Fiscal implications of global decarbonization
Internationally coordinated climate mitigation policies can effectively put the world on a path toward achieving the agreed Paris temperature goals. Such coordination could be initiated by large players,
China
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President Hu looks forward to a 'warm spring'
Chinese President Hu Jintao called for bolstered trust and cooperation with Japan as he arrived in the country Tuesday for the first visit by a Chinese head of state in a decade. Hu, who arrived on a special Air China flight, is scheduled to hold summit talks with Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda on Wednesday, after a meeting with Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko earlier that day.
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EU joins U.S. chorus to blame India
The European Union too has jumped on the U.S. bandwagon to target India and China for driving food prices worldwide. EU Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural development Mariann Fischer Boel on Tuesday said change in dietary habits in India and China was responsible for the spiralling global food prices.
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Grain truths
By holding higher grain consumption in India and China responsible for global food crisis, US President George W Bush and his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, have needlessly started a blame game which is so far removed from the facts as to be laughable, which does not improve Mr Bush's already dodgy reputation on sticking to the facts, and which in any case leads the world nowhere in its combat against hunger.
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Streams of blood, or streams of peace
When Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, was asked to ponder the future of the world before an audience of powerful businessmen and politicians, at a meeting in Switzerland earlier this year, he could have chosen any topic he liked. What he focused on was both a hoary old favourite, and a newly popular preoccupation, of debates on world affairs: the rising risk of wars over fresh water, as populations increase and the world gets drier.
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Anti-pollution march staged in western China
Hundreds of people marched in a western provincial capital over the weekend to protest environmental risks they say are associated with the construction of a petrochemical factory and oil refinery, witnesses said Monday. It was the latest in a series of rare but increasingly ambitious grass-roots movements in Chinese cities aimed at derailing government-backed industrial projects that could damage the environment and people's health.
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Chinese playing big role in Russian power expansion
MOSCOW: Chinese engineers are coming to the rescue of the Russian electricity sector under a five-year expansion plan that will rival the efforts of Lenin and Stalin to electrify the Soviet Union. An estimated 41,000 megawatts of new generating capacity is expected by 2011, much of it powered by coal rather than natural gas. This goal is way out of reach for Russian machine builders and even threatens to swamp the order books of global companies like General Electric and Siemens.
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26 children dead in Chinese viral outbreak
Authorities have reported more than 6,300 cases in a deadly viral outbreak and on Monday raised the death toll to 26 children. The latest fatality was in coastal Zhejiang province. The provincial Health Ministry's website said that in addition to the one death, 1,198 children had been stricken with enterovirus 71. The ministry appealed for any sick children "to be sent immediately to health clinics" and for people to "report the case immediately to health and education departments."
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CM to also visit Tianjin, talk about Bhagidari
The BRT in Beijing was opened in December 2005 and was an instant success, way beyond official predictions about its ridership. The predictions had said that by 2007, a total of 1.5 lakh people would be using the system per day. The figure for the 10km route touched 1.3 lakh on the third day. The system has 17 bus stations across eight residential areas with a total population of about 2 lakh. The CM might hope for similar luck with the system back home when she returns.
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CM may look at BRT during Beijing visit
Facing flak at home over the BRT fiasco, chief minister Sheila Dikshit is now looking eastwards for inspiration. Dikshit, along with four city government officials, is all set to fly to Beijing later this month and officials say a trip to the Beijing BRT to see how it is working may be on the cards. The official purpose of the visit, though, is to see the preparations for the Olympic Games.
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Environmentalists Divided About Burying CO2
Greenpeace and more than 100 other environmental groups denounced projects for burying industrial greenhouse gases on Monday, exposing splits in the green movement about whether such schemes can slow global warming. Many governments and some environmental organisations such as the WWF want companies to capture heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the exhausts of power plants and factories and then entomb them in porous rocks as one way to curb climate change. But Greenpeace issued a 44-page report about the technology entitled "False Hope".