Texas Climate Emergency

A new report by scientist suggests fast-rising sea-levels are likely to hit Pacific Island countries sooner rather than later, reports Radio New Zealand International.

The latest study which was on levels of carbon dioxide in the earths atmosphere has suggested that emissions have kept on rising over the years.

According to the study, predictions of the effects of climate change are based on projected increases in carbon dioxide. (Full Article)

LIKE his uncle, his grandfather and many of their neighbors, Arie Versendaal spent decades working at the Maytag factory here, turning coils of steel into washing machines.

When the plant closed last year, taking 1,800 jobs out of this town of 16,000 people, it seemed a familiar story of American industrial decline: another company town brought to its knees by the vagaries of global trade.

Except that Mr. Versendaal has a new factory job, at a plant here that makes blades for turbines that turn wind into electricity. (Full Article)

OTTAWA – Canada’s largest companies are starting to report more business opportunities than risks as a result of emerging regulations to address the greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming, a new international study has revealed.

The Carbon Disclosure Project, an annual survey of the largest corporations in the world by a coalition of investors, found that an overwhelming majority of the country’s biggest corporations see opportunities as they address the impacts of new caps on their levels of greenhouse gas pollution. (Full Article)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Levels of climate-warming methane — a greenhouse gas 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide — rose abruptly in Earth’s atmosphere last year, and scientists who reported the change don’t know why it occurred.

Methane, the primary component of natural gas, has more than doubled in the atmosphere since pre-industrial times, but stayed largely stable over the last decade or so before rising in 2007, researchers said on Wednesday. (Full Article)

Growing demands on natural capital — such as forests, water, soil, air and biodiversity — already outstrip the world’s capacity to renew these resources by a third, according to the WWF’s Living Planet Report.Reckless borrowing against Earth’s exhausted bounty is driving the planet toward an ecological “credit crunch”, the World Wildlife Fund warned on Wednesday. (Full Article)

UN Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs:: JOHANNESBURG, 25 September 2007 (IRIN) :: Food security in Africa is likely to be “severely compromised” by climate change, with production expected to halve by 2020, according to climate change experts. (full article)