The   Copenhagen Climate Conference has been a water shed in the fight against climate change. Disappointment, indifference and frustration have annihilated the little hope that the endless series of preparatory UN conferences had generated.
Today, three months after Copenhagen, nobody seems to have a clue on how to reduce green house gas emissions sufficiently to [...]

In view of the stalemate on climate legislation in the Senate President Obama has  instructed the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) to prepare executive regulations for capping green house gas emissions from automobiles, trucks, refineries, power plants and major industrial emitters. These measures are designed to enter into force in early 2011 if no legislation has [...]

Kerosene is the only fuel that is globally exempt from any taxation. This bizarre situation is due to an extensive interpretation of article 24 of the Chicago Convention (1944!) on civil aviation, which provides that states should admit aircraft temporarily free of duty and that fuel shall be exempt from customs duty.
This provision prevents [...]

Iran is probably the country with the cheapest gasoline prices.
A litre of gasoline costs only 45 cents beyond the monthly entitlement of 80 litres per car for which car owners pay ridiculous 11US cents.
The Iranian government has to pay almost $ 100 billion annually for financing its generous subsidies on petrol, fuel and electricity (one [...]

Not everything has become dark on the climate front after the disappointing outcome of the Copenhagen Climate Talks three months ago.
In procedural terms, the Mexican hosts of the Cancun meeting in November/December have multiplied their contacts with main players to insure a more successful outcome.
But more important, there many signs that the business, consumers and [...]

Less than two months after the Copenhagen Climate Conference Congress the US Administration has taken three major decisions on its future energy policy:
• A 10 percent  increase of its  nuclear  capacity
President Obama has signed an $ 8 billion loan guarantee for the first two new nuclear reactors to be built in 30 years. The [...]

The most recent FAO report on the “State of Food and Agriculture” contains a comprehensive analysis of the profound changes that have taken place in the livestock sector during the past 30 years. These transformations have outpaced the capacity of governments and societies to provide the necessary policy and regulatory framework to ensure an appropriate [...]

The international community has failed to address climate change. And there is no prospect for it being more successful in the near future. Nobody expects the ministerial meeting (COP 16) scheduled for the end of the year in Cancun to lead to a substantive breakthrough.
The time has come for a more thorough reflection on where [...]

The decision by Areva, the French engineering company with a turn-over of some € 12 billion and employing 75 000 people around the world, to buy Ausra, a tiny US start-up company with less than 100 employees, is likely to give a further boost solar thermal power generation, after the launch of DESERTEC by a [...]

For those fighting to preserve the earth’s climate, the second decade of the 21st century has begun with two bad news:

·     UN member countries will not honour the deadline of February 1st, by which to submit their climate targets for 2020, as “agreed” in the “Copenhagen Accord”. That might be the beginning of [...]