Welcome ! As a young French Marketing professional with a Master's in International Management I have been selecting since January 2007 the latest headlines and best researches on sustainable development, climate change, cleantech and the world energy sector. Sounds great ? Don't hesitate to subscribe now !
To Reuters : ” An Ecuadorean appeals court on Tuesday upheld a ruling that Chevron Corp should pay $18 billion in damages to plaintiffs who accused the U.S. oil giant of polluting the Amazon jungle and damaging their health. “
” A judge ordered Chevron to pay $8.6 billion in environmental damages last February, but the amount was more than doubled to about $18 billion because Chevron failed to make a public apology as required by the original ruling. “
This brings further development to the story I ran in 2010 where I noted that during three decades Texaco operated hundreds of oil wells without taking any notice of environmental issues. Continue »
The French daily Le Figaro publishes a translation of the best New York Times articles each Friday. This enabled me to come accross another huge oil spill, this time located in Ecuador, South America.
During three decades Texaco operated more than 300 oil wells without taking any notice of environmental issues. As a result the company polluted the air, the soil and the water in a massive way. As the NYT puts it :
” The quest for oil is, by its nature, colossally destructive. And the giant oil companies, when left to their own devices, will treat even the most magnificent of nature’s wonders like a sewer.” Continue »
India, the most populated nation and largest democracy announced it would cut its greenhouse gases emissions by 20 to 25 percent by 2020 or 2030. As you can see, the targets are very wide.
This happens as China decided to cuts the carbon intensity of its growth by 40 to 45 percent by 2020. CleanTechies also noted that ” Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil and South Africa have already announced plans to reduce their carbon outputs.”
All these news make me more comfortable about the Copenhagen Climate Conference due to begin next week. We will see what will happen there, so stay tuned !
Since the country announced earlier this year that its deforestation decreased by 46 percent and as its population is taking global warming seriously the government unveiled very ambitious goals for 2020.
Indeed, to Reuters and several other sources the country is willing to cut its emissions by a massive 36 percent minimum and even offered to go as far as 39 percent. This is even further than the United Kingdom.
But there is a slight problem as the base year is 2020. This still represents major cuts and we I believe we shouldn’t decrease the Brazilian climate ambition as it is excellent news. Continue »
To the pictures taken by satellites the annual rate of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest have dropped by no less than 46 percent this year. If these figures were confirmed by ground data this would prove significant.
These figures are the lowest since record keeping begun 21 years ago and can be explained by the increased police patrols as the Brazilian government is willing to cut the deforestation rate by 70 percent by 2018.
Less than three months before the Copenhagen meeting these news are sure to help in reaching in agreement among the world’s leaders. Continue »
Images are worth thousands of words. So when I found on VeoVerde a series of photographs from the NASA depicting the deforestation of the Amazonian rain forest I thought I should share them with you.
The picture on the left (0.4 Mo ; 465*3000 px) is a collage of nine photographs and shows the horrifying process at work between 2000 and 2008 in the western State of Rondonia, Brazil.
It’s high time we find an alternative economic model that would allow the preservation of the rainforest and the subsistence of the populations. Continue »
Recently two Latin America countries unveiled large renewable energies plans. If those projects were to become reality, they would bring several gigawatts of clean energy to the continent.
Argentina is very ambitious as it plans to build a wind farm that will amount for 600 to 900 MW as well as an impressive solar park that could provide up to 2,500 MW (via Ecoworldly).
To TreeHugger, Chile is also working on several projects including a 850 MW wind farm, a 500 MW solar photovoltaïc park as well as 10 MW solar thermal pilot project.
This is the ambitious goal that was set at the beginning of the month by the World Wild Fund for Nature (WWF), eight other NGOs and the government of Brazil.
This would to be reached by various sustainable development schemes that will include the local people, companies and government.
This is high time for such a project to be launched as according to various scientists, already 17 percent of the Amazon forest have been cut off.
According to various sources, including CNN Money and Challenges, the French company Suez sold for 3.3 billion Euros worth of electricity during auctions in Brazil.
The electricity will be generated by a dam that the company is currently building in collaboration with local companies. The project will be ready by 2012.
This project is due to answer in a sustainable way the growing energy demand in this country.
According to the Brazilian Environment Ministry, the deforestation of the Amazonian forest have slowed down by 25 percent in Brazil in 2006 from 2005.
Mr. Luiz Inacio da Silva, the President of Brazil, stated that preserving the environment doesn’t need to slow the economic growth as the latest statistics showed.
I will tackle more in depth this event as it is indeed good news for both sustainable development and climate change mitigation.
