South America

Vanishing wilderness: 10 percent of Nature gone in 25 years

I admit it is hard to keep your head cool when you read such news, and this despite having discovered the power of positive psychology. To a new study the world has lost ten percent of its wilderness in as little as 25 tiny years… 

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Good news from Brazil, and no it is not the Olympics

Last week the Brazilian Senate ratified the Paris Agreement, making it one step closer to make this major climate change mitigation effort a reality. Brazil is the sixth world biggest carbon emitter and the biggest to ratify to date. 

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Uruguay to invest $2.6 billion in Wind energy

The drought that is affecting Brazil so much is also undermining Uruguay and its large dependance on hydro energy ( 74 percent of local electricity ). The current alternative to hydro is oil. So the country will invest $2.6 billion ( 2.3 billion euros ) in wind energy in the next couple of years.

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Peru to have 60 percent renewables by 2025

Currently in Lima, Peru, is taking place the 20th Conference of the Parties. It is an important event as the talks on our future climate are taking place there. In margin of these, the host country made some announcements.

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Chile is preparing a carbon tax

It seems taxing carbon is becoming a really popular idea as Chile is the latest to consider it as Reuters reported recently. The country would be the first to do so in South America and the second in Latin America after Mexico. As Climate Progress reports, this tax would concern only utilities and thermal plants

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Latin America moves forward on renewable energy

While I write mostly about the United States, Europe or China, a lot is happening in other regions of the world. An example of this is the growth of renewable energy sources in Latin America. Lately, I have come across a few large projects in this region. In Chile, a 300 MW solar project worth

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The fortune at the bottom of the pyramid

While reading Richard Branson’s latest book, Screw Business As Usual, I came across an interesting concept : the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid. The term refers to the basic goods and services to sell to the poorest people. To a report from the World Resources Institute quoted in Branson’s book,  the Bottom of

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Buenos Aires switches to LED lights, saves money

The capital city of Argentina, Buenos Aires, have switched its 125,000 streetlights to LED. This will cut energy consumption by half and will last five times longer. With 13 million inhabitants, it is the second largest city in South America. To TreeHugger : ” That’s just one city. It’s estimated that if cities around the

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Deforestation in Brazil bumps up

Even if there have been many good news on the environmental fronts in the past few months, there are still some bad ones. While deforestation of the Amazon rainforest had been drastically reduced since 2004, it seems it increased last year. As Treehugger reports : “According to the Brazilian forest monitoring agency which uses satellite

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Brazilian forestry code changes get vetoed

As deforestation in the Brazilian part of the Amazon rainforest was hitting its lowest levels in over two decades, some special interests had introduced to the local Congress some law to change that. Luckily, environmental organizations has been campaigning to avoid those catastrophic changes. Celebrities joined in too… Even more fortunately, the Brazilian President –

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