living%2CHigher+Educationc6=James+Wilsdonc7=12-May-17c8=1746853c9=Articlec10=Blogpostc11=Environmentc13=c25=Environment+blogc30=contentc42=Environmenth2=GU%2FEnvironment%2FEnvironment%2FGeoengineering" width="1" height="1" //divp class="standfirst"Though the Spice project has been dealt a blow, more research is needed to assess our options for mitigating global warming/ppOpponents of geoengineering will no doubt seize upon a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/may/16/geoengineering-experiment-cancelled" title=""this week's cancellation of the fieldwork element of the Spice project/a as a significant victory in their campaign to outlaw research in this area. There are important lessons to draw from the problems encountered by the project, which planned to investigate the feasibility of spraying particles into the stratosphere to mitigate global warming. But a hastily imposed moratorium on geoengineering research is not one of them./ppAs a href="http://royalsociety.org/policy/publications/2009/geoengineering-climate/" title=""the Royal Society argued in its influential 2009 report/a, more research is needed if we are to assess the feasibility, risks and uncertainties of different geoengineering options. This research needs to be carried out in a safe, transparent and socially responsible way. But without more knowledge of what might be involved, the dilemmas of geoengineering will remain impossible to debate and resolve./ppa href="http://www2.eng.cam.ac.uk/~hemh/SPICE/SPICE.htm" title=""Spice, which stands for Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering/a, involves a team of scientists from several UK universities. Their proposed experiment was environmentally benign, and involved using a hose to pump two bath loads of water into the atmosphere over a deserted field. But this didn't stop a href="http://www.etcgroup.org/en/node/5280" title=""one environmental group from dubbing it a "trojan hose"/a, for moving the world one step closer to large-scale deployment of geoengineering./ppThis element of the Spice project has now been cancelled, but the rest of the research will continue as planned. Jack Stilgoe, a social scientist at Exeter University who has been working with the Spice team, notes that: "Spice was always going to be a social experiment as well as a scientific one." As the work moves cautiously forward, two lessons stand out for the future of geoengineering research./ppFirst, the role of intellectual property and the private sector in geoengineering needs attention, and may need direct regulation. The project was set up in line with the a href="http://www.geoengineering.ox.ac.uk/oxford-principles/principles/" title="""Oxford Principles" of geoengineering/a, which state that it should be treated as a public good. Other prominent scientists working in the field, such as David Keith at Harvard University, a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=researcher-ban-patents-on-geoengineering-technologypage=1" title=""have argued that patents for techniques of solar radiation management should be banned/a./ppBut this model, however ideal, is already under strain. The problems with Spice arose in part from conflicts of interest over a patent application filed by a private consultant, Peter Davidson, who participated in an early workshop that gave rise to the project. Matt Watson, the lead researcher on Spice a href="http://thereluctantgeoengineer.blogspot.de/2012/05/testbed-news.html" title=""writes in his blog that/a: "The details of this application were only reported to the project team a year into the project and caused many members, including me, significant discomfort." Regulators need to look at this issue with some urgency and design frameworks that allow responsible research to proceed, while ensuring that any resulting technologies stay in the public domain, protected from commercial interests./ppSecond, scientific and environmental bodies need to intensify efforts to establish better frameworks for the governance of geoengineering. Projects like the a href="http://www.srmgi.org/" title=""Solar Radiation Management Governance Initiative/a have made a strong start in this regard. Colleagues at my own university, Sussex, are involved in a href="http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/news/201205-news-GeoengineeingGrant" title=""a new Oxford University-led project/a that aims to build on these initial efforts./ppHowever much we may recoil at the prospect, if the world refuses to respond to climate change with sufficient urgency, geoengineering may one day be needed. The worst outcome would be for it to be deployed in unregulated or reckless ways by corporations or individual nations. Responsible research, ethical reflection and careful regulation must go hand-in-hand as we move reluctantly down this path./pp/pp• a href="http://twitter.com/jameswilsdon" title=""James Wilsdon/a is professor of science and democracy at SPRU (Science Technology Policy Research) at the University of Sussex. From 2008-2011, he was director of science policy at the Royal Society./pdiv class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/geoengineering"Geoengineering/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change"Climate change/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/meteorology"Meteorology/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/higher-education"Higher education/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/scienceofclimatechange"Climate change/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change-scepticism"Climate change scepticism/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/universityofsussex"University of Sussex/a/li/ul/divbr/div class="terms"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds"More Feeds/a/divp style="clear:both" / pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/xlhsClhBemFpuiLfqWoCEmDiByw/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/xlhsClhBemFpuiLfqWoCEmDiByw/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/xlhsClhBemFpuiLfqWoCEmDiByw/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/xlhsClhBemFpuiLfqWoCEmDiByw/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

div class="track"img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.24.1.1/34093?ns=guardianpageName=Australasia+has+hottest+60+years+in+a+millennium%2C+scientists+find%3AArticle%3A1746627ch=Sciencec3=GU.co.ukc4=Climate+change+%28Science%29%2CClimate+change+%28Environment%29%2CEnvironment%2CScience%2CCarbon+emissions+%28Environment%29%2CAustralia+%28News%29%2CWorld+news%2CAsia+Pacific+%28News%29c5=Unclassified%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CClimate+Change%2CEthical+Livingc6=Alison+Rourkec7=12-May-17c8=1746627c9=Articlec10=Newsc11=Sciencec13=c25=c30=contentc42=Newsh2=GU%2FNews%2FScience%2FClimate+change" width="1" height="1" //divp class="standfirst"Study of tree rings, corals and ice cores finds unnatural spike in temperatures that lines up with manmade climate change/ppThe last 60 years have been the hottest in Australasia for a millennium and cannot be explained by natural causes, according to a href="http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00649.1"a new report/a by scientists that supports the case for a reduction in manmade carbon emissions.br / br /In the first major study of its kind in the region, scientists at the University of Melbourne used natural data from 27 climate indicators, including tree rings, corals and ice cores to map temperature trends over the past 1,000 years.br / br /"Our study revealed that recent warming in a 1,000-year context is highly unusual and cannot be explained by natural factors alone, suggesting a strong influence of human-caused climate change in the Australasian region," said the study's lead researcher, Dr Joelle Gergis.br / br /The climate reconstruction was done in 3,000 different ways and concluded with 95% accuracy that no other period in the past 1,000 years match or exceeded post-1950 warming in Australia.br / br /The study, a href="http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00649.1"published in the Journal of Climate/a, will be part of Australia's contribution to the fifth Intergovernmetal Panel on Climate Change report, due in 2014.br / br /As part of the study, climate modellers used the natural data to analyse the impact of both natural events, like volcanic eruptions in the pre-industrial era, and the impact of human-induced climate change such as greenhouse gasses emissions on temperatures in the last millennium.br / br /Dr Steven Phipps, from the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, who carried out the modeling, said the study demonstrated strong human influence on the climate in the region.br / br /"The models showed that prior to 1850 there were not any long-term trends and temperature variations were likely to be caused by natural climate variability which is a random process," he said.br / br /"But [the modeling showed] 20th-century warming significantly exceeds the amplitude of natural climate variability and demonstrates that the recent warming experience in Australia is unprecedented within the context of the last millennium."br / br /Annual average daily maximum temperatures in Australia have increased by 0.75C since 1910. Since the 1950s each decade has been warmer than the one before it.br / br /Australia's peak scientific body, the CSIRO, has said temperatues will rise by between 1C and 5C by 2070 when compared with recent decades. It predicts the number of droughts in southern Australia will increase in the future and that there will be an increase in intense rainfall in many areas./pdiv class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/scienceofclimatechange"Climate change/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change"Climate change/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/carbon-emissions"Carbon emissions/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/australia"Australia/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/asia-pacific"Asia Pacific/a/li/ul/divdiv class="author"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/alison-rourke"Alison Rourke/a/divbr/div class="terms"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds"More Feeds/a/divp style="clear:both" / pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/5NBz7S_m-_ADr2hd8DfFcmCS6Bc/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/5NBz7S_m-_ADr2hd8DfFcmCS6Bc/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/5NBz7S_m-_ADr2hd8DfFcmCS6Bc/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/5NBz7S_m-_ADr2hd8DfFcmCS6Bc/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

div class="track"img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.24.1.1/98999?ns=guardianpageName=UK+carbon+targets+at+risk+over+local+authority+funding+cuts%3AArticle%3A1746340ch=Environmentc3=GU.co.ukc4=Climate+change+%28Environment%29%2CEnvironment%2CCarbon+emissions+%28Environment%29%2CUK+news%2CEnergy+efficiency+%28Environment%29%2CEnergy+%28Environment%29c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CClimate+Change%2CEnergy%2CEthical+Livingc6=Fiona+Harveyc7=12-May-17c8=1746340c9=Articlec10=Newsc11=Environmentc13=c25=c30=contentc42=Environmenth2=GU%2FEnvironment%2FEnvironment%2FClimate+change" width="1" height="1" //divp class="standfirst"Committee on Climate Change has called for local authorities to have national funding to cut carbon emissions/ppFunding cuts to squeezed local authorities are putting the UK's carbon targets at risk, the government's climate advisers warned in a report published on Thursday./ppThe Committee on Climate Change, the statutory body set up to advise ministers on how to meet the government's carbon targets, called for local authorities to be ordered do develop and implement plans to cut carbon emissions, with national funding to do so./ppProf Julia King, a member of the committee, told the Guardian that local authorities' climate change initiatives had been badly affected by austerity measures, with climate efforts often one of the first services to go during budget cuts./ppBut she said: "Local authorities have the potential to significantly impact the UK's scale and speed of emissions reductions. There is a wealth of good work being done already at local and regional levels, but many opportunities remain untapped. It is essential that these opportunities are delivered if we are to meet our national carbon targets."/ppPlacing such a statutory duty on councils would ensure that the UK could meet its national carbon targets, and lead to a wide range of new schemes that could also benefit local residents. For instance, energy efficiency would be the cheapest way to cut emissions, and programmes to improve insulation and cut energy use could help to lift people out of fuel poverty./ppBut without adequate funding, it may be impossible for councils to put such plans in place. King said: "Local authorities need to show leadership and recognise their wider role in supporting local emissions reductions, [but] the government needs to strengthen incentives for action by providing national funding where required."/ppAndy Atkins, Friends of the Earth's executive director, welcomed the report: "This is a stark warning the government can't afford to ignore - UK climate targets won't be met unless ministers ensure every council plays its part in slashing emissions, and has the funds to do so. The government has failed to support local action on climate change – and only a few council leaders are currently championing action on the scale required."/ppPlugging the leaks in Britain's draughty homes will be one of the most important ways in which local authorities could cut carbon, according to the report. The government's "green deal", which has come under fire from within government as well as outside experts, is supposed to provide the financial incentives for insulation, but local authorities have the power to supplement the scheme with their own initiatives, such as improvements to social housing./ppBut local authorities can make a substantial difference over a range of areas, the report found – buildings, surface transport and waste make up 40% of the UK's greenhouse gas emissions, and if the right actions are taken, these emissions could be cut by 30% from 1990 levels./ppSome of the other key ways in which local councils can cut emissions and improve the lives of residents include improvements to public transport and other sustainable travel options such as cycle routes and making pedestrian routes more accessible, as well as developing advanced recycling programmes and giving planning permission to local renewable energy projects. All of these steps can create jobs and improve the quality of life, and some can cut energy bills both for households and the council./ppOther options councils should look into, according to the report, include better town planning, in order to make towns and cities more "liveable", for instance by ensuring that amenities such as schools, hospitals and commercial services such as shops and banks are near enough to where people live, to reduce car journeys./ppPlans to generate energy from waste should also be considered, the committee said – this could include decomposing food waste into biogas, and incinerating the residue of waste left over from recycling to generate electricity and heat./ppDistrict heating schemes – for instance, using waste heat from power stations – could also be a key part of local low-carbon strategies, the report found. To date, few such schemes have got off the ground, in part because of a lack of coordination and incentives, and because some potential schemes may fall between different local authorities to implement. Better cooperation among local organisations will be a key factor in realising low-carbon strategies, the report said./pdiv class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change"Climate change/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/carbon-emissions"Carbon emissions/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/energyefficiency"Energy efficiency/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/energy"Energy/a/li/ul/divdiv class="author"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/fiona-harvey"Fiona Harvey/a/divbr/div class="terms"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds"More Feeds/a/divp style="clear:both" / pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/tBhUAtQQ2KfF_iVwUX1cksS5T9M/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/tBhUAtQQ2KfF_iVwUX1cksS5T9M/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/tBhUAtQQ2KfF_iVwUX1cksS5T9M/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/tBhUAtQQ2KfF_iVwUX1cksS5T9M/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

div class="track"img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.24.1.1/71705?ns=guardianpageName=Letter%3A+Carbon+revolution%3AArticle%3A1746546ch=Environmentc3=Guardianc4=Carbon+capture+and+storage+%28CCS%29%2CEnergy+%28Environment%29%2CFossil+fuels+%28Environment%29%2CCarbon+emissions+%28Environment%29%2CClimate+change+%28Environment%29%2CCoal+%28environment%29%2CEnvironment%2CEnergy+industry+%28business+sector%29%2CBusiness%2CUK+newsc5=Environment+Conservation%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CBusiness+Markets%2CClimate+Change%2CEnergy%2CEthical+Livingc6=c7=12-May-16c8=1746546c9=Articlec10=Letterc11=Environmentc13=c25=c30=contentc42=Environmenth2=GU%2FEnvironment%2FEnvironment%2FCarbon+capture+and+storage+%28CCS%29" width="1" height="1" //divpCarbon capture has a lot to offer provided it is retro-fitted first to existing coal-fired power stations (a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/may/09/carbon-capture-storage-climate-change?INTCMP=SRCH" title=""Report/a, 10nbsp;May). Last week a href="http://helprescuetheplanet.com/" title=""Help Rescue the Planet/a organised an international conference on climate change at the Royal Institute of British Architects next to the BBC on Portland Place. Among the 50 or so presentations was a revolutionary method of carbon capture from a company in Finland that requires no storage as the products are all usable. The raw ingredients for their process are a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feldspar" title=""feldspar/a (abundant in the earth's mantle), water (even seawater) and COsub2/sub. The reaction produces useful heat, plus rare valuable minerals, aluminium, quartz sand and water with dissolved bicarbonate. The latter can be used for irrigation (bicarbonate also has a fertilising effect), processed to produce solid calcium carbonate (for use in construction), or filtered to produce drinkable water, so the process can also work as a desalination plant. Pity that none of the 50 or so journalists that were invited bothered to turn up.br /strongDr Robin Russell-Jones/strongbr /emConference organiser, HRTP/em/pdiv class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/carbon-capture-and-storage"Carbon capture and storage (CCS)/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/energy"Energy/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/fossil-fuels"Fossil fuels/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/carbon-emissions"Carbon emissions/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change"Climate change/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/coal"Coal/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/energy-industry"Energy industry/a/li/ul/divbr/div class="terms"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds"More Feeds/a/divp style="clear:both" / pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/gzoIyHLCxjzyriz4bgvEM_D09kE/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/gzoIyHLCxjzyriz4bgvEM_D09kE/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/gzoIyHLCxjzyriz4bgvEM_D09kE/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/gzoIyHLCxjzyriz4bgvEM_D09kE/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

div class="track"img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.24.1.1/43017?ns=guardianpageName=Bonn+climate+talks%3A+EU+plays+down+talk+of+Kyoto+protocol+rift%3AArticle%3A1746246ch=Environmentc3=GU.co.ukc4=Global+climate+talks+%28environment%29%2CClimate+change+%28Environment%29%2CEnvironment%2CEurope+%28News%29%2CWorld+news%2CKyoto+protocol+%28environment%29c5=Unclassified%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CClimate+Change%2CEthical+Livingc6=James+Murray+for+%3Ca+href%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.businessgreen.com%22%3EBusinessGreen%3C%2Fa%3E%2C+part+of+the+%3Ca+href%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Fenvironment%2Fnetwork%22+title%3D%22Guardian+Environment+Network%22%3EGuardian+Environment+Network%3C%2Fa%3Ec7=12-May-16c8=1746246c9=Articlec10=Newsc11=Environmentc13=Guardian+Environment+Network+%28series%29c25=c30=contentc42=Environmenth2=GU%2FEnvironment%2FEnvironment%2FGlobal+climate+talks" width="1" height="1" //divp class="standfirst"Officials insist agreement can be reached despite row over length of new Kyoto deal/ppDivisions have again emerged on the first few days of the latest round of international climate change talks in Bonn, with the EU and groups of developing countries clashing over the future of the controversial Kyoto protocol./ppUnder the terms of the Durban Platform agreed at last year's UN climate summit, the EU said it would sign on to an extension of the Kyoto protocol before it lapses at the end of this year in return for an agreement from all nations that a new binding treaty will be finalised by 2015 and enacted by 2020./ppThe fortnight-long Bonn talks are intended to develop a timetable for agreeing the new treaty and finalise details for how the so-called "Kyoto 2" extension will work for the countries that have agreed to sign up to the treaty./ppHowever, negotiators are divided over how long the extended Kyoto protocol should operate, with developing countries insisting the treaty should continue to be enforced over five-year commitment periods, and the EU expressing its preference for an eight-year commitment period that would allow it to be replaced by the new international treaty in 2020./ppNegotiators for the group of Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and the Alliance for Small Island States issued a joint statement earlier this week warning that an eight-year commitment would allow industrialised nations to delay action to curb emissions. They also hinted that failure to agree to a five-year period could undermine the alliance between the EU and poorer nations, which provided an effective negotiating bloc at the Durban Summit./pp"The environmental integrity of the Kyoto protocol... depends on having a five-year commitment period to avoid locking in inadequate level of ambition," said the statement, arguing that longer term targets tend to be ignored by governments./ppWriting on Twitter, EU climate change commissioner Connie Hedegaard said the EU's preference for an eight-year period was simply intended as a means of smoothing the transition between Kyoto and the new treaty that should come into force in 2020./pp"In Durban, EU declared willingness for both 5 8-year CP2. A 8-year period will avoid gap btw end CP2 start of new regime," she wrote. "So just for the record: the 8-year CP2 is the result of the parties' decision to start new regime in 2020."/ppHer comments were echoed by Artur Runge-Metzger, the head of climate strategy at the European Commission, who told reporters that he remained confident an agreement could be reached at the annual UN climate summit in Doha, Qatar at the end of the year./pp"We want to move in the same direction, even if in terms of instruments we might have some different views," he said. "By Doha, I'm sure we will have sorted them out. And hopefully we can show to the world that we have been able to close that ambition gap."/ppA number of large emitters, including the US, Japan, Russia, and Canada, have signalled they will not sign up to an extension of Kyoto, while large emerging economies will only sign up to an agreement that does not impose binding emission reduction targets on them./ppAs such critics have noted that only around 15 per cent of global emissions will be covered by any extended treaty./ppHowever, the finalisation of the extension to Kyoto will be crucial for large numbers of businesses as it will further codify emission reduction targets for the EU and other signatory countries, while also extending the legal foundations for UN-backed carbon trading schemes such as the Clean Development Mechanism./ppIn addition, the first two days of talks in Bonn have seen continued negotiations over the UN's proposed Green Climate Fund, which is expected to provide up to $100bn of climate funding a year from 2020./ppUN Climate Chief Christiana Figueres insisted it was critical the Bonn talks made further progress on how the funds will be raised post-2020 and how funding will be directed to poorer countries in the year's running up to 2020./ppIt had been hoped that a parallel meeting of EU finance ministers taking place earlier this week would provide some clarification on funding commitments from 2013 onwards, but the talks delivered only a vague pledge to "work in a constructive manner towards the identification of a path for scaling up climate finance from 2013 to 2020"./ppDeveloping countries are fearful that with industrialised nations facing increasingly severe budget deficits there could be a funding gap for green projects after the current commitment to provide up to $30bn of "fast-track" climate funding lapses in 2013./ppHowever, Hedegaard hinted the EU could continue to provide funding by diverting the revenue raised from its controversial levy on aviation emissions to help fund climate initiatives in developing countries./pdiv class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/global-climate-talks"Global climate talks/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change"Climate change/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/europe-news"Europe/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/kyoto-protocol"Kyoto protocol/a/li/ul/divbr/div class="terms"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds"More Feeds/a/divp style="clear:both" / pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/-krNqKWvk1lshCEEVxHwxGJ-mM8/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/-krNqKWvk1lshCEEVxHwxGJ-mM8/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/-krNqKWvk1lshCEEVxHwxGJ-mM8/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/-krNqKWvk1lshCEEVxHwxGJ-mM8/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

div class="track"img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.24.1.1/17453?ns=guardianpageName=Geoengineering+experiment+cancelled+due+to+perceived+conflict+of+interes%3AArticle%3A1746178ch=Environmentc3=GU.co.ukc4=Geoengineering+%28environment%29%2CClimate+change+%28Environment%29%2CEnvironment%2CVolcanoes+%28News%29%2CNatural+disasters+and+extreme+weather+%28News%29%2CWorld+news%2CBristol+University%2CHigher+education+%28Universities+etc.%29%2CEducation%2CUK+newsc5=Unclassified%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CClimate+Change%2CEducation+Weekly+Education%2CEnergy%2CEthical+Living%2CHigher+Education%2CCharitiesc6=Erin+Halec7=12-May-16c8=1746178c9=Articlec10=Newsc11=Environmentc13=c25=c30=contentc42=Environmenth2=GU%2FEnvironment%2FEnvironment%2FGeoengineering" width="1" height="1" //divp class="standfirst"Two scientists involved in Spice project to simulate the cooling effect of volcanoes had submitted patents for similar technology/ppA controversial a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/aug/31/pipe-balloon-water-sky-climate-experiment" title=""geoengineering experiment to simulate the cooling effect of volcanoes/a has been cancelled due to concern over a perceived conflict of interest with some of the researchers./ppThe experiment would have injected 150 litres of water into the atmosphere from a weather balloon via a 1km pipe tethered to a ship as part of the Spice project (Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering)./ppMatthew Watson, a scientist at Bristol University and the principal investigator of Spice, a href="http://www.nature.com/news/geoengineering-experiment-cancelled-amid-patent-row-1.10645" title=""told Nature magazine/a that two scientists involved in the project had not been initially forthcoming that they had submitted patents for technology similar to that used in the project before Spice was proposed./ppThis revelation caused some concern among the scientists involved, leading to the decision to axe the field-test, though they decided the lab-based element of the project should continue. Watson said other concerns had been raised about the lack of government regulation of geoengineering projects./pp"This shows how commercial and financial interests can complicate the management of research on geoengineering, especially SRM technology, even if everyone agrees that it is safe. The project team have done the right thing, but this is an issue that needs to be explored in depth with stakeholders," said John Shepherd, chair of the Royal Society's geoengineering group./pp"It's a shame that the balloon experiment won't be done now, as it would be really interesting to know if this technology would work, and I am quite sceptical about it," he added. "However, it was always an optional extra to the rest of the project, which is scientifically much more important."/ppPeter Cox, a professor of climate system dynamics at the University of Exeter, said in a statement: "It is regrettable that the field-trial aspect of Spice has now been cancelled, but it is vitally important that the remainder of the project, which is desk and lab based, should continue."/ppScientists at Spice – run by the universities of Bristol, Cambridge, Edinburgh and Oxford – had hoped the particles could mitigate the effects of global warming by diffusing sunlight before it reached the earth. The project was controversial, with groups including Friends of the Earth and the Canadian-based ETC Group raising concerns over the long-term impacts./pdiv class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/geoengineering"Geoengineering/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change"Climate change/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/volcanoes"Volcanoes/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/natural-disasters"Natural disasters and extreme weather/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/universityofbristol"University of Bristol/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/higher-education"Higher education/a/li/ul/divdiv class="author"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/erin-hale"Erin Hale/a/divbr/div class="terms"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds"More Feeds/a/divp style="clear:both" / pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/BUt9hYxv51pjKvv1yVX3w9sOmm0/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/BUt9hYxv51pjKvv1yVX3w9sOmm0/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/BUt9hYxv51pjKvv1yVX3w9sOmm0/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/BUt9hYxv51pjKvv1yVX3w9sOmm0/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

div class="track"img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.24.1.1/17788?ns=guardianpageName=Only+biofuels+will+cut+plane+emissions+%7C+Ben+Caldecott%3AArticle%3A1746056ch=Environmentc3=GU.co.ukc4=Biofuels+%28Environment%29%2CAir+transport+%28News%29%2CEnergy+%28Environment%29%2CRenewable+energy+%28Environment%29%2CEnvironment%2CWorld+news%2CCarbon+emissions+%28Environment%29%2CClimate+change+%28Environment%29c5=Climate+Change%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CEnergy%2CEthical+Living%2Cflightexclusionc6=Ben+Caldecottc7=12-May-16c8=1746056c9=Articlec10=Commentc11=Environmentc13=c25=c30=contentc42=Environmenth2=GU%2FEnvironment%2FEnvironment%2FBiofuels" width="1" height="1" //divp class="standfirst"We need something that can deliver emission reductions from existing fleets of planes – and the solution already exists/ppAs a small, maritime trading nation Britain has always been some distance from big international markets. Our ability to visit far-off places and people, and their access to us, has always been at the heart of our ability to punch above our weight in the world, whether that's commercially, culturally or diplomatically./ppIn the past we were dependent on ships, now we are reliant on commercial airlines, as well as the Channel Tunnel and secure data networks. This infrastructure is critical for our future, particularly as we look to major economies like India, China and Brazil for export opportunities. But it is also vital for sustaining our outward facing society and culture; one that's confident engaging with the world and welcoming of its diversity./ppRail and video-conferencing will help, but air travel will remain absolutely essential and more people are going to fly, especially to and from a networked, diverse, outward-facing island nation like our own./ppWe should embrace this, but we must also recognise that flying more will also have negative consequences, in particular greenhouse gas emissions. The a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/may/15/eu-airline-emissions-tax-success?intcmp=122" title=""positive progress on including aviation in Europe's carbon trading scheme/a this week is welcome, but neither that nor more efficient aircraft will deal with the industry's climate problem. As I will argue, only biofuels can do that. Aviation currently accounts for a relatively small proportion of global carbon emissions: 6% of UK, 4% of European Union and 2% of world. This will change fast though, with global aviation expected to grow at 5% a year for at least the next 15 years. If so, by 2050 aviation emissions will account for up to 20% of global emissions, making tackling global warming significantly harder./ppThough a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/mar/21/budget-2012-boosts-airport-expansion" title=""new airport capacity in the UK is essential/a, plans for it must convincingly address this important pollution challenge./ppIncluding aviation in the Europe's Emissions Trading Scheme is a step in the right direction, but at current carbon prices it will not spur the innovations needed to cut pollution. Some say the aviation sector has a good track record of improving the fuel efficiency of new aircraft, achieving an average annual improvement of about 1.5%. But these emissions savings will be completely overwhelmed by growing global demand for aviation./ppSo we desperately need something that can deliver a step-change in emission reductions from existing fleets, particularly as planes built today will be in service for many years to come. The only option is to replace existing jet fuel (kerosene) with an alternative that can deliver deep emission reductions and be used to current aircraft. Fortunately, this technology exists: sustainable bio jet fuels. Made from advanced feedstocks and able to provide significant life-cycle emission reductions and meet other stringent sustainability standards, these fuels can be produced today and have already received a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/08/us-airlines-biofuels-powering-flights" title=""certification for use in commercial jet aircraft/a. They can also be produced now at costs not far above the high and volatile price of jet fuel, with Bloomberg predicting that they could potentially reach price parity with kerosene in 2016./ppThere is an opportunity for the UK to align its need to develop new airport capacity with the development of sustainable bio jet fuels at scale. We should work to ensure that any new airport provide airlines with the best biofuels available./ppa href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/damian-carrington-blog/2012/mar/16/aviation-biofuel-british-airways-carbon" title=""Airport operators should have to provide airlines with a blend of jet fuel/a that has a significant and rising proportion of sustainable bio jet fuel. This would significantly reduce emissions from flights. The mandate should start at an achievable level, say where the blend would have to be 15% less polluting than jet fuel today based on the strictest sustainability standards. It could then ratchet up to reach a point where the blend was 60% less polluting within a reasonable time-frame./ppAirlines would benefit from a genuine and cost-effective emission reduction strategy, which might even attract environmentally conscious flyers. Not many hubs would need to follow the UK before the majority of international flights used sustainable bio jet fuel blends, perhaps only New York, Dubai, Hong Kong and Singapore need change, in addition to London./ppAn ambitious blending mandate would send exactly the signal required to accelerate the development of sustainable bio jet fuels. Airport operators would be required to demonstrate they had a plan to meet the incoming mandate and would sign supply contracts with developers, which would spur innovation and investment. The UK government could also ensure that our leading biotech, aviation and university sectors work in unison to create solutions, through targeted research programmes and tax relief for collaborative work./ppThe luddite wing of the environmental movement will think a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/05/thomson-biofuels-flight" title=""such proposals sacrilegious/a – their only solution is to stop flying. But the reality is that there will be and should be more international travel, particularly to and from the UK. The challenge is to make this as least polluting as is possible, while also minimising local airport impacts. By aligning the debate about airport capacity sensibly with environmental objectives, we can make a significant dent in aviation emissions globally as well as guarantee sufficient airport capacity to keep UK plc open for both business and pleasure./pp/ppem• Ben Caldecott is head of policy at Climate Change Capital and co-author of '/ema href="http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/images/publications/green%20skies%20thinking%20-%20jul%2009.pdf" title=""emGreen Skies Thinking: Promoting the development and commercialisation of sustainable bio-jet fuels/em/aem'/em/pp/pp/ppem /em/pdiv class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/biofuels"Biofuels/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/air-transport"Air transport/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/energy"Energy/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/renewableenergy"Renewable energy/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/carbon-emissions"Carbon emissions/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change"Climate change/a/li/ul/divdiv class="author"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/bencaldecott"Ben Caldecott/a/divbr/div class="terms"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds"More Feeds/a/divp style="clear:both" / pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/3Hbxfj3szILmysmntNTt2rafnIM/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/3Hbxfj3szILmysmntNTt2rafnIM/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/3Hbxfj3szILmysmntNTt2rafnIM/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/3Hbxfj3szILmysmntNTt2rafnIM/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

div class="track"img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.24.1.1/25706?ns=guardianpageName=Britain+is+rising+to+the+challenge+of+greening+our+economy+%7C+Caroline+Sp%3AArticle%3A1745452ch=Environmentc3=GU.co.ukc4=Sustainable+development+%28environment%29%2CCaroline+Spelman+%28Politics%29%2CRio%2B20+Earth+summit%2CEnvironment%2CPolitics%2CUK+news%2CEconomic+policy%2CEconomics+%28Business%29%2CBusiness%2CCarbon+emissions+%28Environment%29%2CClimate+change+%28Environment%29%2CConservatives+tories+tory+party%2CRecycling+%28Environment%29c5=Unclassified%2CCredit+Crunch%2CClimate+Change%2CBusiness+Markets%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CEthical+Livingc6=Caroline+Spelmanc7=12-May-16c8=1745452c9=Articlec10=Commentc11=Environmentc13=c25=c30=contentc42=Environmenth2=GU%2FEnvironment%2FEnvironment%2FSustainable+development" width="1" height="1" //divp class="standfirst"At Rio+20, I'll be calling for a commitment from international leaders to green growth as the path to shared prosperity/ppIt's clear that with unprecedented pressure on our natural resources and our climate, the world economy needs to "green up". I want UK businesses to be in the vanguard of that move. On Wednesday, I'll take my seat alongside British business leaders at the a href="http://www.aldersgategroup.org.uk/asset/download/663/1205%20Rio+20%20Business%20Summit.pdf" title=""Aldersgate Rio +20 Business Summit/a where we'll debate the opportunities – and the challenges – of transforming our whole economy to one geared towards long-term green growth./ppThe shift to a green economy represents one of the biggest business opportunities in decades. Already, the global low-carbon market is worth more than £3 trillion, and is set to reach £4tn by 2015 as more economies invest in low-carbon technologies. In the UK, a sector still in relative infancy is worth over £116bn and employs almost a million people. I want to see that base grow./ppTo take just one aspect of the green economy, the need to manage things people no longer want is big business. The waste and recycling sector generates £11bn a year, employs more than 150,000 people, and consistently outstrips growth in other sectors./ppAnd we need to focus on green growth because the price of inaction is too high. Business is constantly looking for ways to become more efficient – and the competitive gains for British companies' efficient use of resources such as water, energy and materials are enormous, with potential savings of about £23bn a year. Those who do not innovate and fund the efficiencies will not be able to compete./ppWe do not underestimate the challenges that we face in moving to a green economy – but at the same time we know that the price of inaction is too high. We often take our natural resources for granted but these are not inexhaustible, and demand is increasing. This is an economic issue, it's a development issue, and it requires global action./ppNext month, I'm joining leaders in business, government and civil society from all over the world at the Rio+20 Earth Summit in Brazil. I'll be calling for an absolute commitment from my international colleagues to inclusive green growth as the path to shared prosperity. Governments need to create the framework for the private sector to act. We want an agreement to develop sustainable development goals that meet the linked challenges of food, energy and water security, we want a shift in the way we measure prosperity; with agreement to consider natural and social values alongside traditional measures of GDP. We agree with the British businesses who want the a href="http://www.uncsd2012.org/rio20/index.html" title=""Rio summit/a to make corporate sustainability reporting the norm, rather than the exception, and will call for more businesses to commit to improving their sustainability./ppAt home, we're providing support to companies that are changing the way they do business. Our a href="http://www.bis.gov.uk/news/topstories/2011/Feb/green-economy-council-formed" title=""Green Economy Council/a brings together government, businesses and the third sector to help us create the right way to enable action from everyone – from government, businesses and consumers./ppWe in the government want to create an effective basis for the green economy, with policies that are helping growth and giving businesses the certainty to plan and invest. Where regulation is necessary, we'll ensure environmental laws are effective, proportionate, coherent and implemented in a way that uses a bit of common sense to minimise unnecessary burdens on business./ppWe've announced measures to help energy-intensive industries make the transition to a low-carbon economy. We've launched the world's first Green Investment Bank, confirmed in the Queen's speech, which will be capitalised with £3bn to help unlock private sector investment and tackle market failures. We're helping the businesses hardest hit by the transitional costs of moving to a green economy. And we're supporting innovation in low-carbon and water-saving technologies./ppA thriving green economy will generate the investment and innovation to transform our products and services and capture new markets. As we rebuild the British economy, the case for green investment and green growth is compelling. To my mind, there is no other option./pp/pp• Caroline Spelman is secretary of state for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)/pdiv class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/sustainable-development"Sustainable development/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/caroline-spelman"Caroline Spelman/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/rio-20-earth-summit"Rio+20 Earth summit/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/economy"Economic policy/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/economics"Economics/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/carbon-emissions"Carbon emissions/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change"Climate change/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/conservatives"Conservatives/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/recycling"Recycling/a/li/ul/divdiv class="author"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/caroline-spelman"Caroline Spelman/a/divbr/div class="terms"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds"More Feeds/a/divp style="clear:both" / pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/g6efqqnVxPSKncMZNsfhHCwOO0s/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/g6efqqnVxPSKncMZNsfhHCwOO0s/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/g6efqqnVxPSKncMZNsfhHCwOO0s/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/g6efqqnVxPSKncMZNsfhHCwOO0s/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

div class="track"img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.24.1.1/37443?ns=guardianpageName=William+Hague+tells+ministers+to+help+green+industries+boost+economy%3AArticle%3A1745899ch=Environmentc3=Guardianc4=Green+economy+%28environment%29%2CEnvironment%2CClimate+change+%28Environment%29%2CWilliam+Hague%2CDavid+Cameron%2CPolitics%2CConservative+and+Liberal+Democrat+cabinet%2CConservatives+tories+tory+party%2CLiberal+Democrats+Lib+dems%2CCoalition+Liberal-Conservative+coalition%2CUK+newsc5=Not+commercially+useful%2CClimate+Change%2CEthical+Livingc6=Juliette+Jowitc7=12-May-15c8=1745899c9=Articlec10=Newsc11=Environmentc13=c25=c30=contentc42=Environmenth2=GU%2FEnvironment%2FEnvironment%2FGreen+economy" width="1" height="1" //divp class="standfirst"David Cameron should speak about environment, he says in letter revealing frustration over UK's lack of low carbon strategy/ppThe government should do more to help green industries boost economic growth, stop the UK falling behind international rivals, and avoid losing its global leadership on the environment, William Hague has told cabinet colleagues, in aa href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/interactive/2012/may/18/william-hague-green-economy-letter" private letter /aseen by the Guardian./ppThe foreign secretary also warns in his letter to ministers that unless Britain takes stronger leadership on the green economy there is no hope of securing an international agreement on climate change./ppHague's letter comes at a sensitive time for the government as it faces criticism for not doing enough to stimulate growth. The country has officially entered a double-dip recession with two consecutive quarters of negative growth./ppDavid Cameron and George Osborne are also under pressure from environmental groups and some business leaders for failing to live up to their promise to be the "greenest government ever" as they appear to have watered down their ambition in the face of opposition from Tory rightwingers, worried about extra regulation and angry about wind farms./ppNowhere in the letter does Hague overtly criticise the government's programme, and he is supportive of many elements of it, but the letter appears to betray a frustration that more could be done, particularly if senior government ministers were to be more vocal in their support of the green economy./ppHague told the Sunday Telegraph that business leaders should "work harder" instead of complaining about the government. But his letter appears to suggest that by giving more support to the low carbon production and consumption the government could do more to stimulate growth, pointing to the success of economies which have done so, particularly China and Germany./ppThe letter says the strategy would have five benefits: reducing exposure to volatile energy prices; revitalising manufacturing based in low carbon sectors; modernising infrastructure; reducing utility bills by cutting energy use, and it would have "a particular appeal for the under 30s"./pp"I believe we should reframe our response to climate change as an imperative for growth rather than merely being a way of being green or meeting environmental commitments," says Hague. "The low carbon economy is at the leading edge of a structural shift now taking place globally … we need to stay abreast of this, given our need for an export-led recovery and for inward investment in modern infrastructure and advanced manufacturing."/ppHague cites the successes of the coalition government's green investment bank, electricity market reform and the green deal, but urges a "stronger political emphasis" on the sector. "We could get more mileage from this without additional commitment of expenditure or fiscal risk," adds the letter, which was written in March but only emerged on Tuesday./ppAs well as helping the UK's economy, "greater emphasis in our core narrative on low carbon growth" would help the UK's "commercial diplomacy" with countries interested in investing in and trading with the UK, and in its role in international climate negotiations./pp"We will not secure a binding agreement in 2015 unless the idea of low carbon growth becomes dominant across the major economies before then," says Hague. "We can leverage this. But our diplomacy will only succeed if it is rooted in our own domestic narrative."/ppHague sets out a strategy, which starts by urging the prime minister to make a special speech on the subject and using the UK's presidency of the G8 next year to push the message strongly. Just weeks later, an event which had been billed as a keynote speech on the environment by the PM was downgraded by officials, who insisted he was only making "comments"./ppOther suggestions include a wider push for market growth by lowering barriers to trade and investment in low carbon goods and services, a more focused push by the EU on helping low carbon innovation and infrastructure investment, and pressing the EU to liberalise energy markets to speed up energy saving and other new technology./ppAt least two cabinet colleagues have responded to Hague's letter: Ed Davey, the energy and climate secretary, and Vince Cable, the business secretary. Both Liberal Democrats appear to sound a more cautious note than the foreign secretary, insisting that any push on the low carbon economy must "fairly represent the costs involved alongside the benefits" in order to be "credible"./ppCable also warns that without an international accord on cutting emissions – something currently overseen by the United Nations – "we need to watch the impact of our climate policies on UK competitiveness more broadly"./ppThe Foreign Office said it did not comment on leaked documents./pdiv class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/green-economy"Green economy/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change"Climate change/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/williamhague"William Hague/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/davidcameron"David Cameron/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/conservative-and-liberal-democrat-cabinet"Conservative and Liberal Democrat cabinet/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/conservatives"Conservatives/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/liberaldemocrats"Liberal Democrats/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/liberal-conservative-coalition"Liberal-Conservative coalition/a/li/ul/divdiv class="author"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/juliettejowit"Juliette Jowit/a/divbr/div class="terms"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds"More Feeds/a/divp style="clear:both" / pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/0ENlWL-EDr1pk0TMlgoEsh2-8Ic/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/0ENlWL-EDr1pk0TMlgoEsh2-8Ic/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/0ENlWL-EDr1pk0TMlgoEsh2-8Ic/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/0ENlWL-EDr1pk0TMlgoEsh2-8Ic/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

div class="track"img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.24.1.1/51807?ns=guardianpageName=EU+hails+airline+emissions+tax+a+success%3AArticle%3A1745591ch=Environmentc3=GU.co.ukc4=Carbon+emissions+%28Environment%29%2CAirline+industry+%28business+sector%29%2CEuropean+Union+EU+%28News%29%2CEnvironment%2CAir+transport+%28News%29%2CBusiness%2CEurope+%28News%29%2CWorld+news%2CChina+%28News%29%2CAsia+Pacific+%28News%29%2CIndia+%28News%29%2CClimate+change+%28Environment%29c5=Unclassified%2CClimate+Change%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CPolicy+Society%2CBusiness+Markets%2CEthical+Living%2Cflightexclusionc6=Erin+Hale%2CDamian+Carringtonc7=12-May-15c8=1745591c9=Articlec10=c11=Environmentc13=c25=c30=contentc42=Environmenth2=GU%2FEnvironment%2FEnvironment%2FCarbon+emissions" width="1" height="1" //divp class="standfirst"More than 99% of major airlines comply with first step of Europe's scheme to charge them for carbon emissions/ppMore than 99% of all major global airlines have complied with the first step of Europe's controversial scheme to charge them for their carbon emissions./ppThe inclusion of aviation in the European Union's emissions trading system (ETS) from the start of 2012 caused uproar from airlines in a href="http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/2153544/opponents-discuss-countermeasures-eus-aviation-co2-plan" title=""more than 20 countries/a including the US, China, Russia and Japan, but virtually all submitted the required baseline emissions data for 2011. Only eight Chinese airlines and two Indian ones did not comply by the 31 March deadline./ppConnie Hedegaard, the European commissioner for climate action, said: "To put these figures into perspective, these [10] airlines represent less than 3% of total aviation emissions. So the bottom line is more than 1,200 airlines from all other countries but China and India have complied: implementation of the law is there."/ppEU member states have contacted the Indian and Chinese airlines to remind them of their obligations, said Hedegaard, and extended the deadline until mid-June./ppThe a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/dec/20/eu-charge-airlines-carbon-emissions" title=""inclusion of international airlines/a in the ETS scheme prompted failed legal attempts to kill the move. Subsequently, a so-called "coalition of the unwilling" has threatened a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/11/us-india-eu-climate-idUSBRE83A07S20120411" title=""to refuse to pay the carbon tax/a or to retaliate against Europe. China has threatened to a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/mar/09/airbus-eu-carbon-trading-chinese?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487" title=""drop aircraft orders from Europe's Airbus/a./ppSmall fines for non-compliance could be levied now by EU member states and, in the future, airlines that do not comply could face fines of $128 per tonne of CO2 emitted or be banned from European airports./ppHedegaard said the EU was currently negotiating with China on whether equivalent measures could be put in place by the Chinese authorities, which the EU would find acceptable./ppUnder the a href="http://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/ets/index_en.htm" title=""EU's cap and trade system/a, major polluters are given allowances to emit greenhouse gases. If the company exceeds its allowances, it has to buy extra permits, but if it cuts its emissions it can sell the allowances. Over time, the total number of allowances is scaled back, in order to cut emissions and tackle global warming, but the ETS currently has a large oversupply of permits due to over-allocation and the reduction of economic activity caused by the economic crisis./ppInitially, most of the permits are given to the airlines free of charge. The EC estimates the ETS will cost Chinese airlines less than €2.5m a year and Indian airlines €1m a year, an "insignificant amount", according to an EC source. The collection of 2011 aviation emissions data will be used to set a benchmark. Next year, the EU will distribute a href="http://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/transport/aviation/allowances/index_en.htm" title=""allowances equivalent to 97%/a of the previous year's emissions, and then 95% for 2013-2020./ppHedegaard said she was happy with the overall progress made so far by the ETS: "The EU ETS emissions continued in 2011 to decrease: it decreased at 2% at the same time that we actually had economic growth. It shows once again that emissions reductions and economic growth can go together. It also shows that the ETS is actually delivering results."/ppHowever, Damien Morris, senior policy adviser at the carbon trading thinktank Sandbag, said: "While we welcome signs of a less carbon-intensive economic recovery in Europe, Hedegaard's attribution of this abatement to the ETS is highly optimistic. The reduction happened in spite of, not because of, the EU ETS, and will serve to exacerbate the massive oversupply of carbon allowances that threaten to haunt the system until 2020. Urgent intervention to reduce the supply of allowances is required if the EU ETS is to help drive a cost-efficient transition to a low-carbon European economy."/pdiv class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/carbon-emissions"Carbon emissions/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/theairlineindustry"Airline industry/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/eu"European Union/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/air-transport"Air transport/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/europe-news"Europe/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/china"China/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/asia-pacific"Asia Pacific/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/india"India/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change"Climate change/a/li/ul/divdiv class="author"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/erin-hale"Erin Hale/a/divdiv class="author"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/damiancarrington"Damian Carrington/a/divbr/div class="terms"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds"More Feeds/a/divp style="clear:both" / pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/F45P30K7wGTTnJUHCq-JW9boiik/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/F45P30K7wGTTnJUHCq-JW9boiik/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/F45P30K7wGTTnJUHCq-JW9boiik/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/F45P30K7wGTTnJUHCq-JW9boiik/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

div class="track"img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.24.1.1/227?ns=guardianpageName=Green+cars+will+lead+to+fall+in+motoring+revenue+for+Treasury%2C+says+stud%3AArticle%3A1745359ch=UK+newsc3=GU.co.ukc4=Transport+UK+news%2CUK+news%2CTransport+policy%2CPolitics%2CEnvironment%2CCarbon+emissions+%28Environment%29%2CClimate+change+%28Environment%29%2CRoad+transport+%28News%29%2CPetrol+prices+%28UK+-+consumer%29%2CMotoring+%28Money%29%2CMoneyc5=Motoring%2CPersonal+Finance%2CClimate+Change%2CPolicy+Society%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CEthical+Livingc6=Gwyn+Tophamc7=12-May-15c8=1745359c9=Articlec10=Newsc11=UK+newsc13=c25=c30=contentc42=Newsh2=GU%2FNews%2FUK+news%2FTransport" width="1" height="1" //divp class="standfirst"Report claims as consumers look to eco vehicles, government will need to claw back drop in road taxes and fuel duties/ppThe drive to promote greener, more efficient motoring will blow a £13bn hole in the public finances as revenue from fuel and road taxes dries up, leading thinktanks have warned./ppTax breaks for electric cars and lower fuel consumption from efficient vehicles will mean a collapse in income even as road traffic increases, the Institute for Fiscal studies has found./ppAccording to IFS research commissioned by the RAC Foundation and released on Tuesday, fuel duty collected by the exchequer will drop from 1.7% of GDP now to 1.1% of GDP by 2029, while vehicle excise duty will fall from 0.4% of GDP to 0.1% – a £13bn shortfall in revenue./ppThe implication, according to motoring groups, is that drivers may end up being taxed more, even as the industry adapts to meet environmental targets./ppProf Stephen Glaister, director of the RAC Foundation, said: "As drivers endure record prices at the pumps they might be surprised to learn that future governments face a drought in motoring tax income./pp"The irony is that while ministers encourage us to buy greener, leaner cars, they are being forced to look at ways of clawing back the money motorists think they will be saving. This isn't scaremongering. The Treasury has already announced a review of VED bands to ensure drivers make a fair contribution to the public finances even as cars become more fuel efficient./pp"If the chancellor was faced with a £13bn shortfall in motoring tax revenue today he would need to push the rate of fuel duty up from 58p per litre to 87p per litre to fill the financial black hole./pp"The government has hard choices to make. Amongst the options are: forgoing the money it gets from drivers, pushing up duty on petrol and diesel, or starting to tax green forms of energy such as the electricity used in battery-powered cars./pp"None are appealing. The first blows a hole in the Treasury's budget. The second blows a hole in drivers' budgets. And the third risks stalling the decarbonisation of road transport."/ppPaul Johnson, the director of the IFS, said the findings of its Fuel for Thought report suggested that road taxes based on mileage and congestion would work better than fuel duty./ppHe said there were two problems such a system would solve: "Petrol taxation does not reflect the fact that the costs I impose on others vary dramatically according to when and where I drive. So many drivers, in rural areas for example, are effectively overtaxed./pp"But some, in congested urban areas, pay a lot less in tax than they would if they were paying for the costs they impose on other road users./pp"And as cars become more fuel-efficient, the revenue from petrol tax will fall – eventually to close to nothing if we are to meet our climate change targets."/ppThe Department for Transport last year predicted that road traffic will rise by 44% by 2035./pdiv class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/transport"Transport/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/transport"Transport policy/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/carbon-emissions"Carbon emissions/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change"Climate change/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/road-transport"Road transport/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/petrol-prices"Petrol prices/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/motoring"Motoring/a/li/ul/divdiv class="author"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/gwyntopham"Gwyn Topham/a/divbr/div class="terms"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds"More Feeds/a/divp style="clear:both" / pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/nWiWd_CLGqmMnVvJzmAsP6jviis/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/nWiWd_CLGqmMnVvJzmAsP6jviis/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/nWiWd_CLGqmMnVvJzmAsP6jviis/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/nWiWd_CLGqmMnVvJzmAsP6jviis/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

div class="track"img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.24.1.1/70605?ns=guardianpageName=Earth%27s+environment+getting+worse%2C+not+better%2C+says+WWF+ahead+of+Rio%2B20%3AArticle%3A1745175ch=Environmentc3=GU.co.ukc4=Rio%2B20+Earth+summit%2CWWF+%28environment%29%2CCarbon+emissions+%28Environment%29%2CClimate+change+%28Environment%29%2CGlobal+climate+talks+%28environment%29%2CGlobal+development%2CSustainable+development+in+the+developing+world%2CEnvironment%2CWorld+news%2CSustainable+development+%28environment%29%2CPopulation+%28News%29c5=Unclassified%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CClimate+Change%2CEthical+Livingc6=Erin+Halec7=12-May-15c8=1745175c9=Articlec10=Newsc11=Environmentc13=c25=c30=contentc42=Environmenth2=GU%2FEnvironment%2FEnvironment%2FRio%2B20+Earth+summit" width="1" height="1" //divp class="standfirst"Swelling population, mass migration to cities, increasing energy use and soaring CO2 emissions squeeze planet's resources/ppTwenty years on from the a href="http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?documentid=78articleid=1163" title=""Rio Earth summit/a, the environment of the planet is getting worse not better, according to a report from WWF./ppSwelling population, mass migration to cities, increasing energy use and soaring carbon dioxide emissions mean humanity is putting a greater squeeze on the planet's resources then ever before. Particularly hard hit is the diversity of animals and plants, upon which many natural resources such as clean water are based./pp"The Rio+20 conference next month is an opportunity for the world to get serious about the need for development to become sustainable. Our report indicates that we haven't yet done that since the last Rio summit," said David Nussbaum, WWF-UK chief executive./ppThe latest a href="http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/all_publications/living_planet_report/" title=""Living Planet/a report, published on Tuesday, estimates that global demand for natural resources has doubled since 1996 and that it now takes 1.5 years to regenerate the renewable resources used in one year by humans. By 2030, the report predicts it will take the equivalent of two planets to meet the current demand for resources./ppMost alarming, says the report, is that many of these changes have accelerated in the past decade, despite the plethora of international conventions signed since the initial Rio Summit in 1992. Climate-warming carbon emissions have increased 40% in the past 20 years, but two-thirds of that rise occurred in the past decade./ppThe report, compiled by WWF, the a href="http://www.zsl.org/" title=""Zoological Society of London/a and the a href="http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/" title=""Global Footprint Network/a, compiles data from around the world on the ecological footprints of each country and the status of resources like water and forests. It also examines changes in populations of 2,688 animal species, with the latest available data coming from 2008./ppThe eighth report of its kind, the new Living Planet document, comes five weeks before a href="http://www.uncsd2012.org/rio20/index.html" title=""Rio+20/a, the latest United Nations conference on sustainable development./ppNussbaum said: "We have taken some important steps forward: the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change is an important step, a way in which the world is seeking to come to agreement about [cutting] greenhouse gases. The Convention on Biological Diversity is an important way of the world identifying steps that can be taken in protecting biodiversity. But the pace in both cases is rather glacial. And unfortunately our lifestyles and the consequences of those are having an impact more quickly than the acts we are taking to protect the planet."/ppWealthy countries have seen some improvement, with the Living Planet biodiversity index, rising 7% since 1970, as nature reserves and protections were introduced. But the biodiversity index has dropped by 60% in developing countries, where people depend more on nature. Demographic shifts have had a significant impact. The world's cities have seen a 45% increase in population since 1992, according to the Global Footprint Network, and urban residents typically have a much larger carbon footprint than their rural counterparts. The average Beijinger, says WWF, has a footprint three times the Chinese average, due to factors including private car use./ppWater security is a growing concern in many parts of the world as population and agriculture drives demand, placing enormous stress on freshwater ecosystems and fishing zones, according to data from WWF./pp"The Living Planet report shows that the biggest single drop in the living planet index is for freshwater species in tropical areas, which have shown a decline of 70% since 1970," said David Tickner, head of freshwater at WWF-UK./ppA note of hope for the future, said the authors, is that the world could see peak population sometime this century. Though the population a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/31/seven-billionth-baby-born-philippines" title=""hit 7 billion/a in 2011, the UNEP reports the population growth rate has fallen from 1.65% to 1.2% since 1992, with women now having an average of 2.5 children./pdiv class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/rio-20-earth-summit"Rio+20 Earth summit/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/wwf"WWF/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/carbon-emissions"Carbon emissions/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change"Climate change/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/global-climate-talks"Global climate talks/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/environmental-sustainability"Environmental sustainability/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/sustainable-development"Sustainable development/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/population"Population/a/li/ul/divdiv class="author"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/erin-hale"Erin Hale/a/divbr/div class="terms"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds"More Feeds/a/divp style="clear:both" / pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/rgRl_jyUl_fbYVd7PI9Rlj3tjuA/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/rgRl_jyUl_fbYVd7PI9Rlj3tjuA/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/rgRl_jyUl_fbYVd7PI9Rlj3tjuA/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/rgRl_jyUl_fbYVd7PI9Rlj3tjuA/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

div class="track"img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.24.1.1/3325?ns=guardianpageName=Heartland+Institute+grows+isolated+as+three+more+donors+disassociate%3AArticle%3A1745288ch=Environmentc3=GU.co.ukc4=Climate+change+scepticism+%28environment%29%2CClimate+change+%28Science%29%2CClimate+change+%28Environment%29%2CUS+news%2CWorld+news%2CBusiness%2CEnvironmentc5=Business+Markets%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CClimate+Change%2CEthical+Livingc6=Suzanne+Goldenbergc7=12-May-14c8=1745288c9=Articlec10=Newsc11=Environmentc13=c25=c30=contentc42=Environmenth2=GU%2FEnvironment%2FEnvironment%2FClimate+change+scepticism" width="1" height="1" //divp class="standfirst"Ultra-conservative climate sceptic thinktank continues to lose mainstream support, damaging its prospects of expansion/ppHeartland Institute was cut off by three more corporate donors on Monday, further isolating the ultra-conservative thinktank from the mainstream business world./ppThe defections reinforce the sense of Heartland's isolation, ahead of its major climate contrarian conference in Chicago next week. A number of prominent speakers also pulled out of the conference after Heartland put up a billboard on a Chicago expressway a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/may/09/heartland-institute-donors-lost-unabomber-ad"suggesting believers in climate change were akin to serial killers./a/ppIn statements to advocacy groups, pharmaceutical giant Eli Llily, BBT bank and PepsiCo confirmed they would not fund Heartland in 2012 – dealing a blow to the thinktank's plans of building long-term relationships with major corporations./ppThe three were the latest in a rush of companies to distance themselves from Heartland after the ad campaign featuring Unabomber Ted Kaczynski./pp"Lilly is not funding Heartland in 2012 and has no plans to do so in the future," David Marbaugh, communications director of Corporate Responsibility for Eli Lilly informed Forecast the Facts by email. "That type of ad is not consistent with how Lilly engages in public debate."/ppIn purely monetary terms, Monday's defections will have very little effect on Heartland./ppNone of the three had contributed to Heartland in 2011, according to confidential a href=".http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/15/leak-exposes-heartland-institute-climate"documents obtained by the water scientist Peter Gleick/a, and released without the thinktank's permission./ppPepsiCo's contributions in 2010 amounted to only $5,000. Eli Lilly donated $25,000 in 2010 and BBT $16,105./ppHowever, they make it very difficult for Heartland to pursue its expansion plans for 2012 and disprove its efforts to project itself as a mainstream organisation seeking to act as an honest mediator in debates over climate policy./ppThe Heartland budget and ambitious expansion plans for 2012 had been predicated on returning those donors to the fold. It had projected a $3m budget increase for 2012, based on those plans./ppSpecifically, a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/292935-1-15-2012-2012-heartland-budget.html#document/p4/a47500"Heartland had hoped to raise $1.5m/a or half of those funds from "lapsed" corporate donors like Eli Lilly./ppBut it appears that the exposure of Heartland's key mission of discrediting climate change – including a project to influence kindergarteners – has turned off public corporations./ppMany publicly traded companies outwardly endorse climate change and sustainability as part of their corporate brand – and that makes association with Heartland politically awkward./ppThose contradictions intensified after the Gleick leak last February when advocacy groups began focusing more intensely on Heartland's corporate donors – even those funding programmes that have nothing to do with clinate change./ppPepsi made up its mind to steer clear of Heartland well before the Kaczynski ad./pp"As previously stated, our relationship ended in 2011," Paul Boykas, vice-president of public policy and government affairs for PepsiCo told Forecast the Facts by email. The advocacy group noted the PepsiCo's website reaffirms its belief in climate change./ppBBT told Greenpeace, meanwhile, it had not received requests for 2012 funding./pp"We do not have any active request from or any planned contribution to Heartland Institute in 2012," Maria Lachapelle, vice-president of corporate communications for BBT, told Greenpeace by email./ppIn another blow to Heartland, a meterologist from the National Hurricane Center on Monday publicly disassociated himself with the organisation./ppChris Landsea, the hurricane centre's science and operations officer, asked Heartland to remove him from its website, a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/post/meteorologists-chris-landsea-and-joe-bastardi-respond-to-heartland-campaign/2012/05/14/gIQAfd9yOU_blog.html"the Washington Post reported/a on Monday./ppIt quoted a posting from Landsea to the website BigCityLib Strikes Back saying: "The billboard campaign that you all have recently been displaying is not in good taste nor is it furthering the advancement of better undstanding of how our climate fluctates and changes. Please remove my name from your list of experts."/pdiv class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change-scepticism"Climate change scepticism/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/scienceofclimatechange"Climate change/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change"Climate change/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usa"United States/a/li/ul/divdiv class="author"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/suzannegoldenberg"Suzanne Goldenberg/a/divbr/div class="terms"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds"More Feeds/a/divp style="clear:both" / pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/PbZwBaTGefXx5C6--pY9aYfSjqA/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/PbZwBaTGefXx5C6--pY9aYfSjqA/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/PbZwBaTGefXx5C6--pY9aYfSjqA/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/PbZwBaTGefXx5C6--pY9aYfSjqA/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

div class="track"img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.24.1.1/51773?ns=guardianpageName=The+Figueres+family+led+Costa+Rica%27s+revolution%2C+and+now+its+green+revol%3AArticle%3A1744906ch=Environmentc3=GU.co.ukc4=Environment%2CCosta+Rica+%28News%29%2CChristiana+Figueres+%28environment%29%2CCarbon+emissions+%28Environment%29%2CAmericas+%28News%29%2CWorld+news%2CClimate+change+%28Environment%29%2CGlobal+climate+talks+%28environment%29%2CUnited+Nations+%28News%29%2CConservation+%28Environment%29%2CSustainable+development+%28environment%29%2CRenewable+energy+%28Environment%29c5=Wildlife+Conservation%2CUnclassified%2CClimate+Change%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CEnergy%2CEthical+Living%2CCharitiesc6=John+Vidalc7=12-May-14c8=1744906c9=Articlec10=Newsc11=Environmentc13=c25=c30=contentc42=Environmenth2=GU%2FEnvironment%2FEnvironment%2FCosta+Rica" width="1" height="1" //divp class="standfirst"As the Bonn climate talks begin, John Vidal speaks to former president José María Figueres about Costa Rica's journey towards sustainability/ppSay the name Figueres in Costa Rica and it's bound to get a reaction. José "Don Pepe" Figueres led the 1948 revolution, was president three times, nationalised the banks and gave women and black people the vote. His daughter Christiana is the UN's climate chief trying to steer almost 200 countries through the most complex international negotiations ever attempted; and her brother José María was one of Latin America's youngest ever presidents at the age of 39./ppNow José María – who coined the phrase "there's no planet B" when head of the World Economic Forum – has joined his sister in the fight for a global energy revolution a href="http://www.carbonwarroom.com/news/2012/03/29/news-bulletin-jos%C3%A9-maria-figueres-joins-carbon-war-room-new-president" title=""by taking over/a as head of the climate change business thinktank a href="http://www.carbonwarroom.com/" title=""Carbon War Room/a, which aims to get business to cut gigatonnes of carbon by sharing best practice information./ppShe hopes to lead the world's public sector into a low carbon future, he the private sector. But is it an accident of history or sibling rivalry played out on the international stage that accounts for so many revolutionaries in one central American family?/pp"I call her 'Hermanita', or Little Sister," says José María. "We pulled each other's hairs out [as children]. It's always been a fierce but friendly rivalry between us. We have worked together before. When I was minister of agriculture she was my chief of staff. I was the boss, but she solved the problems. When I was president she was on the government's climate negotiating team. I like to think she is responsible for finding solutions for 50% of the carbon cuts needed and I must find them for the other half. I'd love to be her chief of staff."/ppTheir father was a landowner and coffee grower who launched a revolution of intellectuals and farmers from the small family ranch he called "La Luccha sin Fin" (the endless struggle) high in the central mountains. The revolution was, he says, based on a liberal, Scandinavian model of universal healthcare, public education, and strong institutions./pp"Mother was an MP and later a diplomat. Father taught us the values of no wastage and austerity and of a life in harmony with the natural habitat. We learned politics at the family table. We ate it for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Every conversation was about politics, the challenge of development, inequalities and legislation. A table with all of us was so argumentative. There must have been something in the water we drank," he says./ppBut José María says that when 18 he wanted a change and chose to go to leading US military academy West Point, whose alumni included presidents Ulysses Grant and Dwight Eisenhower as well as five people who have walked on the moon. This is remarkable, he accepts, because his father is the only president in modern history to have abolished a standing army. "Father had a fit when I went to West Point. He never went there. Perhaps it was my challenge to him," he says./ppThere followed years at Harvard, as an engineer, a farming boss and then in public service. "I was invited to turn around the railways and then I was made minister of agriculture and forests. We concentrated on resource management and efficiency. We moved to the biological control of pests instead of pesticides."/ppWhen he was elected Costa Rican president in 1994, the Berlin wall had come down, the Soviet Union had imploded, the Gulf war had been fought and the Rio Earth summit had been held. He says the world had changed and Costa Rica would not be able to compete in the new world without new ideas – so he turned to business and sustainable development./pp"I brought in economists like Jeffrey Sachs. I was strongly influenced by people like Maurice Strong [who headed the Rio earth summit] and his adviser on business, the Swiss industrialist Stefan Shmidheiny who set up the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD)./ppHis single term – all that was allowed – was the start of Costa Rica's move towards an economy based on eco-tourism, conservation and national parks. "It began my thinking about the ethical and moral necessity to be efficient with natural resources," he says./ppToday, "eco-travel" is the country's biggest industry, worth billions of dollars a year, and sustainable development has proved lucrative. Most farmers benefit in some way from eco tourism, and, from a country in real danger of losing all its forests in 1970, 25% is now dedicated to conservation./pp"Climate change is the ultimate challenge. But I am convinced that the development opportunity of our lifetimes lies in the transition to a low carbon economy. If we are to solve it we need to scale up our responses. We need to attract capital and resources to get there."/ppThe Carbon War Room has addressed shipping and aviation and will move to become a major international NGO, says José María. "Business needs to learn from civil society. The world can live far better than it does now. Six billion people aspire to live like the other one billion. That is a just aspiration. I really believe that moving to a low carbon economy would unleash entrepreneurship."/ppBut how would Don Pepe, the old revolutionary, see his two children today? "He would be at the forefront of the renewable energy revolution. He'd be enjoying it. He'd get a kick out of smart grids. Meanwhile, big brother is not waiting for little sister. I wish her the best but we in business are going full steam ahead. At the moment I think business is doing better than countries on climate change, but the jury is out. I know if it were up to Christiana alone that governments would be leading ahead by leaps and bounds."/pdiv class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/costa-rica"Costa Rica/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/christiana-figueres"Christiana Figueres/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/carbon-emissions"Carbon emissions/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/americas"Americas/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change"Climate change/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/global-climate-talks"Global climate talks/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/unitednations"United Nations/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/conservation/"Conservation/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/sustainable-development"Sustainable development/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/renewableenergy"Renewable energy/a/li/ul/divdiv class="author"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/johnvidal"John Vidal/a/divbr/div class="terms"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds"More Feeds/a/divp style="clear:both" / pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/ryQv3a0ybXFN6uZZPJNSVMXGQa0/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/ryQv3a0ybXFN6uZZPJNSVMXGQa0/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/ryQv3a0ybXFN6uZZPJNSVMXGQa0/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/ryQv3a0ybXFN6uZZPJNSVMXGQa0/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

div class="track"img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.24.1.1/64660?ns=guardianpageName=Australian+project+simulates+effects+of+runaway+climate+change%3AArticle%3A1744828ch=Environmentc3=GU.co.ukc4=Climate+change+%28Environment%29%2CAustralia+%28News%29%2CClimate+change+%28Science%29%2CEnvironment%2CScience%2CCarbon+emissions+%28Environment%29%2CAsia+Pacific+%28News%29%2CWorld+newsc5=Unclassified%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CClimate+Change%2CEthical+Livingc6=Oliver+Milmanc7=12-May-14c8=1744828c9=Articlec10=Newsc11=Environmentc13=c25=c30=contentc42=Environmenth2=GU%2FEnvironment%2FEnvironment%2FClimate+change" width="1" height="1" //divp class="standfirst"Multimillion-dollar study subjects bushland to heightened CO2 levels and altered rainfall patterns/pp/pp/ppAn Australian university has embarked upon an ambitious project – hailed as the first of its kind in the world – to simulate how the environment would cope with runaway climate change./ppThe decade-long study, at the University of Western Sydney's a href="http://www.uws.edu.au/hie" title=""Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment/a, will subject Australian bushland to heightened CO2 levels and altered rainfall patterns consistent with a "business as usual" global increase in greenhouse gases./ppThe centrepiece of the study is the Eucalyptus Free Air CO2 Enrichment experiment, which has involved the construction of six fibre glass and steel ring structures 28 metres high and 25 metres in diameter in native woodland in Richmond, New South Wales. The structures contain an array of sensors that will deliver a concentration of CO2 to the trees within the rings./ppThis, scientists say, will recreate an atmosphere where CO2 is at 550 ppm – about 40% higher than current levels – to see how the environment would change for living things, including humans./ppThis level of CO2 has been chosen to mimic how the environment would react in a world where no significant action is taken to reduce carbon emissions over the next 35 years./ppIt has been predicted that a 40% increase in CO2 would result in an average global temperature increase of about three degrees centigrade./ppAn automated computer-controlled system will modulate the amount of CO2 pumped from the rings, to account for environmental variability./ppScientists will use a giant 43-metre high crane to study the impact on all parts of the towering eucalypt trees, such as soil bacteria and fungi, the growth patterns of the tree canopy and the insects that dwell in the foliage./ppThe sprawling facilities at the institute have been funded via a AUS$40 million (£25m) grant from the federal government, bolstering a $15m investment by the University of Western Sydney./ppa href="http://www.uws.edu.au/hie/people/researchers/professor_david_ellsworth" title=""Prof David Ellsworth/a, who is leading the "free air" experiment, was involved in a similar study at Duke University in the US./pp"That study was with plantation trees and we found there was less [growth] enhancement than we expected with the higher CO2 levels," he said./pp"But there's been nothing like this before, on this scale. We're dealing with native woodland and poorer soils. It's an area with impoverished phosphorus and nutrition in the soil, which is the same as the environment in many areas of the world in the tropics and sub tropics./pp"It will give us a window into how biodiversity will behave in futuristic conditions."/ppThe first results from the study, which is due to launch in September, will be published next year./ppHowever, the institute has already conducted preliminary research – the findings can be read a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2010.02325.x/abstract" title=""here/a and a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-3040.2011.02465.x/abstract" title=""here/a – on a small collection of trees over the past 18 months, to test their responses to heightened CO2 and warmer temperatures./pp"The outcome was that the trees had a limited ability to adjust," said Ellsworth. "They didn't cope well with a warm Sydney summer. Photosynthesis decreased. They stopped growing, basically./pp"Heightened CO2 levels have been shown to initially aid plant growth, but previous studies have shown this can last as little as a few months./pp"To put it crudely, plants want a balanced diet. CO2 is part of that diet, but they also need nutrients that aren't depleted."/ppThe institute insists its work isn't only of interest to Australia, where modelling has predicted a temperature rise a href="http://www.csiro.au/Outcomes/Climate/Understanding/State-of-the-Climate-2012/Future-Changes.aspx" title=""of as much as 5C/a, coupled with more frequent droughts, by 2070 if no action on emissions is taken./ppa href="http://www.uws.edu.au/hie/people/researchers/professor_ian_anderson" title=""Prof Ian Anderson/a, director of research at the institute, said scientists from the UK, Brazil and South Africa had already contacted the institute about the research./pp"The soils are very different here to the northern hemisphere, but plants there rely on the same equation of CO2, nitrogen and phosphorus as they do here," he said./pp"We are also looking at the impact of drought and because we will potentially see big water reductions in the future, the results here will be very important for the rest of the world."/ppEllsworth said: "I really hope the big players, like China and the US, are paying attention to research like this./pp"If we don't want to be saturated by carbon in 2040 or 2050, the international community really needs to be in its final run of cutting of emissions right now."/pdiv class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change"Climate change/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/australia"Australia/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/scienceofclimatechange"Climate change/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/carbon-emissions"Carbon emissions/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/asia-pacific"Asia Pacific/a/li/ul/divdiv class="author"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/oliver-milman"Oliver Milman/a/divbr/div class="terms"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds"More Feeds/a/divp style="clear:both" / pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/mSCTEmU0dh0EsLzSDBZZJlrxPaY/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/mSCTEmU0dh0EsLzSDBZZJlrxPaY/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/mSCTEmU0dh0EsLzSDBZZJlrxPaY/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/mSCTEmU0dh0EsLzSDBZZJlrxPaY/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p