In 2019, the illegal wildlife trade reached staggering levels. Pangolin scales and ivory were being trafficked in massive quantities from Africa to Asia, exposing a network of crime syndicates operating at an industrial scale. The sheer volume of these shipments marked a disturbing milestone, one that revealed the global reach …
Always on the cutting edge, Sir Richard Branson, president of Virgin Atlantic, has set his company on a course towards further sustainability. Virgin Atlantic Airways has announced plans to fly commercial routes on a waste-based, synthetic gas fuel rather than typical jet fuel. The reconstituted fuel will produce half the …
European rules forcing all airlines to pay for carbon emissions are within the law, an adviser to Europe's highest court said on Thursday, in the latest stage of a bitter battle between the European Union and the aviation industry. From January next year, all airlines will have to buy permits …
Texas Governor Rick Perry, struggling to regain his status as front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, expressed fresh doubt on Saturday about whether humans are causing climate change. “I still stand by that the science is not settled on man-made global warming,” Perry said while campaigning in the key early …
British Airways faces a bill of nearly €50m, the highest of any airline, when carriers around the world are brought into the European Union’s carbon emissions trading scheme next year, a new study estimates. But BA and other large European carriers will face a relatively smaller burden than their rivals …
This second annual State of the Forest Carbon Markets tracks, reports, and analyzes trends in global transactions of emissions reductions generated from forest carbon projects. The data and analysis that follow cover forest carbon activity in compliance carbon markets as well as voluntary carbon markets—such as the voluntary Over-the-Counter (OTC) …
The EU could yet table a proposal that would throw the beleaguered Kyoto Protocol a lifeline and secure the future of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) beyond 2012, government negotiators and observers have told Point Carbon News. Officials from the bloc's member states will in the next few weeks discuss …
An electricity power plant in Minnesota. The recession has hit demand for electricity, cutting emissions to about 30 per cent below the cap Businesses in the north-eastern US are preparing for a battle over the future of the country’s only working cap-and-trade scheme for controlling carbon dioxide emissions. At the …
Australia's Greens party, which takes the balance of power in the Senate this week, said that major hurdles remained in closed-door talks with the government on a controversial carbon price to tackle climate change and a deal could still unravel. Uncertainty over the fate of the policy, which would tax …
A California appellate court has ruled that state regulators can proceed with plans to implement a carbon cap-and-trade system, a decision that puts them on track to launch the market as scheduled in January 2012. The ruling by the California First District Court of Appeal late on Friday is the …
Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney broke with Republican orthodoxy on Friday by saying he believes that humans are responsible, at least to some extent, for climate change. "I believe the world is getting warmer, and I believe that humans have contributed to that," he told a crowd of about 200 at …
Over the last four years, the United Nations’ negotiations on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation – REDD+ – has become increasingly central in global discussions on climate change. Unfortunately there are still a number of serious misconceptions about the suitability of carbon markets to finance forest protection. The …
Opposition to cap and trade, a regulatory tool for curbing greenhouse gas emissions, normally comes from the right end of the political spectrum, where it is derided as
A California judge has suspended the implementation of an emissions cap-and-trade scheme till air regulators can examine alternatives, dealing another setback to an ambitious program that could serve as a model for other states. San Francisco Superior Court Judge Ernest Goldsmith ruled that the California Air Resources Board (ARB) should …
A California judge ruled on Friday that state air regulators must stop carrying out a cap-and-trade plan until they examine alternatives to emissions trading to meet the state
The United States has abandoned comprehensive greenhouse-gas curbs, but California is pressing ahead. Mary Nichols is leading the fight against emissions.
Chinese airlines have joined U.S. rivals in opposing their inclusion in the European Union's carbon emissions market from 2012, while some European airlines have supported including all airlines in the scheme. From January 1 next year, the EU will require all airlines flying to Europe to be included in the …
This report makes clear that there are many different approaches to renewable energy policy. Many factors influence the approaches that local governments choose. Some of these include geographic resource availability, financing availability, relationship to state and national governments, local regulatory authority and legal jurisdiction, social and cultural conditions, existence of …
Most scientists agree that human activity that releases carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) into the atmosphere is the dominant cause of climate change. The current concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is around 380 parts per million (ppm), up from 280 ppm in pre-industrial times. The Intergovernmental …
International greenhouse gas offset credits from developing countries could play a major role in fulfilling developed countries’ emission reduction pledges under the Cancún Agreements, but there is great uncertainty about the future role of such offsets. This paper focuses on a key question: whether both the developing countries generating the …
