Search Results for: Climate change

BY MARK GODFREY

BARRY Lee is probably typical of Chinese wine drinkers. The auto-sales accountant started off drinking a local Great Wall red at an office lunch, then got curious and went to a Beijing branch of the French Carrefour supermarket chain where he spent RMB78 (US$11.40) on a bottle of Chilean red.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

IF the number of notifications received by the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) for pre-registering the use of chemicals by businesses making or importing chemicals in Europe is a gauge of success, then the new REACH control system is performing with aplomb.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Union’s (EU) agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel has backed a review of the EU’s European Action Plan for Organic Food and Farming. She favours a "mid-term evaluation" of the 2004 plan: "If there’s clear evidence that we need to change course slightly – why not?"…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

MORE than 350 local government leaders – including 16 from Britain – have signed a European Union (EU) Covenant of Mayors where they have promised to cut carbon emissions in their towns and cities by more than the EU minimum targets by 2020.…

BY MARK ROWE

THE COSMETICS markets in Scandinavia, as elsewhere in the developed world, face an uncertain 2009. Iceland’s economic crisis is well documented but the few surviving local producers are presenting a determined face to the challenges they face. On the other hand, the markets of Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark look likely to slow after healthy growth in 2008 (this growth almost universally excluded sunscreens, on account of the wet summer of 2008), but also to escape the worst of the problems.…

BY MARK ROWE

FOR the past 10 years, the message from the environmental movement has been "biofuels good, fossil fuels bad". And the search for alternatives has exercised many industries, not least the cosmetics sector, which widely uses mineral oils, but has increasingly been looking for ways to use bio-based oils and fats.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Parliament has called for the forging of a trilateral deal between the European Union (EU), Ukraine and Russia, which would "secure gas supply from Russia via Ukraine to the EU in the coming years."

A comprehensive energy strategy overwhelmingly approved by MEPs also proposed the writing of an "energy security clause" in future trade, association, partnership and cooperation agreements with any gas producer and transit countries.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Parliament is unhappy with the quality of national energy efficiency plans submitted by European Union (EU) member states and is calling for a comprehensive review of their contents this year. A formal motion overwhelmingly approved by MEPs, said current plans contained "deficiencies which might endanger the attainment of the EU’s energy efficiency and climate protection objectives".…

BY JAMES BURNS

THE LAST jurisdiction to outlaw yellow margarine finally got in line with the rest of the world last July when the Quebec provincial government in Canada repealed a 21-year-old law forbidding the sale of yellow margarine.

This marked the end of North America’s official long-standing antipathy towards the popular fat.…

BY MONICA DOBIE

GLOBAL yields of most biofuels crops have been overestimated 100%-150% claims a USA University of Wisconsin/University of Minnesota study. Data from nearly 240 countries suggest yield estimates are overly based on United States and Europe conditions, ignoring climate, soil, technological and other factors impeding other regions’ production.…