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The European Union wants President Obama to act on his promise of introducing a new climate change policy and work out the modalities of a cap-and-trade policy before the Copenhagen Talks in December. Doing so, EU ministers say, would send a clear signal to the world and especially the developing countries about the change in America's environment policy. 1 voteBuzz up! The European Union already has clear renewable energy and carbon emissions reduction policy in place but that has yet to make any difference in the stance of the developing countries like India and China. The Asian neighbors continue to resist any demands to reduce their carbon emissions claiming that their contribution to the overall global carbon emissions is very less as compared to that of the developed nations especially the United States which has not ratified the Kyoto Protocol.

Even before George W. Bush can settle into his new house in Dallas, his legacy on the environment is being dismantled by his replacement in the White House. In less than two months, President Obama has put on hold Bush's plans for power-plant pollution, offshore oil drilling, nuclear waste storage and endangered species. THE PRESIDENT'S AGENDA: What's been done, what lies ahead The Obama team has rolled out policies Bush officials delayed, such as requiring higher energy efficiency from appliances. Such moves have significant impacts and not just on the environment. They could affect electric bills, gas prices and the time it takes to build highways, dams and bridges.

Some are calling it a "smear job", while others are applauding the National Geographic's rather sobering 20-page publication on the Alberta tar sands, titled "Scraping Bottom." Either way, the timing is brilliant. Dubbed by some as the "most destructive project on Earth" - scarring it visibly from space - there's no doubt that the tar sands extraction industry has a huge environmental footprint, which even President Obama could not help but acknowledge during his visit to Ottawa last week, to the chagrin of some Canadian officials. Many of them, from Prime Minister Stephen Harper on down, are attempting to control the potential damage in the lead up to the ministerial visit to the U.S. next week - but it's almost like watching the frantic efforts of a doctor as the patient is hemorraging to death. "I'm proud of the oil sands. It's a world leader. National Geographic is not going to teach me any lessons about the oil sands," said Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff in a defensive response to the article. Canada's Environment Minister Jim Prentice went on to dismiss the feature as "just one article."

Tomorrow, Wednesday, February 18, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu will deliver the opening keynote address at the 2009 DOE-NARUC National Electricity Forum. In the address, Secretary Chu will outline the Administration's commitment to modernizing the nation's electricity distribution system through a "Smart Grid" that will create new jobs, save consumers money, use energy more efficiently and avoid blackouts, and pave the way for a dramatic expansion in renewable energies such as solar and wind power. He will also discuss the immediate and long-term impacts of the President's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in creating jobs and investing in a clean energy future.

Four years, aka one presidential term, is all the time Obama has to save the Earth according to NASA scientist James Hansen. Hansen testifed to Congress over twenty years ago alerting the world that climate change was under way. Five presidential terms later, Obama is left with a crisis of epic proportion. Hansen warns: We cannot afford to put off change any longer. We have to get on a new path within this new administration. We have only four years left for Obama to set an example to the rest of the world. America must take the lead.

The Utah Legislature will soon begin its 2009 session, and we may expect bills promoting two favorite pieces of home-grown pork, the Lake Powell pipeline and Transition Power's nuclear nightmare on the Green River. But before legislators cast more of our recession-stretched cash before these two swine, they should read the latest study of Colorado River issues, James Powell's Dead Pool , from which the following is taken. For eight years under George W. Bush, the Bureau of Reclamation has refused to acknowledge the effects that global warming is having and will yet have on the Colorado, in spite of record temperatures and the recent 500-year drought that nearly brought Lake Powell to its knees. Instead, the bureau continues to use only data from the last century, the first half of which was one of the wettest periods in the known history of the Colorado. According to Bush's BOR, in 2050 Lake Powell, which reflects the health of the river as a whole, will stand at 3,660 feet, just 40 feet below full pool.

The US renewable energy sector is capable of meeting President-elect Barack Obama's pledge to double US production within three years, but the ongoing financial crisis will challenge the industry in 2009, analysts and industry experts said. Currently, renewable energy sources comprise 7% of the US energy supply, according to the US Energy Information Administration. In a speech last week, Obama reiterated his pledge to make development of the sector a major part of his economic stimulus package.

Congress will not act until 2010 on a bill to limit the heat-trapping gases blamed for global warming despite President-elect Obama's declaration that he will move quickly to address climate change, the chairman of the Senate Energy Committee predicted Wednesday. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said that while every effort should be made to cap greenhouse gases, the economic crisis, the transition to a new administration and the complexity of setting up a nationwide market for carbon pollution permits preclude acting in 2009.

Don't blink: This is the here-today, gone-tomorrow 2009 Chrysler Aspen Hybrid SUV, which is rated for 20 mpg in the city, 22 mpg on the highway (the best fuel economy for that size of SUV). Chrysler will cease production of the hybrid and conventional Aspen and Dodge Durango SUVs at the end of 2008.

The world's leading energy companies won rights to develop two major oil fields in Iraq at an auction on Friday. Royal Dutch Shell and Malaysia's Petronas were awarded the contract to exploit the Majnoon oil field in southern Iraq, one of the world's largest untapped oil fields with more than 12 billion barrels of proven reserves. They accepted a fee of 1.39 U.S. dollars per barrel.

The world's leading energy companies won rights to develop two major oil fields in Iraq at an auction on Friday. Royal Dutch Shell and Malaysia's Petronas were awarded the contract to exploit the Majnoon oil field in southern Iraq, one of the world's largest untapped oil fields with more than 12 billion barrels of proven reserves. They accepted a fee of 1.39 U.S. dollars per barrel.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) just issued its must-read report on U.S. Carbon Dioxide Emissions in 2009. It turns out energy-related CO2 emissions have dropped faster than EIA had expected just a few months ago (see my September post, "EIA stunner: By year's end, we'll be 8.5% below 2005 levels of CO2 - halfway to climate bill's 2020 target"). Surely this country could reduce CO2 emissions a little more than 7% in 10 years and meet the modest target set out in the Senate climate bill, which appears likely to be introduced next week. It really isn't bloody hard (see Game changer part 2: Unconventional gas makes the 2020 Waxman-Markey target so damn easy and cheap to meet).

Scott Cooney of Red, Green, and Blue recently wrote a thought provoking post about the need for population control as a fundamental and necessary tool to deal with a wide range of environmental crises. He refers to population control as the elephant in the room when it comes to policymakers. This is certainly an apt description of the issue, and it may even be considered an understatement. I would go so far as to say that population control is regarded as political suicide and a topic that is seemingly avoided at all costs.

How some traditional energy companies are reusing and repurposing their technology to develop renewables. by Marsha W. Johnston, Contributor California, United States [RenewableEnergyWorld.com] Most people tend to think of renewable energy as a clear break with our energy history, jettisoning all of the trappings associated with a dirty industry. It thus may come as a surprise to discover that, in fact, certain conventional technologies and infrastructure, including those associated with fossil fuel production, increasingly are being adapted to facilitate renewable energy production.

One of the nicer Friday News Dumps, this decision comes as a welcome and long overdue shift in government activity on carbon and other global warming gasses. The timing of the announcement, especially under the cover of Obama releasing torture memos from the Bush administration, is interesting - it's already becoming a regular thing for this administration to give it's opponents a few things to chew on in a very short period, and I would bet that many people are more fired up about the torture thing then this EPA ruling. On the other hand: this is a big deal for everyone, be you tree-hugger or capitalist overlord, because the new set of rules for how the country is going to respond to the climate crisis is coming into focus.

Less than a week after the Interior Department published the findings of a report claiming that 25% of the nation's electricity could be supplied by offshore wind farms, the Department also reached an agreement with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) over how the two agencies would handle the permitting and licensing of all types of renewable energy development on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) of the United States. On Thursday, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Jon Wellinghoff signed a memorandum of understanding (pdf) that establishes a streamlined process by which Interior's Minerals Management Service and the FERC will lease, license and regulate all renewable energy development activities on the OCS. According to Interior Secretary Salazar, the agreement will spur the development of clean, renewable energy, which he called, "the growth industry of the 21st Century," adding that, "Our nation's economic future demands we lead that competition."

In response to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's recent comments that the offshore wind energy resource in the United States could potentially provide 25% of our electricity and replace the need for coal-fired power generation, Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal balked, telling reporters: "Ain't going to happen." At an impromptu press conference in Cheyenne on Wednesday, Freudenthal said Salazar's comments were a "dumb thing to say," and said he hoped Salazar would learn the wisdom of "not making gratuitous statements." Wyoming is the biggest coal-producing state in the U.S., producing more than 450 million tons of coal in 2007, or nearly 40 percent of the country's coal.

Much ado and attention has been paid to the pollutants emmitted from the tail pipes of cars and trucks in recent years, both here in the U.S. and across the pond in Europe. With an estimated 250 million passenger vehicles in the U.S. alone, it would seem that cars would be a major contributor to pollution and air quality issues here and abroad. But newly released data from Europe suggests that a single container ship may cause as much pollution as 50 million cars and release as much as 5,000 tons of sulfur oxide into the air annually. And there are 90,000 such ships of varying sizes across the world at any one time.

Republicans are not just talking about slowing progress on clean energy, energy efficiency, and climate change, they're doing it…by doing nothing about it. I'm over it. There's a lot of phooey balooey about compromising, reaching across the aisle, Republicans and Democrats working together, a spirit of bipartisanship, a 'new kind of politics'…

The first-ever report exclusively focused on the global human impact of climate change indicates that more than 300 million people are seriously affected by climate change at a total economic cost of $125 billion per year. Earlier today, former UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, President of the Global Humanitarian Forum, announced the results of a report on the human impact of climate change. The study, Human Impact Report: Climate Change - The Anatomy of a Silent Crisis, emphasizes the present impacts of a changing climate, pulling the debate away from a focus on "future generations."

People unfamiliar with Nevada's vast desert often find it more difficult to see what is there than to imagine what could be superimposed on the seemingly endless landscape. Nuclear waste wedged inside a mountain. Towering mushroom clouds. A network of nuclear missiles covering 10,000 square miles. These days, a very different image is evoked for 10,000 square miles of Nevada desert: a 100-mile-by-100-mile square of solar panels, enough to furnish the entire country with electricity.