This overview sets the scene for the various modules in the Renewables 2024 Global Status Report Collection. It provides high-level trends on the status of renewables in the wider fossil fuel-dominated energy system in the context of global challenges such as climate change, development goals and the geopolitical landscape. Urgent …
Are the nations of the world serious in their much-touted efforts to control greenhouse gas emissions? Vinayak Rao examines the motives, moods and manifestoes in the run-up to the forthcoming climate change conference in Geneva.
The dynamism of Western academia never ceases to amaze me. Once an idea enters the people's mind-set, scholars of all hues begin analysing it from the standpoint of different disciplines. This is quite unlike what happens in a country like India. Gunnar Myrdal in his '60s trilogy, Asian Drama, had …
The origin of greenhouse gas emissions is an important issue in relation to the need for devising policy options to minimise potential global climate change and its impacts. The best known of the greenhouse gases is CO2, which is emitted into the atmosphere in large amounts -the equivalent of more …
IT WAS 250 million years ago that life took its first beating - the worst ever - when mass extinctions marked the end of the Permian period. A group of American palaeontologists say that they have evidence to prove that the extinctions in the Permian period, which devoured 90 per …
Scientists from the British Natural Resources Institute and the Kenyan Agricultural Research Institute working at Kenya's Rift valley suggest that volcanic carbon dioxide, instead of methyl bromide, could be used to exterminate granary pests (New Scientist, Vol 148, No 2004). Experiments have been conducted on more than 2,000 tonnes of …
LET us accept the general consensus of scientists that global warming is happening, that it is caused largely by carbon dioxide released by burning fossil fuels, and that it cannot be reversed without a reduction in the use of fossil fuels. Following on from Rio and more recently Berlin, most …
A GROUP Of Scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboragtory In the us have come up with a unique strategy to Pee the carbon dim (Cod gas emans from fuel-burning plants - report responsible for the global war" phenomenon - harmless. Atcordin Klaus S Lackner, the chief physich the laboratory, …
India has been increasingly under pressure from the North to reduce her carbondioxide emissions. But many of the developed countries have not done enough to cut down their own emission levels. Doesn't this expose the North's double standards? We have called for a differentiated but common responsibility among the countries …
A group of chemists in Switzerland has devised a way to convert Ramospheric carbon dioxide - the main greenhouse gas - into fuel (New Scientist Vol 146, No 1971). The scientists first blew carbon dioxide saturated with water into a matrix of glass wool coated with titanium dioxide, which acts …
The government can truly be proud that it played a big role in the outcome of the recent Berlin climate convention. Its record, however, was not an entirely unbesmirched one. Indian officials, goaded by Indian NGOs, finally agreed in Berlin to support the small island countries" proposal that industrialised nations …
THE Danish government is all set to paint the country a vibrant green. It plans to impose a set of "green taxes" which will encompass both the industrial sector and the consumers. While it is not likely to take much of a toll on the latter, it seems the corporate …
WHILE scientists debate the reality of global warming, an extraordinary experiment in the Pacific has dredged up impressive evidence in favour of the seemingly preposterous idea that pumping iron into the sea might stave off the heating of the planet. The theory is that many parts of the ocean lack …
THE North is persuading India to accept joint implementation (JI) programmes to curtail its emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), a greenhouse gas. High level delegations from Canada and Germany visited Delhi recently to hold talks with the Indian government officials and experts on national energy policy issues. The reason behind …
THE governments of the industrialised countries, shaky about meeting their present commitment to roll back their co2 emissions to the 1990 level, launched a 3-pronged attack in the February 17 Climate Change Convention in New York. The strategy was meant to loft the ball for such reductions to newly-industrialised countries …
THE industrialised countries are back to their pre-Rio game of chess. They imposed their narcissistic environmental agenda on the economically atremble South by virtually bamboozling it into signing the treaty on climate change in 1992. Three years later, the North has not only reneged on its commitments, but also seems …
LAST autumn, the Greenhouse Debate -- one of the objectives of the Greenhouse Tour (Down To Earth, December 31, 1994) -- organised by Friends of the Earth (FOE)-Netherlands, sought to show how Dutch society can contribute towards reducing energy consumption. The stated objective of 50 per cent less carbon dioxide …
The European Commission's (EC) attempt to devise a common carbon energy tax has fallen apart. At a meeting in Brussels in mid-December 1994, European environment ministers gave their assent to the adoption of individual measures by member-states to cut down carbon dioxide emissions. uk environment minister John Gummer said that …
Friends of the Earth (FOE) Netherlands organised a Greenhouse Tour from September 3 to December 11. They travelled by boat through the many canals and rivers in the Netherlands, visiting 42 municipalities that have signed the Climate Alliance, a declaration in which municipalities have pledged to do all they can …
The present targets set by various countries to limit carbon dioxide emissions are not enough to avert an increase in its atmospheric levels, concludes the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC). The report says that an accumulation of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the …
