Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
China energy efficiency ‘improves in first half’
AFP
China cut its average energy consumption by 3.53 percent in the first half of 2009 from a year ago, helped by massive stimulus spending on green projects, the government said Sunday.
The figure compared with a decline of 2.89 percent in the first quarter of the year, the National Development and Reform Commission said in a statement on its website.
At the end of 2008, China unveiled a four-trillion-yuan (580-billion-dollar) fiscal package aimed at mitigating the impact of the global crisis, with part of the money meant to be spent on improved energy efficiency.
China has set a goal of reducing average energy consumption by 20 percent from 2006 to 2010.
This means that it has to cut average consumption by four percent annually over the five-year period — a target it has so far failed to meet…
(2 August 2009)
Global poll finds 73% want higher priority for climate change
Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian
A majority of peoples around the world want their governments to put action on climate change at the top of the political agenda, a new global public opinion poll suggests.
Unfortunately for Barack Obama though, who has put energy reform at the top of his White House to-do list, Americans are not necessarily among them.
Only 44% of Americans thought climate change should be a major preoccupation for the Obama administration, the survey co-ordinated by the University of Maryland’s Programme on International Policy Attitudes said. The only other two countries unwilling to see their governments make climate change a top focus were Iraq and the Palestinian territories. In 15 other countries though there was strong support for governments to do more to deal with climate change…
…The poll, which sampled the opinions of 18,578 people in 19 countries, found broad popular support for making climate change a top priority extended even to those countries whose governments have yet to commit to global action. In China there was overwhelming support — 94% — for the government to keep climate change on the front burner. And in India, which is also rapidly emerging as one of the world’s leading producers of global warming pollution, 59% of the public wanted their government to make climate change a top priority.
Link to the poll results
(5 August 2009)
I would question how meaningful this kind of data is. The questions are extremely broad and there is no accompanying data of whether people would support policy if it were implemented. – SO
Saving Fish is Possible, Unless They’re Past the Tipping Point
Brandon Keim, Wired
Just a few years after scientists warned of impending ocean apocalypse, a handful of simple management tools have pulled some of Earth’s fisheries back from the edge of collapse, according to a review of global fish populations and catch data.
But though the big picture is brighter than before, many of the details remain dark. Some scientists say certain populations may hit “tipping points” beyond which recovery is practically impossible.
“In most cases, when you reduce fishing pressure enough, the stock rebounds. But there’s a breaking point beyond which the system has changed so much that it may not recover,” said Boris Worm, a marine biologist at Canada’s Dalhousie University. “The longer you wait to fix a situation, the harder it becomes.”
Three years ago, Worm said Earth’s ocean ecosystems were on the verge of collapse. Nearly one-third of fished species had already been critically depleted. The rest would follow by mid-century.
In a paper published Thursday in Science, a Worm-led team of fisheries experts updated those findings, providing the most comprehensive analysis to date of global fisheries. The findings are mixed.
In five of 10 well-studied regions — Iceland, Newfoundland-Labrador, the Northeast U.S., Southeast Australia, and the California Current — fishing pressures have on average become less intense. One-third of the all fish populations have been steered away from imminent doom, and appear to be recovering. Their ecosystems are no longer fast-tracked for collapse.
The solutions were relatively simple: abandon destructive fishing techniques like longlining and bottom trawling, reduce catches, put some waters off-limits, and give fishermen an economic reason to not overfish. New solutions didn’t need to be invented.
From those perspectives, the new study is hopeful. But looked at another way, the numbers are grim. There are more collapsed fish populations now than any other time in recorded history. Even within those less-pressured regions, many individual species are threatened. Two-thirds of all stocks need to be rebuilt, and half of those are still being overfished…
(30 July 2009)
