This is a dark hour. The Kyoto Protocol will end in 2012. With every failed summit, the likelihood grows that there will be no new treaty to replace it. Kyoto was far from perfect. The nations covered by the protocol’s targets account for less than a quarter of global emissions. And it did not cover shipping or aviation. But Kyoto did represent a global recognition of the need to tackle climate change. And if the treaty lapses without a replacement the small successes it has delivered, such as finance for developing nations that protect their rainforests, could unravel.

Optimists point out that Spain and India have made constructive moves over the past fortnight. But Japan, Canada and Russia have grown more recalcitrant. And the election of a host of new climate sceptic Republican members to Congress in last month’s mid-term US elections has tied President Barack Obama’s hands. China, meanwhile, remains the roadblock that it was in Copenhagen.

It is tempting to argue that the search for a binding global deal should now be abandoned and to recommend that governments focus on national emission reductions, bilateral deals where possible or even adaptation to a hotter planet. Yet if nations go their own way, we will likely descend into a beggar-thy-neighbour world, in which countries with laxer emissions controls poach manufacturing capacity from states that take a lead. It is hard to see even the most modest national emission reduction efforts surviving under such circumstances.

Read it all.

I was recently in America. It’s a country I love but it was depressing. All the energy for legislating on climate change has drained away. Those once leading the debate are now silent, the deniers have turned up the volume. The Administration has stalled on this vital subject. The President said in his State of the Union speech “the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy”. If that’s true (and I believe it is) then America has already begun to cede its premier place in the world economy.

The Chinese are already talking about the economic downturn as “the North Atlantic Crisis”. And according to the Pew Centre Research “China is emerging as the world’s cleanest energy powerhouse”. It has already become the world’s leading investor in renewables aiming for 15% of its energy to be generated through renewables by 2020. It has designated 5 provinces and 8 cities as China’s Low Carbon Pilots, representing 350 million people, 27% of the population and one third of the economy. The centre of gravity is shifting from West to East not just for the World Economy but for the Green Economy.

Future historians will ponder long and hard on why the North Atlantic nations fell so easily on their swords and pressed the self-destruct button.

Read it all.

The ballroom of the Grand Hyatt on Beijing’s East Chang An Avenue was packed. The occasion: the first-ever China International Nuclear Symposium, a gathering of China’s top nuclear players and the world’s nuclear power companies, including Westinghouse, Areva SA, and Hitachi-GE.

What brought the Chinese to the Hyatt on Nov. 24 and 25 was a hunger for the latest technology, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its Dec. 6 issue. What brought the foreigners was money: According to Michael Kruse, consultant on nuclear systems for Arthur D. Little, the Chinese are ready to spend $511 billion to build up to 245 reactors.

“The market is being driven by the construction of new reactors, and it is no secret that most of those are right here in China,” says Fletcher T. Newton, an executive vice-president of Uranium One, a mining company.

Read it all.

Scientists have long known that pollution and dust from China travels over the Pacific to the western United States. What they haven’t been able to figure out is how much. Until now.

In a paper published in the latest issue of the scholarly journal Environmental Science and Technology and picked up by Chemical & Engineering News, a team of geochemists announced that they have developed a method for tracing fine airborne particulate pollution (also known as PM2.5 because the particles are less than 2.5 microns wide) with origins in East Asia by testing for a specific lead isotope, 208Pb, found in greater concentrations in coal and metal ores from the region.

Read it all.

Parishioners at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church on Third Avenue took 123 steps toward being a greener, more Earth-friendly parish Sunday in the form of a dedication ceremony for 123 solar panels that were installed in August and September.

The Rev. John Sosnowski said Monday that the project will result in parishioners being “better stewards” of the Earth.

“It’s an investment in our future,” Sosnowski said, adding that once the power-purchase agreement is completed between the church and 95th Street Power Associates LLC, the company that funded most of the project, the panels will become church property.

Read it all.

Action on climate change is becoming so urgently needed that even ”¨scientists trained not to make value judgements see it as a moral”¨ issue.”¨”¨ What’s more, we may be “running out of time,” says Dr. John Stone, adjunct”¨ research professor, geography and environmental studies, at Carleton”¨ University in Ottawa.

“Climate change has now become such a threat ”¨to our society, economy and environment that some of us find it difficult,”¨ if not irresponsible, to remain within our [objective] disciplinary domains,” ”¨”¨he told a Nov. 14 workshop at The Church of St. John the ”¨Evangelist (Anglican) Church here. “We have defined the problem, now we need to put all our efforts”¨ into developing and implementing solutions.”

Read it all.

A stream of evidence shows that “a culture of complacency” rather than a “culture of safety” prevailed at BP, Transocean Ltd. and Halliburton as they worked on the ill-fated Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, according to the chairmen of the presidential commission investigating the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The panel’s investigators uncovered “a suite of bad decisions,” many still inexplicable, involving tests that were poorly run, alarming results that were ignored, proper equipment that was sidelined and safety barriers that were removed prematurely at the high-pressure well, said William K. Reilly, who is co-chairman of the commission with former Democratic Sen. Bob Graham of Florida.

“Each company is responsible for one or more egregiously bad decisions,” said Reilly, who was an administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under President George W. Bush.

Read it all.

Since the birth of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, there has been a welcome transformation in the language of global conservation. Policymakers and even some businesses have started to express a view of nature as a store of wealth””or “natural capital”. Talk of “ecosystem services” now draws attention to the helpful things that nature does unbidden, such as providing fresh soil and clean water.

This approach not only has the advantage of moving conservation from the domain of lofty morality down to earth, reflecting a pragmatism more likely to support and sustain action.

Read it all.

China, which has been blocking shipments of crucial minerals to Japan for the last month, has now quietly halted shipments of some of those same materials to the United States and Europe, three industry officials said on Tuesday.

The Chinese action, involving rare earth minerals that are crucial to manufacturing many advanced products, seems certain to further ratchet up already rising trade and currency tensions with the West. Until recently, China typically sought quick and quiet accommodations on trade issues. But the interruption in rare earth supplies is the latest sign from Beijing that Chinese officials are willing to use their growing economic muscle.

“The embargo is expanding” beyond Japan, said one of the three rare earth industry officials, all of whom insisted on anonymity for fear of business retaliation by Chinese authorities. They said Chinese customs officials imposed the broader shipment restrictions Monday morning, hours after a top Chinese official had summoned international news media Sunday night to denounceUnited States trade actions.

Read it all.

As the U.S. prepares to embark on a new round of Federal Reserve quantitative easing, there are plenty of reasons to doubt that it is the right course for the economy and job creation.

Here’s another: The voyage might have to be aborted ”” or at least diverted ”” soon after QE2 leaves the dock because the Fed may be sailing into a political hurricane.

Even before the anticipated launch of the next round of Treasury purchases ”” it’s expected to be made official on Nov. 3 ”” the Fed’s unmistakable signals have fueled commodity price gains as the dollar has sagged….

Read it all.

Lawmakers will consider a recommendation when they return in January to raise the gasoline tax by 5.5 cents, from 16.75 cents to 22.25 cents a gallon, along with a financial doom-and-gloom message from state Department of Transportation Secretary Buck Limehouse.

Limehouse told lawmakers in a letter he sent Monday that funding is the agency’s biggest challenge. The state gasoline tax pays for road improvements and construction, safety upgrades as well as bridge replacement. That cash is used to pull down federal highway dollars.

Read it all.

China is pouring another $7bn (£4.4bn) into Brazil’s oil industry, reigniting fears of a global “land grab” of natural resources.

State-owned Sinopec clinched the deal with Spain’s Repsol yesterday to buy 40 per cent of its Brazilian business, giving China’s largest oil company access to Repsol Brasil’s estimated reserves of 1.2 billion barrels of oil and gas. The whopping price tag for Repsol Brasil ”“ which values the company at nearly twice previous estimates ”“ is a sign of China’s willingness to pay whatever it takes to lock in its future energy supplies and avoid social unrest. It will give the company enough cash to develop all its current oil projects, including two fields in the Santos Basin.

Read it all.

During the recession, political and business leaders have held out the promise that American advances, particularly in green technology, might stem the decades-long decline in U.S. manufacturing jobs. But as the lighting industry shows, even when the government pushes companies toward environmental innovations and Americans come up with them, the manufacture of the next generation technology can still end up overseas.

What made the plant here vulnerable is, in part, a 2007 energy conservation measure passed by Congress that set standards essentially banning ordinary incandescents by 2014. The law will force millions of American households to switch to more efficient bulbs.

The resulting savings in energy and greenhouse-gas emissions are expected to be immense. But the move also had unintended consequences.

Rather than setting off a boom in the U.S. manufacture of replacement lights, the leading replacement lights are compact fluorescents, or CFLs, which are made almost entirely overseas, mostly in China.

Read it all.

Every gallon of gasoline you pump would cost you 5.5 cents more.

You’d pay 19 cents more each month to run the water from your tap.

The medicines you take to treat your illnesses would cost an additional 88 cents a month.

Turning on the lights and the television would help run up an additional 79 cents a month on the electricity bill for the typical South Carolina household.

You would have to open your wallets for new taxes at the grocery store and get used to paying for sales taxes on more of the services you buy, such as home pest control treatment, pampering at the beauty salon and a storage unit to stash your stuff.

Read it all.

This summer I’ve been waiting for the opening of the movie Eat, Pray, Love with an anticipation that is a bit different from my hope that Congress would find effective strategies to address climate change. The difference? I don’t think I’ll be disappointed with the movie’s ending.

I’m a Christian, an environmentalist, an academic and a pop-culture junkie. And I think the three verbs in the movie’s title ”” eat, pray, love ”” might provide direction for the thousands of believers from diverse faith traditions who advocated for a religious response to global warming in three stories that unfolded this summer.

Despite sincere prayer and informed lobbying, people of faith have watched: (1) the Senate’s inability to tackle the real problem of climate change, (2) the lack of progress at the United Nations Climate Change Conference and (3) the failure of the oil spill along the Gulf Coast to create a national demand for alternative energy sources.

Read it all.

The social service arm of the local Catholic Church said Tuesday (Aug. 3) it’s nearly out of relief money for people damaged by the BP oil spill because the oil company has not approved a replenishment the church requested in June.

Jim Kelly, co-president of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, said the archdiocese and its partners have distributed $1.8 million in aid to families along the Gulf coast since May.

BP donated $1 million toward that effort, but that money is gone and Catholic Charities is spending out of its reserves to keep the relief sites open, Kelly said.

The church issued a public appeal for funds Tuesday. It was contacting foundations and prior donors as well, because the church is committed to keeping the work going, he said.

Read it all.

Students of the Old Testament know that it says God created the heavens and earth. There’s a new program in Georgia that helps religious organizations take care of them both by using government stimulus money.

Some 400 congregations in Georgia of all faiths have signed on to the Power Wise program.

Whenever congregations meet, the members are challenged to help others, to improve the world around them. For one group in Georgia the light went on — so to speak.

“We are not an environmental organization,” said Alexis Chase, executive director of Georgia Interfaith Power and Light. “We are a faith-based organization. So, we talk about why as people of faith what our religious, historical traditions say about why we should care about creation and what God has created.”

Read it all.

Ikbal Ali, a bureaucrat in a beaded head scarf, accompanied by a phalanx of police officers, quickly found what she was out looking for in the summer swelter: electricity thieves. Six black cables stretched from a power pole to a row of auto-repair shops, siphoning what few hours of power Iraq’s straining system provides.

“Take them all down,” Ms. Ali ordered, sending a worker up in a crane’s bucket to disentangle the connections. A shop owner, Haitham Farhan, responded mockingly, using the words now uttered across Iraq as a curse, “Maku kahraba” ”” “There is no electricity.”

From the beginning of the war more than seven years ago, the state of electricity has been one of the most closely watched benchmarks of Iraq’s progress, and of the American effort to transform a dictatorship into a democracy.

And yet, as the American combat mission ”” Operation Iraqi Freedom, in the Pentagon’s argot ”” officially ends this month, Iraq’s government still struggles to provide one of the most basic services.

Read it all.

A team of federal investigators known as the “BP squad” is assembling in New Orleans to conduct a wide-ranging criminal probe that will focus on at least three companies and examine whether their cozy relations with federal regulators contributed to the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, according to law enforcement and other sources.

The squad at the FBI offices includes investigators from the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Coast Guard and other federal agencies, the sources said. In addition to BP, the firms at the center of the inquiry are Transocean, which leased the Deepwater Horizon rig to BP, and engineering giant Halliburton, which had finished cementing the well only 20 hours before the rig exploded April 20, sources said.

While it was known that investigators are examining potential violations of environmental laws, it is now clear that they are also looking into whether company officials made false statements to regulators, obstructed justice or falsified test results for devices such as the rig’s failed blowout preventer. It is unclear whether any such evidence has surfaced.

Read it all.

Four decades of experience suggests the only way to wean the nation off its ruinous oil addiction is prices that go up and stay up. And, although it’s a political non-starter for now, the simplest and best way to achieve that is to gradually raise the federal gasoline tax, now 18.4 cents a gallon, where it has been since 1993.

The arguments for a gas-tax increase are no less compelling for their familiarity. Higher taxes would produce substantial revenues ”” roughly $1 billion a year for every extra penny in tax ”” that could be used to fix roads and reduce the budget deficit. They would make fuel-efficient cars more attractive.

Ultimately, higher taxes could help drive alternative technologies that would slow the flow of money to finance some of the world’s worst regimes and multinational oil companies, such as BP.

Whether increasing the gas tax would reduce the need for drilling in environmentally sensitive areas such as the Gulf depends on worldwide demand for oil, which is being driven upward by the rising economies of China and India. But those countries have their own efforts to curb gasoline use, and reducing consumption in the USA, the world’s top oil consumer, is essential.

Read it all.

We’ve basically decided to keep pumping greenhouse gases into Mother Nature’s operating system and take our chances that the results will be benign ”” even though a vast majority of scientists warn that this will not be so. Fasten your seat belts. As the environmentalist Rob Watson likes to say: “Mother Nature is just chemistry, biology and physics. That’s all she is.” You cannot sweet-talk her. You cannot spin her. You cannot tell her that the oil companies say climate change is a hoax. No, Mother Nature is going to do whatever chemistry, biology and physics dictate, and “Mother Nature always bats last, and she always bats 1.000,” says Watson. Do not mess with Mother Nature. But that is just what we’re doing.

Read it all.

BP Plc plans to appoint Robert Dudley to succeed Tony Hayward as chief executive officer as the board looks to recover the company’s position in the U.S., two people with knowledge of the matter said.

Dudley, the director of BP’s oil spill response unit, is ready to be announced as the company’s first American chief on July 27 and to take the helm Oct. 1, one of the people said, asking not to be identified because a final decision hasn’t yet been made. The decision was reached in discussions with board members about how best to take BP forward and rebuild its U.S. position, the person said. The BP board meets tomorrow to “rubber stamp” the plan, the second person said.

“The fact he is American should help to keep things a little more straightforward in his dealings with the U.S. administration,” Ted Harper, who helps manage $6.8 billion at Frost Investment Advisors in Houston, said today. He doesn’t hold BP stock. “Dudley’s most important task will continue to be making sure that the well is capped.”

Read it all.

Watch….[as the following people speak] from New Orleans Roman Catholic Archbishop Gregory Aymond, Margaret Dubuisson of Catholic Charities of the New Orleans Archdiocese, and Rev. John Dee Jeffries, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Chalmette, discussing the spiritual toll of the oil spill crisis for people along the Gulf Coast.

You may find the video link here.

An alarm aboard the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that could have alerted workers to fire and explosive gas had been silenced before the 20 April explosion, a senior rig technician has said.

Mike Williams told a hearing that managers wanted warning sirens and lights silenced because they did want workers disturbed by false alarms.

He said the alarm had been partially shut off months before the blast.

Read it all.

For members of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, confirming Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court is not just a matter of law or politics. It is a spiritual imperative for the disillusioned Obama acolytes suffering from post-election politician syndrome.

They need a replacement for the “deep cynicism” decimating the hope Barack Obama generated in supporters prior to the 2008 presidential election, according to one of Berkeley-based NSP’s three leaders, Rabbi Michael Lerner.

The pacifists for open borders, with a penchant for emitting ‘sacred hollers’ in a group setting, are culled mainly from liberal Protestant and Jewish congregations. Members are not required to have any particular religious beliefs. What adherents are asked to do is “to take time out each day to look at this incredible universe, say: Wow! Fantastic! Amazing!”””and chart their path to heaven through politics.

One of NSP’s most sacred causes is the Global Marshall Plan. Introduced in Congress this year, the resolution is styled as “a commitment to peace, social justice and the ecological sanity of our planet.”

Read it all.

Tests on BP’s newly capped Gulf of Mexico oil well show pressure has been building up slightly as hoped with no signs of leakage, BP says.

BP vice-president Kent Wells said rising pressure “is giving us more and more confidence”. Tests, however, could be extended beyond Saturday.

The new cap has managed to stop the flow of oil for the first time since a 20 April explosion killed 11 people.

Read it all.

John Rotonti, Felix’s owner, would not let the bar go dry. He bought oysters from Florida and Texas to supplement the meager harvest from Louisiana.

Still, a shucker can only do so much in the face of an environmental disaster of mammoth proportions.

Close to closing time, Mr. [Keith] Chancley, who on a good day last year might have made $200 in tips, took a measly $4 out of the tip bucket after the total was split with the rookie shucker (three years on the job) and the novice shucker (a dishwasher in training).

“We’ve got to take the good with the bad,” said Mr. Chancley, a 35-year veteran. “I tell the other shuckers around town ”” we’re a close group ”” just weather the storm. Take it as a time to heal your cramped hands and your soul.”

Read it all.

Where would Jesus drill?

Religious leaders who consider environmental protection a godly mission are making the Gulf of Mexico oil spill a rallying cry, hoping it inspires people of faith to support cleaner energy while changing their personal lives to consume less and contemplate more.

“This is one of those rare moments when you can really focus people’s attention on what’s happening to God’s creation,” said Walt Grazer, head of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment.

Read it all.

As the oil continues to spill in the Gulf of Mexico, what to do about off-shore drilling and the regulation of the oil industry is cause for debate in Congress and among coastal residents. Now add to this another dimension: religion.

The Southern Baptist Convention has used notably strong language to call on the government ”” and its own congregation ”” to work to prevent such a crisis again.

In a resolution, the Convention called on the government “to act determinatively and with undeterred resolve to end this crisis … to ensure full corporate accountability for damages, clean-up and restoration … and to ensure that government and private industry are not again caught without planning for such possibilities.”

Dr. Russell Moore helped pass that resolution….

Read it all.

Ron Greve expects the worst is yet to come in the oil spill drama that is haranguing beach towns all along the US Gulf Coast. So, like a growing number of residents, the Pensacola Beach solar-cell salesman took a hazardous materials class and received a “hazmat card” upon graduation.

Those cards, says Mr. Greve, could become critical in coming weeks and months. In the case of a hurricane hitting the 250-mile wide slick and pushing it over sand dunes and into beach towns, residents fear they’ll face not only mass evacuations, but potential permanent relocation.

Storm-wizened locals know that it can take days, even weeks, for roads to open and authorities to allow residents to return to inspect the damage and start to rebuild after a hurricane moves through.

Read it all.