Explore Our Planet

Car buyers now have a simple way to compare the “greenness” of their automotive choices.

Environmental Defense has partnered with Yahoo!Autos to make Green Ratings widely available to consumers—right next to vehicle prices and other common car specs anyone can access on the Internet.

Fuel efficiency factors into the Green Ratings, greener choices cut oil use and help U.S. energy security while protecting the planet.

Remember: no car is most greenest car and only 1% of fuel’s energy is actually used by a car to transport you.

Picture Credit: Australian Greenhouse Office, Department of the Environment and Heritage

Asking 5,800 adults in 20 countries: “Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? - Damage to the environment must be reduced, even if it means slower economic growth.” Angus Reid Strategies and Maclean’s got following results:

via:
Angus Reid Global Monitor - U.S. Out of Step With World on Environment
Methodology details

Latest Rough Guide on Climate Change publishing was accompanied by a letter to all MPs with three simple questions:

How important a concern is climate change?

What can Britain do to make a difference?

What steps do you plan to take (or have you taken), in your constituency, and as an individual?

About half of them answered (MP Gordon Brown not) and the Independent highlights the response from MP Richard Benyon (Newbury, Conservative) as an average:

“Climate Change is the defining issue of our age. Previous generations had to deal with the rise of Nazism or communism. This is the issue on which my generation of politicians will be judged. This is our Dunkirk.”

All reponses are listed at roughguides.com/mps/fullreplies.htm

A two-minute film broadcasted in UK that starts to tell the story of why climate change is happening and why it needs to be tackled together.

Original source: climatechallenge.gov.uk, Quicktime

More: A guide to communicating climate change.

Since 1873 the temperature of the North Sea is measured, but the length of current warm period is unique. With an average of 0.13°C every year temperature rises, 1.7 degree since 1993. (more…)

The US Energy Information Administration published yesterday the numbers on the greenhose gas emissions from 2005. The ‘good’ news is the emissions ‘Growth Lower than Average in 2005′.

Quoted from press release:

Total U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were 7,147.2 million metric tons carbon dioxide equivalent (MMTCO2e) in 2005, an increase of 0.6 percent from the 2004 level according to Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States 2005, a report released today by the Energy Information Administration (EIA). Since 1990, GHG emissions have grown at an average annual rate of 1.0 percent. (more…)

Trees generate about 40 per cent of the world’s oxygen. To recreate the loss of trees in the past decade, we would need 1.3 million km2 and 140 billion trees.

Trees are the original multitaskers. They provide social, ecological, and economic benefits. They clean the air we breathe and the water we drink.

Every tree you plant is one closer to making the environment safer for generations to come. Together we can plant the future!

Join the Billion Tree Campaign (UNEP)

(more…)

Kenya is hosting the second meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (COP/MOP 2), in conjunction with the twelfth session of the Conference of the Parties to the Climate Change Convention (COP 12), in Nairobi from 6 to 17 November 2006.

The two-week conference, the twelfth Conference of the 189 Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the second meeting of the 166 Parties to the Kyoto Protocol, is the first UN climate summit in sub-Saharan Africa and is expected to draw around five thousand participants.

Climate change is rapidly emerging as one of the most serious threats that humanity may ever face, …

… We face a genuine danger that recent gains in poverty reduction will be thrown into reverse in coming decades, particularly for the poorest communities on the continent of Africa.

We need an equitable and effective future climate change regime that enables us to stabilize atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases while at the same time allowing economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner,…

[ President of the conference, Kenyan Environment Minister Kivutha Kibwana in his opening speech ]

Live Webcast (Realplayer needed)

The Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) programme of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) promotes systematic and reliable observations of the global atmospheric environment.

The Environment Division of WMO’s Atmospheric Research and Environment Programme recently published the 2005 Greenhouse Gas Bulletin with the latest trends and atmospheric burdens of the ost influential, long-lived greenhouse gases; carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O), as well as a summary of the contributions of the lesser gases. (more…)

Don’t forget the event tomorrow, goto London and show there is time for action now.

Timetable:

10.00am Cycle protest assembles at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, South side (Holborn/Temple tube). Goes via ExxonMobil offices, Australian Embassy and Downing Street to arrive at US embasy at 11.30 am. (more…)