Working Together – Saving Tomorrow Today: 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17)
The climate talks in Durban, South Africa, entered their second week today, entwined in a weave of issues and with no expectations from observers of a guaranteed deal being reached by negotiators. The theme of this year’s meeting is ‘Working Together, Saving Tomorrow Today’. How much work and progress has been made so far, after…
NGOs call for Durban debate on climate justice in tourism
The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa is now underway, and already running into difficulties with rumours that Canada may formally renounce the Kyoto Protocol due to fears about economic competitiveness. While tourism is not a major component of the Durban talks, aviation is one of the contentious issues, with individual countries…
The UN climate change summit opened in Durban today
The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa, begins today, 28 November, and will continue until 9 December 2011. The event includes the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP 17) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 7th Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of Parties to…
Can invasive species become necessary for their new ecosystems?
Invasive species are, in most cases quite rightly, generally seen as a "bad thing". Often free from native predators in their new environment, they can become much more aggressive than in their native habitats where they are in balance with the rest of the ecosystem and held in check by natural enemies, predators and diseases.…
Generating energy from sewage will soon become a reality in the north of England
Being a wastewater treatment specialist, I have often pointed out that more projects should be making use of waste by-products to generate renewable energy. Anaerobic digestion (AD) processes, which are widely used in wastewater treatment processes produce biogases. These are mainly methane and carbon dioxide gases, which are often wasted. In a recent paper McCarty…
Countdown to seven billion: does the world have enough water to produce food for us all?
As the world counts down to the landmark of seven billion people on the planet (a scary number predicted to happen – perhaps a little too conveniently? – on the scary day of Halloween, 31 October) we are seeing an increasing number of stories and statistics on whether the Earth's resources can cope with a…
Food for thought on UN World Food Week – Close to one billion people are chronically hungry
“In the searing heat of late spring, before anyone realized that what was happening here was just the beginning of something much bigger, a tiny girl stumbled through a field of rocks toward a group of international aid workers. She was barefoot and limping. Flies dotted her face, craving the moisture of her eyes, lips,…
Following the heat wave – moths migration to the UK
Photo courtesy of Butterfly Conservation A number of moth species from other countries in Europe and areas as far away as the Mediterranean region have migrated to the UK in the past week, most probably due to the heat wave we have experienced this Autumn, reported various news channels this morning (e.g. BBC News). Some moths…
How green is bioenergy?
It is well known that there is an international effort to replace fossil energy with biomass in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and curb global warming. It was widely assumed that biomass combustion would be inherently 'carbon neutral' because it only releases carbon taken from the atmosphere during plant growth. However, there…
24 hours of reality – is this the beginning of a global climate crisis movement?
A total of 24 presentations on the climate crisis were broadcast via the internet, starting in Mexico City at 7 pm on the 14th of September and proceeding westward around the globe, so that the presentation happened at 7 pm in each city, ending at 7 pm on 15th September 2011 in New York, on…