Biodiesel tanker cars have been sent back and forth numerous times between Canada and the US by CN Rail without being unloaded. Ostensibly the purpose of these mystery rides may be attributable to efforts to benefit from incentives offered by Natural Resources Canada’s $1.5-billion biodiesel program.
The world’s urban population is expected to grow by 2.6 billion people between 2011 and 2050, bringing the total number of urbanites from 3.5 billion to 6.3 billion. This urban expansion will be especially burdensome for developing countries, where 82 percent of the world’s population currently lives.
This year may have lacked the huge catastrophes that have dominated the corporate responsibility headlines of the last couple of years (such as BP’s oil spill in 2010 or TEPCO’s nuclear disaster at Fukushima in 2011), but 2012 has probably been more packed with serious incidents than any of the previous years.
When in September the Arctic sea ice that freezes and melts each year shrank to its lowest extent ever recorded and then contracted a further 500,000 sq km, the small world of ice scientists was shocked. Only widespread warming of the atmosphere could have been responsible for less ice growth during the winter and more ice melt during the summer, the scientists concluded.
Since Africa’s first mobile phone network went live in 1994, mobile phone penetration has shot up to 65 percent; access to the internet is also increasing rapidly. Today, information and communications technology (ICT) plays a central role in promoting development and humanitarian assistance.
Climate change is killing 400,000 people per year including 1,000 children a day and costing the global economy $1.2 trillion a year. This study was conducted by 50 scientists and policy experts. It was commissioned by 20 nations that are most at risk from climate change.
Living in Tokyo, this is one thing I luckily don’t have to deal with: finding a parking space. Like many Tokyo residents, I don’t own a car and, like nearly all workers, I take the train to work. Costs for parking and gas are astronomical and traffic, navigation, and overall experience is a time suck and a lesson in futility.
Efforts to end urban poverty are failing because policymakers at aid agencies and in governments do not always understand it, asserts a new book by experts from the International Institute for Environment and Development.
As expected, the natural gas revolution in the U.S. is having a large positive economic impact. According to the Financial Times, “manufacturers have announced more than $90bn worth of investments in the US to take advantage of its cheap natural gas.”
Kumi Naidoo from Greenpeace gives a brief at the end of the COP 18 negotiations in Doha. As he reviews in this video, the science is clear, we must act now! It will cost 60 billion to clean up after Hurricane Sandy but delegates are reluctant to pony up the same amount of money for climate change finance.
