By David Ritter 8 July 2013 (The Guardian) – A mighty political struggle is dividing Australia, but it is not the mêlée taking place in Canberra. It is the battle that pitches the kids on my street: bouncy Jack, serious Cristiana, little toddling Lily and all of their mates, and every other child from across […]
By Jonathan Kaiman8 July 2013 BEIJING (The Guardian) – Air pollution causes people in northern China to live an average of 5.5 years shorter than their southern counterparts, according to a study released on Monday which claims to show in unprecedented detail the link between air pollution and life expectancy. High levels of air pollution […]
PITTSBURGH, 3 July 2013 (Associated Press) – A group of Protestant churches has become the first U.S. religious body to vote to divest its pension funds and investments from fossil fuel companies because of climate change concerns. The United Church of Christ, which traces its origins back to the Pilgrims in 1620 and has about […]
The end of an era. The Oil Drum was the single best source for intelligent discussions about the future of world energy production, with a contrapuntal theme of global warming chat. Rembrandt broke the news that TOD is closing: …due to scarcity of new content caused by a dwindling number of contributors. Despite our best […]
By Carmel Lobello27 June 2013 (The Week) – In a speech on Tuesday, President Obama laid out a plan for reducing carbon emissions, directing the EPA to add new carbon limitations for coal plants that are already active — a move that opponents are likening to a “war on coal.” Coal, the largest source of […]
By Rakteem Katakey28 June 2013 (Bloomberg) – India is burning coal in power plants at the fastest pace in 31 years. At the same time, domestic supplies of natural gas that are the main alternative are falling at the quickest rate in Asia, data from 2012 compiled by BP Plc (BP/) show. Both trends […]
By Tom Randall 25 June 2013 (Bloomberg) – Transcript of President Barack Obama’s speech at Georgetown University announcing his new climate-change policy: On Christmas Eve, 1968, the astronauts of Apollo 8 did a live broadcast from lunar orbit. So Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, William Anders — the first humans to orbit the moon — described […]
[Desdemona strongly endorses a War on Coal.] By Sean Cockerham and Erika Bolstad26 June 2013 WASHINGTON (McClatchy Newspapers) – President Barack Obama’s plan to curb climate change could transform American energy, potentially dealing a blow to the coal-fired power plants that supply much of the nation’s electricity but also pump planet-warming gases into the atmosphere. […]
By David J. Unger20 June 2013 (Christian Science Monitor) – No country emits more carbon dioxide than China, but at least some of that heat-trapping gas gets its start in Appalachian mines. With cleaner-burning natural gas cutting into the their market in the United States, coal companies have found eager customers in the East, fueling […]
By Gareth Carpenter; Edited by James Leech12 June 2013 London (Platts) – Coal remained the world’s fastest-growing fossil fuel in 2012, despite the rate of consumption slipping below the 10-year average of 4.4% during the year, according to the BP 2013 Statistical Review of World Energy released Wednesday. Total global coal consumption in 2012 rose […]
