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Issue 1 wikifeed
Local and Regional
June 9th TIF Bid announced- central government will unlock £3bn, so long as congestion charging is part of the overall plan of transport improvements.
June 10 20-year old MMU student Dominic Green has co-developed "Enviro-Match", which uses games to help educate children and young people on environmental issues. resolveevolvesolve.com has a demo.
June 20 Students and staff at Parrs Wood High School,
Didsbury tried to set up a recycling scheme, but were asked for 2
grand per year by Manchester City Council for the privilege of having
them empted. (MEN 20/6/08)
National
June 7 EON claims that England's failure to qualify for EURO 2008 could save the equivalent of 30 double-decker buses worth of carbon dioxide emissions (MEN)
June 9 The Climate Bill went to the House of Commons for its second reading (fill in rest of it here)
June 12 A report commissioned by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds concludes that building a whacking big (10 mile) barrage across the Severn Estuary would cost £15 billion, and that money could be better spent on wind farms and the like.
June 12 Stirling is aiming to become the UK's first carbon neutral city thanks to £1.25m in funding announced today from the Big Lottery Fund and the Scottish Government to the community-led Going Carbon Neutral Stirling
(GCNS) project.
June 16 David Cameron accused the government of faking the case for Heathrow runway three to make political capital. But left himself wiggle room to go ahead with it if/when he is PM.
June 16 The Association of British Insurers warned that 500,000 properties will be uninsurable unless flood risks are managed better.
June 17 The Association of Electricity Producers accused the Conservatives of having the "wrong approach" in proposing to making "carbon capture and storage" mandatory. In other news, the Pope is still Catholic.
June 17 On Tuesday night climate campaigners from ‘Leave it in the Ground’occupied the UK Coal’s Lodge House site in Derbyshire by barricading themselves in a disused farm building and taken to the trees on the site of the open cast mine. http://leaveitintheground.wordpress.com/
June 21 Energy Minister Malcolm Wicks announced the UK's plans to achieve the EU target of 15% of energy from renewables by 2020. Loads of solar heating panels and 3,500 new wind turbines.
International
Date, 2 sentences, Source of info/further info.
e.g June 19 President Bush today admitted complete ignorance in the face of climate science. "I get my scientifical information from the Bible, especially the older bits. And anyhow, here comes the Rapture." Reuters.
June 6th The US Senate fails to pass a Climate Bill that would have required greenhouse gas emissions to be cut 18 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and nearly 70 percent by mid-century. (That's not enough, btw)
June 7th International Energy Agency report on future of energy technologies has urged the world to wean itself of oil in order to avoid "significant change in all aspects of life and irreversible change in the natural environment" (FT)
June 7th The International Energy Agency says that the cost of carbon dioxide emissions would need to be at least $200 a tonne to deliver the necessary cuts to avert the threat of Global Warming.
June 9 NASA's press office was found to have politically interfered with its own scientists work on global warming, after an internal investigation.
June 10th Eight of the world’s leading carbon reduction and offset providers have formed the International Carbon Reduction and Offset Alliance (ICROA), The Climate Group announced. (Environmental Leader)
June 10th Bush at his last EU-US summit
June 10th Japan is launching an experimental carbon trading scheme for industry and is pledging to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 60 to 80% by 2050
June 10th France and Germany agree over targets for car emissions, ahead of the French taking on the EU presidency. They had spatted over whether all models of cars should contribute equally to the European Commission's proposed goal of cutting CO2 emissions to 130g per km by 2012
June 12 Speaking to the UN General Assembly at a meeting on private investments and climate change, Carbon Disclosure Project Chairman James Cameron said the world must reach agreement on a new internationally treaty that is binding in international law, Investment Management News reports.
June 13th The world needs ever increasing energy supplies to sustain economic growth and development. But energy resources are under pressure and CO2 emissions from today’s energy use already threaten our climate. What options do we have for switching to a cleaner and more efficient energy future? How much will it cost? And what policies do we need? The second edition of Energy Technology Perspectives addresses these questions, drawing on the renowned expertise of the International Energy Agency (IEA) and its energy technology network.
June 16 China’s CO2 emissions increased eight percent in 2007, and the country accounted for two-thirds of last year’s global GHG emissions increase of 3.1 percent, according to a report from the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. Per head of population, that is still way lower than the US or UK, but it's still bad news...
June 17 Mitsubishi announces it will produce an all-electric vehicle- the i-MiEV.
June 20 Friends of the Earth Canada is suing the Conservative government for the inadequacy of its climate change mitigation plans. (Canada signed up to the Kyoto Protocol, but its emissions have soared anyway.)
June 20 99 companies are asking the political leaders who attend the G8 meeting in Japan next month to set greenhouse gas reductions targets and establish a global carbon market. THe companies include lcoa, British Airways (BA), Deutsche Bank, EDF, Petrobras, Shell and Vattenfall.
Scary Science
June 10th The Royal Society and other major scientific bodies urged governments to spend a lot more moolah on carbon reduction and storage techniques, timing their call ahead of the G8 meeting in Japan, early July.
June 11th The world could be tracking towards irreversible climate change as warming takes place much quicker than previously thought, an Adelaide academic has warned. Climate change expert Barry Brook, of Adelaide University, told a Canberra conference — Imagining the Real Life on a Greenhouse Earth — atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were headed towards 600 parts a million, and forecast global temperature increases of up to six degrees... Chris Hammer in the Age (Melbourne)
Scientists monitoring sea ice extent in the Arctic are reporting that once again, sea ice is declining at increased rates. While the sea ice extent for May 2008 is a little above the extent for 2007, it is below the 20-year average, and the rate of decline this year is greater rate than in 2007. For more information and analysis, go to http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/index.html.
14 June Arctic thaw threatens Siberian permafrost
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Saturday, 14 June 2008
The permafrost belt stretching across Siberia to Alaska and Canada could start melting three times faster than expected because of the speed at which Arctic Sea ice is disappearing.
A study found that the effects of sea-ice loss – which reached an all-time record last summer – extend almost 1,000 miles inland to areas where the ground is usually frozen all year round.
June 17 German airline Lufthansa has committed to reducing its GHG emissions by 25-percent by 2020 and mixing biofuels with conventional jet kerosene as part of its environmental strategy
June 19 US Climate Change Science Programme releases report predicting more droughts, hurricanes, floods in the US.
Past events/meetings
June 9 Eleven people attended the Campaign against Climate Change meeting to discuss strategy, the recent Heathrow demo and upcoming plans www.gmcacc.org
June 13 Various academics and activists and groupies discussed "apocalyptic rhetoric" at the first of three workshops of the "Future Ethics" programme of Manchester University's theology programme. www.manchester.ac.uk/FutureEthics
June 17th Manchester Evening News hosted a nuclear debate.
June 17th SEMA meeting- outcomes?
June 19th Green Party members debated TIF bid