TYLER IRVING: On Wednesday, environment ministers from all of Canada’s provinces had dinner with their federal counterpart, Jim Prentice. This was the final meeting of Canada’s environment ministers before the start of the UN conference on climate change begins in Copenhagen on December 7th.

Ontario’s Environment Minister, John Gerretsen, called the meeting “productive” but also said that some provinces, especially Ontario and Quebec would like to see more ambitious action at the federal level. On Monday, Quebec’s Premier Jean Charest announced his province’s target to reduce carbon emissions to 20% below 1990 levels by 2020. This makes it the most ambitious target in North America. Ontario’s target is 15% over the same period, and the two provinces are members of the Western Climate Initiative, a group provinces and American states aiming to implement a cap-and-trade program by 2012.

For his part, Jim Prentice says that Canada will stick with the current plan, which is to match whatever commitment the United States is willing to make. The current federal target is often stated as 20% by 2020, but uses a baseline of 2006 rather than 1990. As for the Prime Minister Stephen Harper, yesterday he announced that despite earlier indications to the contrary, he will be present at the UN conference in Copenhagen. This follows announcements this week from both President Barack Obama and high-ranking Chinese officials that they too will be attending the conference.nbsp;[ index ]

DARYN CAIISTER: Former US Vice-President Al Gore was in Toronto this week for a speaking event. At the event he continued his attack against the Alberta tar-sands projects. He made many statements that were meant to target the federal government, primarily the charge that the Alberta projects jeopardize the survival of the human species. His speaking engagement was called Thinking Green: Economic Strategy for the 21 Century. Tickets were as high as $500 per person, but the proceeds from the event were given to the David Suzuki Foundation. Mr. Gore also emphasised for the crowd that not only were many human lives at stake, but a lot of money and the future of human civilization. Also highlighted in his talk was reference to the Canadian government’s position of waiting for everyone else to decide before committing, and the compounding effects of the stalled climate change bill in the US senate. With hopes for legally binding CO2 reductions falling ahead of next month’s international climate talks in Copenhagen Mr. Gore expressed his disappointment at the pace of global leader’s negotiations. Many of the international agreements that have been under construction over the last year in preparation for the Copenhagen talks fall well short of science based targets and insight into the level of restrictions necessary to prevent runaway climate change, he said. One glimmer of hope is the US house bill this summer which committed to curb carbon emissions that passed by a narrow margin. In response to the few climate change deniers both in Canada and the United States, Mr. Gore said “Because this crisis is so unprecedented, it trigger the natural tendency we all have to confuse the unprecedented with the improbable.” Estimates vary, but Canada’s tar-sands are estimated by some reports to be as much as 15% of the world’s remaining recoverable oil, second only to Saudi Arabia. [ index ]

DARYN CAISTER:  A new report by the Canadian Energy Research Institute noted that as much as $100 billion worth or cancelled or postponed tar-sands projects have been or are in the process of starting back up. The re-opening of construction and planning for these projects are starting back up in large part due to re-rising oil prices and because of good signs from many parts of a recovering world economy. The group also predicts that many more may become re-activated over the next 5-8 months. The report predicts that over the next 35 years Alberta tar-sands production will increase from 1.4 million barrels of crude and bitumen a day this year, 1.7 million by 2015 and 5.3 million barrels a day increased production by 2041. Some of these predictions have actually fallen from last year, for instance the previous report predicted 5 million barrels a day increase by as soon as 2015. CERI also predicts that the price of fuel oil will increase beyond $100 a barrel by 2013, and could surpass $200 a barrel by 2043 due mainly to steady growth from developing and industrializing nations such as India and China. For many of these re-opened projects, the investors are expecting a $100 barrel price to make in projects viable. While CERI, did not factor in or speculate on the effect of climate change policy limitations or cap and trade or cap systems being discussed an Copenhagen next year, however they are predicting that tar-sands project emissions would increase more than four times, to 137 million tonnes per year of carbon by 2043. [ index ]

TYLER IRVING: Canadian companies looking reduce their environmental impact got a new tool this week in the form of an investment fund that will generate emissions credits, rather than financial profit.

The Greening Canada Fund was announced Monday by Green Power Action Inc., a Toronto-based company that specializes in the management of carbon offset credits. Companies who invest in the fund will see their money go to support projects in the public, private, and non-profit sector that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This could include everything from installing new windows in a school or hospital to complete retrofits of commercial buildings or even the purchase of low-carbon vehicles. In return, the investors will receive carbon credits that they can use to lower their overall environmental footprint.

Although federal regulations on carbon emissions are still far from being in place, the program is currently attracting interest from companies who want to voluntarily reduce their carbon output. Initial investors include both the Bank of Montreal and the Toronto Dominion Bank, who together have pledged $13 million to the project. That amount is money is expected to generate carbon offsets equivalent to taking 190,000 cars off the road for a year. Green Power Action’s CEO, Gerry Rocchi, says he has an initial investment target of $50 million. The fund expects to start buying emission credits within the next month. [ index ]

TYLER IRVING: A report released this week by the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (NRTEE) states that Canada’s north is unprepared to deal with the effects of climate change.

The NRTEE is a government-appointed advisory group that includes members from the scientific, environmental, and business communities. In its report, NRTEE states that the north is on the front lines of climate change. For example, many communities are dependent throughout the winter months on ice roads that could fail to form in the coming years. As well, melting permafrost can wreak havoc with building foundations, as well as energy and communications infrastructure.

The report recommends changes to building codes and standards to take changing conditions in the north into account. It also recommends that the insurance system be reformed to deal with increased risks posed by climate change, and that disaster and emergency preparedness plans be reviewed. NRTEE CEO David McLaughlin says that the new report offers “practical advice to make infrastructure more resilient and less vulnerable to climate change.” [ index ]

DARYN CAISTER:  Bernard Coulombe, President of the Jeffrey asbestos mine in Quebec called the provincial governments National Public Health Institute a “little gang of Talibans” this week. The puzzling comment, along with the dispute was replying to was sparked after the Jeffrey mine had hoped to sign a deal to open up new mines next year. The new pit would have been underground, and the current Jeffrey mine in and open pit mine; however it has run out of asbestos and is no longer operating. The Quebec public health agents stepped into the proceedings and opposed its own provincial government’s policies in allowing the mining and use of the material. The company claims that chrysotile asbestos, the form it mines and the only kind commercially traded in the world left today, is safe and claims it hasn’t harmed any workers since 1970. Public health officials however argue that it has records of increasing numbers of people, particularly constructions workers in Quebec, and dismisses the credibility of the mines reports out of hand. The inflammatory comment by Mr. Coulombe seems to be intended to describe him feelings that his company is being terrorized by having the provincial health officials scare the public. Media in Quebec has pointed out that the asbestos industry there has not attacked the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Cancer Society, the World Health Organization or the Canadian Labour Congress who have all been outspoken proponents that chrysotile asbestos must be banned. The reason according to them is that it is because thy industry would rather go after public servants instead who have limited resources or individual influence to combat the attacks. The new mine, is about 90% complete at this time and would tap into a large new deposit of asbestos that would provide the company with enough to carry out its operations for a further 50 years if it is allowed to complete the project. [ index ]

TYLER IRVING: The Asian carp may have taken another crucial step in its slow invasion of North America’s waterways. Large in both size and infamy, the Asian carp were imported by catfish farmers in the southern U.S. to control algae in their ponds. Flooding of the Mississippi in the early 1990s caused some of the carp to escape into the river, and since then they have been slowly working their way north.

In 2002, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers installed an electronic barrier across the mouth of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, which is the waterway that connects the Mississippi watershed with the Great Lakes. A more permanent barrier was constructed in 2004, at a cost of $9 million. However, this week, the Army Corps of Engineers announced that Asian carp DNA has been found in the water just beyond the barrier, although no live fish have yet been spotted. Environmental groups such as Great Lakes United are demanding that locks on the canal be closed until it is demonstrated that the fish has not overcome the barriers.

Asian carp consist of four species, the grass, black, silver, and bighead carps. The fish can grow up to a metre long and consume up to 40% of their weight in plankton in a day, outcompeting many native species for food. Moreover, silver carp are known to leap out of the water when startled by the sound of outboard motors. In the past decade, numerous boaters and waterskiiers have been seriously injured when struck by jumping fish. If the species does reach the great lakes, conservation groups are predicting dire consequences for fisheries, tourism, and ecological stability. [ index ]

DARYN CAISTER:  A new study by the Canadian Automotive Association and Pollution Probe describes what drives green car shoppers in Canada. According to the study, fuel efficiency, particularly the dollar value saved at the pump was by far the most important factor in buying a new vehicle. The study is not the first, but continues to confirm previous studies that environmental consciousness is not an important factor when buying a car in Canada, but that this does not by any mean that there isn’t a market for newer cleaner cars. Direct vehicle emissions in Canada are estimated to be about 12% of the Canadian totals of CO2 emitted per year. Interestingly, the study showed that fuel efficiency overall for the 800 surveyed drivers who had either just bought or are about to buy a car was by far the biggest factor for the purchase of greener cars, but that fuel efficiency overall is not a significant factor still for most drivers. The study also found that drivers believe that placing restrictions on manufacturers is the best way to lower vehicle emissions in Canada. Drivers also felt that purchaser incentives, tax rebates and public education were the most effective strategies in lowering vehicle emissions based on consumer preferences. [ index ]

SHAK HAQ:  China has announced a new policy it says will maintain economic growth and convince the international community it is meeting its environmental responsibilities. The ambitious policy statement calls for a 45 per cent cut in carbon intensity by the year 2020, a target that received a positive reaction on Friday. Carbon intensity does not measure the actual amount of greenhouse gas emissions; it shows the amount emitted relative to its economic output, such as manufacturing and services. In a statement on Thursday, China’s state council said the drive to improve efficiency was a “voluntary action” which would make “a major contribution to the global effort in tackling climate change”. The announcement marks the first time China has set specific targets for cutting carbon emissions, seen as a major cause of global warming. Environmental groups have long complained that China is one of the world’s least efficient users of natural resources. The announcement came shortly after China’s foreign ministry said that Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier, would travel to Copenhagen next month to attend the UN-backed global summit on climate change. A spokeswoman said Wen’s attendance would be a demonstration of China’s willingness to work with the international community to curb emissions and tackle climate change. China has said it will seek binding pollution cut targets for developed countries at the Copenhagen meeting, but will reject similar requirements for itself. Beijing has said repeatedly that it is unfair that all countries should be required to play a role combating global warming since most of the environmental damage was caused by developed nations. [ index ]

SHAK HAQ: Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia denies emails provide evidence of collusion by climatologists to fix data. Professor Phil Jones Director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in Norwich says charges of conspiracy over climate change are ‘rubbish’. The climatologist at the centre of the leaked emails row said today that he “absolutely” stands by his research and that any suggestion that the emails provide evidence of a conspiracy to manipulate or hide data that do not support the theory of man-made climate change was “complete rubbish”. In his first full interview since last week’s theft, which saw hundreds of emails and documents exchanged between some of the leading climatologists over the past 13 years stolen from the university’s servers, Jones defended himself against accusations by climate skeptics that the emails provide evidence of collusion by climatologists to fix data. “That the world is warming is based on a range of sources: not only temperature records but other indicators such as sea level rise, glacier retreat and less Arctic sea ice,” he said. “Our global temperature series tallies with those of other, completely independent, groups of scientists working for Nasa and the National Climate Data Centre in the United States, among others. Even if you were to ignore our findings, theirs show the same results. The facts speak for themselves; there is no need for anyone to manipulate them.” Jones accepted, though, that the contents of some of the emails were cause for embarrassment: “Some of the emails probably had poorly chosen words and were sent in the heat of the moment, when I was frustrated. I do regret sending some of them. We’ve not deleted any emails or data here at CRU. I would never manipulate the data one bit – I would categorically deny that.” He confirmed that all of the leaked emails that had provoked heated debate – including the now infamous email from 1999 in which he discussed a “trick” to “hide the decline” in global temperatures – appeared to be genuine. [ index ]

SHAK HAQ: President Barack Obama is seeking to regain momentum for the Copenhagen climate summit, aiming for a “comprehensive agreement” that would spark immediate action even if it falls short of a legally binding treaty. The effort came as the Canadian government said failure to conclude a final deal in Copenhagen would further delay the release of Ottawa’s long-awaited climate regulations. After Mr. Obama and other Asia-Pacific leaders sounded a more cautionary tone on the weekend, the U.S. President emerged from a meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao Tuesday saying the two sides had agreed to pursue a successful conclusion at Copenhagen next month. At an Asia-Pacific summit in Singapore on the weekend, the leaders acknowledged that time has run out for the conclusion of a final treaty that would include individual-country targets, as well as agreement on how developed countries would help finance mitigation and adaptation efforts by developing nations. Environmentalists were dismayed that global leaders appeared to be undermining the Copenhagen negotiations and feared they were setting the stage for endless negotiations and for delays by countries in moving forward with their domestic policies. The Canadian government is now indicating its will not release its regulations until late next year, after the conclusion of international talks and U.S. efforts to pass its own legislation. In a conference call from Copenhagen, Environment Minister Jim Prentice said Ottawa does not want to be out of step with an eventual international treaty, or with the American approach. It could take nearly all of 2010 to translate any political agreement achieved in Copenhagen into a full and binding treaty, said the minister, who is participating in a final round of negotiations before the summit begins on Dec. 7. “This kind of comprehensive agreement would be an important step forward in the effort to rally the world around a solution to our climate challenge.” He said the United States and China agreed that each would make significant efforts to reduce greenhouse gas and would “stand behind” commitments to do so made in Copenhagen. Mr. Hu emphasized the need for emerging countries such as China to bear a different level of responsibility for reducing emissions, as compared to more developed nations. But he, too, committed to work for a broad agreement at the summit in the Danish capital. The Obama administration, however, is reluctant to commit to specific targets for emission reductions until the Senate passes a cap-and-trade bill similar to the one approved by the House of Representatives that would reduce emissions by 17 per cent from 2005 levels by 2020. He has made it clear he does not want to sign anything in Copenhagen that could be used as political fodder for opponents of the bill in the Senate, which is not expected to vote on the legislation until the new year. For its part, China is expected to table targets for reducing the rate of growth in greenhouse-gas emissions as its economy expands, but has not agreed to including those targets in a binding, international accord. Given that Canada never came close to meeting its emission-reductions commitments under the Kyoto Protocol, Ottawa faces a credibility problem unless it produces a plan to meet its targets, said Jake Schmidt, international climate director for the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington. [ index ]

SHAK HAQ: Growing crops in less space is good, but it may not be good enough without some help, say researchers who reviewed 35 years of data on cropland use by nation. Conservationists predict that revving up yields not only feeds an exploding population but also encourages farmers to let some of their land go wild again. Between 1970 and 2005, rising crop yields accompanied a drop in land used for agriculture nationwide in only 34 of 161 countries, says rural sociologist Tom Rudel of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. The majority of those successful cases had extra factors, Rudel says; land sparing often came with increased grain imports or with government policies encouraging farmers to set aside some of their fields. Rudel and a team of agriculture specialists report their findings online November 23 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. You need a policy that assures the benefits, Rudel says. Otherwise, farmers may just increase total production while keeping the same amount of land in cultivation. “Intensification continues to be promoted to help developing countries,” says geographer Alan Grainger of the University of Leeds in England. “Development aid agencies invest huge sums of money in trying to make it a reality.” In theory, increasing yields boost supplies and prices sag. Farmers then take the less-productive land out of cultivation. To test this idea in a broad sweep, Rudel and his colleagues turned to data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations on crop yields and land area in cultivation for 10 crops. These diverse foodstuffs account for 57 percent of the Earth’s cultivated land and include corn, wheat, rice, soybeans, potatoes, bananas, sugarcane, coffee, cocoa and cotton. During those years, world population grew by 74.3 percent, but cultivated land for those crops increased by only 25.7 percent, the researchers note. In a sense, that increased farming intensity saved land that might otherwise have been converted to agriculture, comments Paul Waggoner, of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven, who has written about land-use issues. Yet the land area devoted to agriculture still increased overall, Rudel notes. He and his colleagues did find some countries, however, in which the amount of land in cultivation decreased as a whole when yields rose. That was the case in Austria, for example, during a period when farmers were encouraged to set aside some of their fields for conservation. These lands can benefit the ecosystem by reducing erosion, providing wildlife habitat and sequestering carbon.nbsp;[ index ]

JOANNA DAFOE: Coming from Singapore, Prime Minister Stephen Harper says he will attend the Copenhagen climate change talks only if it appears that other world leaders plan to show up. Prime Minister Harper has received formal invitations to attend the negotiations by the Danish Government and the UN General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon. [ index ]

DARYN CAISTER: Copenhagen agreement is possible, despite not addressing major issues according to Environment Minister Jim Prentice. Mr. Prentice announced this week that the conservative government was preparing to agree to an unspecified agreement at the COP15 conference next month, despite ruling out pollution caps and many other big issues that are on the negotiating table. The seemingly contradictory announcement has environmental groups in Canada to scratching their heads as to exactly what type of agreement Mr. Harpers government is intending to sign. Compared to the many statements from his office, Mr. Prentice has said very little about what Canada is willing to do to combat climate change. The environment minister has made several cryptic announcements with increasing frequency leading up to the negotiations where he typically talks about Canada’s intention to have a role at the international table, and then rules out the possibility of even discussing many of the important issues up for discussion such as carbon cap and trade systems and addressing the international condemnation of the Alberta Tar-sands. Earlier this fall, Mr. Prentice said that the federal government would introduce a full plan of measures and proposals to regulate pollution from industry ahead of next month’s conference, which has not materialized. In a statement this week Mr. Prentice also said that regardless of what is agreed on in Copenhagen, that the Canadian government would not be moving on these issues right away and would wait to see what is accomplished by other states. The conservative government currently want to kill the Kyoto Protocol, and instead focus on imposing regulations and limits for other countries, particularly developing nations such as India, China and Brazil. [ index ]

JOANNA DAFOE: A new report by Ecojustice is calling on mayors across BC to lead at a local level and recognize residents’ rights to a healthy environment. Restoring the Balance: Recognizing Environmental Rights in British Columbia, provides a toolkit for governments and citizens alike which outlines how these crucial rights can be established. The report examines the growing recognition of envirnmental rights, and highlights the recent trend towards municipal declarations of environmental rights. [ index ]

JOANNA DAFOE: Carbon Storage in Canada’s Boreal Forest Underestimated. Recent studies find that previous global accounting of carbon have vastly underestimated the amount, depth, and age of carbon stored in the boreal forest. These findings are made available in a recent report by the Boreal Songbird Initiative and Canadian Boreal Initiative. According to the report, the boreal forest stores more carbon than any land-based ecosystem on the planet. The boreal forest “carbon bank” stores 22 percent of all carbon on the earth’s land surface. Within Canada, this amounts to an estimated storage of 208 billion tons of carbon – the equivalent of 26 years worth of global carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels. The report calls on world leaders to include the boreal forest in the international climate change negotiations. In particular, the report calls on the climate change negotiations to “motivate stewardship of the massive quantity of carbon stored in forest and peat land ecosystems.” [ index ]

DARYN CAISTER: The Toronto Star published a biting article this week attacking Alberta’s tar sands industry requests for federal cash. Alberta tar sands companies have been asking the federal government for billions of dollars to help it get massive and unproven carbon capture and storage projects off the ground to help mitigate Canada’s largest source of carbon emissions. Toronto Star Energy and Technology columnist Tyler Hamilton addressed the issue this week in his column saying that Alberta was unfairly asking the rest of Canada’s provinces and territories to pitch in to fund expensive new technology. Alberta’s Premier Ed Stelmach has been on the attack against various form of carbon limiting legislation such as cap and trade saying that Alberta won’t abide by a transfer of wealth under his watch. Meanwhile, his provincial government and the private tar-sands corporations that supply most of the momentous growth that the province has seen over the past decade wants Canada to help supply subsidies, that will then see the profits kept for themselves, as Hamilton states. Tyler Hamilton’s article takes many of its points from a new book by Satya Das, called “Green Oil”, which says that while Alberta already has an internal carbon tax of $15 per ton of CO2, an amount closer to $65 per ton is required to make a serious dent in Alberta’s climate emissions. Hamilton and Das also point out that Ontario, which is currently supporting about 40% of Canada’s federal tax base would be one of the largest contributors to any federal government investments in carbon capture infrastructure for Alberta. Das says in his book that if Alberta is concerned with keeping profits inside its province within a carbon restricted world it would do well to take some of the massive profits it already generates from the tar sands projects and invest it in renewables’ and retrofit programs such as Ontario has been doing. Despite having some of the best resources in Canada for geothermal, companies that have sought as little $1 million from the Alberta government to do exploratory research have so far been turned down. [ index ]

JOANNA DAFOE:  A PEI wind energy company has had to shut its doors. The company Entegrity Wind Systems has been bankrupt since September and shut its doors earlier this year. The company was waiting to see the result of the last of a series of loan requests, the last of which was from the PEI Business Development Corporation and was denied this week. Entegrity Wind Systems started up in PEI in 2004 and since then accrued almost $13 million in losses. Along with several other rounds of requests for reinvestment and provincial loans, Entegrity has pinned its hopes on a promising offer from the PEI government from Innovation Minister Allan Campbell, but that offer has since fallen through. Mr. Campbell said to the media that the negotiations had fallen through because none of the terms being negotiated would bring the province the kind of economic return it was looking for. [ index ]

TYLER IRVING: Legendary Canadian author Margaret Atwood is back in Canada to with a fundraiser for environmental education. Atwood has been on a 45 stop international tour across 4 continents promoting her new book “The Year of the Flood”, and will be using the stop in Tofino, BC to host a fundraiser for the Raincoast Education Society. In addition to being a prolific writer Atwood has taken her eco-credentials seriously on her tour including an entire section on her website devoted to cataloguing methods that will be taken to mitigate and minimize the impact of her world trip. Another famous Canadian author Graeme Gibson will also be joining her for several of the Canadian stops, and is also known for his love of the natural, including being a former council member of the World Wildlife Fund of Canada, and is currently the chairman of the Pelee Island Bird Observatory. Atwood’s new book is a fictional account of a world and humanity that has been destroyed by catastrophic climate change. Atwood is using the new book and its opening tour to travel the world talking about ecological issues and hold events in support of local environmental education programs. [ index ]

BRYANT BOULIANNE: Two scientific studies released this week highlight how climate change is affecting the ability of the world’s oceans to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. A study from Columbia University used seawater measurements, along with estimates of human carbon emissions, to see if the ocean’s uptake of CO2 increased along with rising CO2 emissions from human activity. The report concluded that the rate at which the oceans absorb CO2 decreased by 10% from 2000 to 2007. They suggest that “the more carbon dioxide the ocean absorbs, the more acidic it becomes and the less carbon dioxide it can absorb.” Conversely, a study by the British Antarctic Survey found that retreating ice sheets in the Antarctic have opened up new areas of seawater to plankton growth, thereby increasing the ability of these patches of the ocean to take in carbon. The lead author of the paper, Lloyd Peck, warned, however, that this discovery is likely to have only a “minuscule effect on climate change.” These studies suggest that the oceans may not be as reliable a carbon sink into the future as once thought. [ index ]

BRYANT BOULIANNE: The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, or ICCAT, concluded its annual meeting in Recife, Brazil this week. The body set the quota for the catch of bluefin tuna at 13,500 tonnes for the 2010 fishing season, a reduction of about one-third from this year’s quota. The European Commission has lauded this reduction as a “clear sign that the international community acknowledges the scale and magnitude of the problem and is ready and willing to work constructively”. However, this decision has also garnered criticism for falling far short of a complete suspension of the fishery that had been recommended by numerous environmental and scientific groups. An independent report commissioned by ICCAT released earlier this year concluded that ICCAT’s objectives on the bluefin tuna fishery had “not [been] met”, in large part due to weak enforcement of regulations as well as illegal over-fishing. That report recommended “that all fishing for East Atlantic and Mediterranean bluefin tuna be immediately suspended until the [member organizations] involved in those fisheries…agree to fully abide by the rules and recommendations.” A spokesperson for the Pew Enivronment Group commented on the decision saying that it was “not enough for even 50% chance of recovering the species.” The Pew Environmenl Group had been calling for a year’s suspension of the fishery or, at the very least, a reduction to “8,000 tonnes or less.” ICCAT scientists had recently concluded that current bluefin tuna stocks were down to 15% of pre-1970s levels and that dramatic action needed to be taken in order to make the fishery sustainable. [ index ]

BRYANT BOULIANNE: Kumi Naidoo, a South African who worked for decades as a human rights activist, has taken over as executive director of Greenpeace this week. In an interview with the New York Times this Wednesday, Mr. Naidoo said that his first priority as director is to “[secure] a fair, ambitious and binding deal in Copenhagen.” Elaborating on this, Mr. Naidoo emphasized that the promotion and adoption of clean, renewable energy will be key to this goal and that the world must move away from coal and oil, which he described as “dirty”, and from nuclear energy, which he described as “dangerous.” Mr. Naidoo was referring to the Copenhagen conference on climate change which begins next month in Copenhagen, Denmark. [ index ]

BRYANT BOULIANNE: During his visit to China this week, US President Barack Obama, along with Chinese President Hu Jintao, announced an agreement between the United States and China aimed at creating partnerships between American and Chinese companies in order to develop and implement clean energy technologies. China is the world’s largest producer and user of coal. Among other things, the agreement aims to develop cleaner coal fuelled power plants and to conduct a feasibility study on capturing and storing carbon from coal emissions. Speaking on the agreement, President Obama stated: “As the two largest consumers and producers of energy, there can be no solution to this challenge without the efforts of both China and the United States, that’s why we’ve agreed to a series of important new initiatives in this area.” [ index ]