A round-up of the top climate and energy news.
Four dozen of the world’s largest cities are attempting to cut 248 million tons of greenhouse gas pollution by 2020, according to the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will deliver the news at the Rio+20 Earth Summit this week. Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post reports:
The C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group— a network of 59 cities, including Los Angeles; Tokyo; Bogota, Colombia; and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia — was launched in 2005 to provide support for mayors hoping to cut greenhouse-gas emissions in urban centers across the globe. The group analyzed data from 48 cities to determine a suite of policies that are now in place to cut 248 million tons of greenhouse gases, the equivalent of taking 44 million passenger vehicles off the road for a year.
The 59 cities of the group, Bloomberg added, have the capacity to cut their carbon output by 1 gigaton, or a billion tons, by 2030 compared with business as usual. That reduction, which could be achieved through steps such as the capture of methane from urban landfills and installation of more-efficient lighting and energy-efficient building codes, would be equivalent to the combined greenhouse-gas emissions of Canada and Mexico.
“This is not only a central government problem,” Paes told reporters, adding that when world leaders gathered in his city two decades ago for the first Rio Earth summit, “it was a nice discussion, we set out some goals, but I don’t think we got much better.”
Japan is poised to overtake Italy and become the world’s second-biggest market for solar power, as incentives starting July 1 propel sales. It could eventually top Germany, which holds the No. 1 spot. [Bloomberg]
Global leaders, development experts, bankers, academics and activists are gathering here this week to celebrate the anniversary of the landmark Earth Summit of 1992 and to try to address the linked problems of poverty, hunger, energy shortages and environmental degradation.[Washington Post]
Corn prices surge as crops begin to droop in hot, dry weather; metals, energy products mixed The price of corn jumped 3.5 percent Monday as crops have begun drooping under a blanket of hot weather across the Midwest. [Star Tribune]
The death toll of campaigners, community leaders and journalists involved in the protection of forests, rivers and land has risen dramatically in the past three years, said Global Witness. [Guardian]
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Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
The Global Witness report on the accelerating level of murders of environmentalists is, I fear, a glimpse into the future. Only today, in the NSW Parliament, on the floor of the Legislative Assembly, a representative of the far Right ‘Shooters’ Party’ openly lamented that he could not take a Green member outside and ‘beat him to death’. Faced with resistance, the Right always responds with violence and murder, because it advantages them and they get off on it. The coming frantic struggle for the survival of humanity will give them just the opportunity they are slavering for, to identify and ‘deal with’ ‘Green extremists’, ‘water-melons’, ‘Gaia-worshippers’ and all the others they so viscerally despise.