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Posts in October 2007

• US: Oil Sands are “Threat Number One”

  Andy Rowell

  Oct31

  Anyone who read yesterday’s blog on oil sands will know it’s a fuel with serious ecological and social problems. Well, Canadian oil sands producers should brace for further bad news – this time from south of the border. David Pumphrey, a former official in the Department of Energy and now a senior fellow at the…
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• World Oil Output Struggling, Say Arab Experts

  Andy Rowell

  Oct31

  Leading figures from the Middle East oil industry have added their voices to those warning that the world is struggling to sustain rising oil production. “There is a real problem — that supply may not be possible to increase beyond a certain level, say around 100 million barrels,” Libya’s National Oil Corporation chairman Shokri Ghanem…
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• Un Chief to Visit Antarctica and Amazon

  Andy Rowell

  Oct31

  Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who has made climate change a priority, will visit the Antarctic and the Amazon rain forest during a South American tour starting next week, the United Nations has confirmed. The visits will be “so that he can see first-hand the effects of climate change and deforestation on the environment,” U.N. spokeswoman Marie…
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• Exxon Can Contest Valdez Fine

  Andy Rowell

  Oct30

  And so it continues. Much to the dismay of thousands of Alaskans, Exxon Mobil has won the right to appeal against a $2.5bn damages bill relating to the Exxon Valdez oil spill. The US Supreme Court said it would hear the appeal against record damages due to victims of the Valdez oil spill. The case…
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• The “Dark Side” of Oil Sands

  Andy Rowell

  Oct30

  People concerned about the environmental and social downside of the tar sands boom, should read the Guardian today, with a long feature on the “dark side” of  the frontier town of Fort McMurray, which is an oil sands boom town – going from a “a small town becoming a major city, and a major economic…
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• China: Pollution Causes Surge in Deformed Babies

  Andy Rowell

  Oct30

  China has acknowledged an alarming rise in birth defects, amid concern that heavy pollution is damaging the country’s children. Babies born with conditions such as cleft palates and extra fingers and toes now account for up to 6 per cent of births each year, according to statistics published yesterday.

• Biofuels Are a “Crime Against Humanity”

  Andy Rowell

  Oct29

  A United Nations expert has condemned the growing use of crops to produce biofuels as a replacement for petrol as a crime against humanity and called for a five-year ban on the practice. The UN special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, said he feared biofuels would bring more hunger and were “a…
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• Shell Wildlife Exhibition Hit by “Songs of Freedom”

  Andy Rowell

  Oct29

  Poor old Shell. There it goes sponsoring the prestigious BBC “Wildlife Photographer of the Year” exhibition at the Natural History Museum in London and 15 or so folk turned up and started singing “a new hymn of hope to an oil-free future”. The protesters started singing inside the Natural History Museum, gradually being removed by…
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• UK: We Need A Climate Change Minister

  Andy Rowell

  Oct29

  Britain should have a Cabinet rank climate change minister and a powerful new coordinating body to manage its somewhat haphazard and conflicting climate policies, an influential parliamentary committee has concluded. The Environmental Audit Committee said the government’s climate change rhetoric was not being reflected in its actions, and noted that it was likely to miss…
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• Humanity’s Survival is at Risk, Says UN

  Andy Rowell

  Oct26

  The speed at which mankind has used the Earth’s resources over the past 20 years has put “humanity’s very survival” at risk, a UN study involving 1,400 scientists has concluded. The study found that each person in the world now requires a third more land to supply his or her needs than the Earth can…
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