During my two weeks away in Southern France I didn’t read much news except the ones I had on the Facebook pages of I love climate scientists and 350.org. This allowed me to find some quite interesting stuff.
Each article below could have been the topic of a full post here, but given the fact that I switched for the summer to three articles per week, this is not going to happen. I hope you will like this selection nonetheless.
This selection allows us to travel all around the world and are only good news. More and more countries are becoming serious about climate change. Finally !
Obama gave another climate speech
According to Al Gore, US President Obama delivered his most important climate speech. I say this is nice and that there are nice ideas in that speech. Now, talking is easy, walking the talk is much harder. I am looking forward – and I am sure you too too – action. Plans and projects are needed, money to bring them to reality too.
Philippines unveiled a great renewables plan
The Republic of Philippines has unveiled during these two weeks an important plan to be powered solely by renewable energy sources by a decade. This is an important move as the Asian nation has nearly 100 million inhabitants, making it the seventh most populated in Asia and the twelfth in the world.
As Cleantechnica noted : ” high-level representatives of the federal and provincial governments of the Philippines yesterday to lay groundwork for a Sustainable Energy Roadmap for the archipelago nation, which aims to shift its current electricity system to 100 percent renewable energy within a decade. “
Australia’s carbon tax turned one year old.
Australia has been one of the first countries in the world to enact and launch a carbon tax. As it has been a year since its start, environmental websites have been publishing results.
And these are encouraging as brown coal use has been decreased by 13 percent, renewables’ use have increased by a massive 20 percent. Overall greenhouse gases emissions related to electricity generation have been cut by as much as eight percent in a single year.
The World Bank to stop funding coal-fired plants
In a much awaited move, the World Bank has announced that it won’t be funding any more coal fired plants in the world, baring exceptional circumstances where renewables are more expansive. Given how they are getting cheaper, I am sure this will happen often…
Since the United States won’t fund them any more as well – after Obama’s speech – this nefarious energy source just lost quite a lot of its potential development capacity. Now that’s great news.
Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to terminate climate change.
The former governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, more famous in the world for his role in the Terminator movies, wants to help his host country to say ” Hasta la vista, baby “ to coal energy. As Mother Nature Network noted, Arny stated that :
“California is 40 percent more energy efficient than the rest of the United States, if the rest of the United States followed our lead, the country could close 75 percent of our coal-fired power plants.”
The largest offshore wind farm was inaugurated.
The London Array, the world’s largest offshore wind farm to date, was inaugurated on July,4th. With 630 megawatts of capacity, the 178 wind turbines will be enough to power 450,0000 homes and avoid the emissions of nearly a million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.
Grist noted that the United Kingdom has so far 3.6 GW of offshore wind capacity and is aiming for no less than 18 GW by the end of the decade. Way to go !
A digital artist deforests famous paintings.
Trees are prominent parts of our world, and thus, of many famous paintings. Dr. Iain Woodhouse took trees out of John Constable’s The Haywain; Georges Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Grande Jatte; Vincent Van Gogh’s Olive Trees with Yellow Sky and Sun.
The result is quite shocking and just show how our world and our civilization needs trees. Via Good.is