Richard's blog

Reuters are running a story about a new carbon tax in Quebec.

"TORONTO, Oct 1 (Reuters) - Quebec province slapped the country's first carbon tax on energy firms on Monday, as Canadian business leaders urged "environmental taxation" to rein in greenhouse-gas emissions.

The tax, proposed more than a year ago, is expected to raise C$200 million ($202 million) a year to fund the province's plans to reduce emissions." 

Read full article here. 

Tree Hugger Article
By Jasmin Malik Chua
Treehugger.com

Green for All, a new national campaign dedicated to bringing green-collar jobs to urban neighborhoods, launched today at the Clinton Global Initiative. Created by Van Jones, the co-founder of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, the group wants to harness the power of the growing green economic wave to bolster predominantly black, low-income communities in areas such as Detroit, Baltimore, and New Orleans.

Paul Simons from the London Times reports on the early effects of climate change.

Experts predict a run of severe weather in the coming months, with devastating floods striking some parts of the world while severe droughts afflict other regions, as the climate phenomenon known as La Niña gathers momentum.

A chronic drought afflicting southern California and many southeastern states of America could be exacerbated, with Los Angeles heading for its driest year on record. In contrast, western Canada and the northwestern US could turn colder and snowier. Mozambique, southeast Africa, and northern Brazil may face exceptionally heavy rains and floods, while southern Brazil and much of Argentina suffer drought.

La Niña could even rearrange the pattern of sea ice around the Antarctic, pushing the ice pack towards the Pacific side of the continent. Already, torrential rains have triggered severe floods across a huge swath of Central Africa, stretching from Senegal in the west to Uganda in the east.

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Domatoceras, a precursor of the squid with a hard shell, thrived 443 million years ago during the early Silurian period. More than 100 million years later during the Carboniferous period, Pentamerus, a clamlike, two-shelled invertebrate, clustered on ocean floors. Both stored rare isotopes of carbon and oxygen in their calcium carbonate shells that then fossilized. By examining the percentage of such bonded rare isotopes, scientists have now confirmed the link between carbon dioxide levels and warmer ancient climates.

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We face a lot of challenges, complex and sometimes overwhelming challenges. There are no Single Shot / Silver Bullet solutions out there. But, in some ways, there are solution sets that could be considered a Silver BB.

Our challenges include Peak Oil, Global Warming, clean water constraints, food supply challenges (including every increasing food miles, how far food is traveling to the dinner table), poor urban infrastructure, urban heat islands, housing challenges, etc...

Vertical urban agriculture offers a potential silver BB in this domain ... with a new concept from Seattle offering one of the most integrated and interesting approaches that I've seen to...
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"It will be up to those of us who understand the great value of this important film to take this as an opportunity to spread the word to the many, many more of us who need to get the news."
Maryann Johanson

Read the full review

The area covered by sea ice in the Arctic has shrunk to its lowest level this week since satellite measurements began nearly 30 years ago, opening up the Northwest Passage – a long-sought short cut between Europe and Asia that has been historically impassable.

In the mosaic image above, created from nearly 200 images acquired in early September 2007 by the Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) instrument aboard ESA’s Envisat satellite, the dark gray colour represents the ice-free areas while green represents areas with sea ice.

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Panel Faults Emphasis of U.S. Climate Program
The New York Times - September 14, 2007
Andy Revkin

An effort by the Bush administration to improve federal climate research has answered some questions but lacks a focus on impacts of changing conditions and informing those who would be most affected, a panel of experts has found.