Search Results for: Climate change

BY PAUL COCHRANE, in Beirut
AN ARAB language newspaper has reported that British clothing retail giant Marks & Spencer is investigating opening a branch in the Lebanese capital Beirut.

The Al Balad newspaper said talks have been suspended however over Lebanon’s ongoing political instability and concern over the possible store location.…

BY MONICA DOBIE, in New York
QUESTION

GLOBAL warming is destroying the ice cap habitat of the Arctic’s iconic polar bear. Recently, the Bush administration proposed that the polar bear should be added the US ‘threatened’ species list because warming temperatures are melting ice flows where bears hunt seals.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
FOLLOWING a year or more of advance razzmatazz, the European Union’s multi-pronged energy strategy was unveiled on January 10 and while history may not see it as the “new industrial revolution” that Brussels proclaimed, there’s enough in it to engage the minds of everybody in the energy industry for perhaps years to come.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
The long-awaited energy policy package unveiled by the European Commission on January 10th will, as the EU’s competition commissioner Neelie Kroes says, “make uncomfortable reading for many energy companies.” This is not surprising. For the past year it’s been widely expected that, among other things, Brussels would be coming up with a plan for the enforced separation of power networks from suppliers.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
TRADE ministers have agreed to restart the Doha Development Round agricultural liberalisation talks, hoping sufficient progress can be made to persuade the US Congress to renew President Bush’s fast-track negotiating authorisation. This expires in June, and will need refreshing for the World Trade Organisations talks to have any hope of success.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
LOCAL authorities were invited this week to help write a European Union (EU) green paper on how sustainable urban transport can benefit many municipal policy goals. The European Commission launched a wide-ranging public consultation on Wednesday (January 31) at a Brussels conference on ‘Urban Transport: Problems, Solutions and Responsibilities’.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
Both sides in the dispute have however created themselves a little more wriggle room in which to find a compromise by yesterday (31-1) releasing proposed new CO2 emission standards for the oil industry. The Commission has formally proposed formal obligations for fuel suppliers to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions their fuels generate when they are refined, transported and used in the EU.…

BY MARK ROWE
CLIMATE change, the general scientific consensus now holds, is taking place, and will continue to do so even were we to stop our fossil fuel emissions overnight. And while there may be jests to the effect that hotter summers would be good news for drinks manufacturers, the reality is that the drinks sector faces as many challenges as any other industry, both in terms of ingredient and energy supplies, production adjustments and related commercial issues.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has promised in an assessment of the European Union (EU) end-of-life vehicles directive to pump-prime the development of technology that will help the recycling and reuse of cars. Brussels says it will stick with the existing 2015 targets of the legislation: 85% reuse/recycling and 95% reuse/recovery, concluding these “are optimal both in terms of environmental and economic performance.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
The European Commission has made a pitch for world leadership in the fight against climate change by calling on the 27 EU member states to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20% by 2020. The move is seen as an example to other countries of the kind of action needed in the post-Kyoto period if there should be no further international agreement for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by then.…