See here the Happy Planet Index by NEF (pdf).
Category:5 Environment
Japan to lead climate change fight?
Incoming Prime Minister Hatoyama has said that Japan will adopt a goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 25% at the Copenhagen talks in December. This is the bottom end of the range proposed by the UN (15%-40% cuts), but far more than considered by Japan and other rich emitters so far. Japan is the …
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Arctic warmest for 2,000 years, and getting warmer fast.
Evidence from ice cores, tree rings and lake sediments shows that arctic temperatures are now higher than at any time in the last 2,000 years. The arctic cooled slowly over the past 2,000 years as Earth’s orbit changed, but in the past 100 years greenhouse gas emissions have fuelled fast temperature rises. 23 sites sampled …
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Do you want to live without trees?
An article in today’s news suggests that we can turn back the tide of carbon by installing thousands of artificial carbon capture trees. OK, it might help. But it’s just the wrong kind of thinking and a tremendous waste of materials. It is real trees that we need. Building steel structures with solar panels and …
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Getting real about the high price of cheap food
An informative story from Time magazine. Somewhere in Iowa, a pig is being raised in a confined pen, packed in so tightly with other swine that their curly tails have been chopped off so they won’t bite one another. To prevent him from getting sick in such close quarters, he is dosed with antibiotics. The …
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Why don’t we change our behaviour?
Even people who know things are bad for them, like too many sweets, find it hard to change their behaviour. It is easier to change if the result of changing behaviour is immediate, tangible and measureable – that’s evidenced by the labour market – somebody will do anything at a price. But it is more …
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Bundanoon outshines the G8. It bans bottled water.
Bundanoon, a rural town in New South Wales, Australia, has voted overwhelmingly to ban the sale of bottled water over concerns about its environmental impact. It may be the first community in the world to have such a ban. 350 residents turned out to vote at the public meeting in the town hall. Only one …
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G8 saves face with procrastination and prevarication.
So the G8 agreed to limit global warming to 2°C by 2050. OK maybe a step in the right direction. But no agreement to cuts by 2020. And no agreed action. The G8 agreed its members would “work towards” 80% cuts in emissions by 2050, but again no commitment, no economic penalties for failing to …
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Time to start decarbonising, and stop recarbonising.
An international group of academics is urging world leaders to abandon their current policies on climate change. The authors of How to Get Climate Policy Back on Course say the strategy based on overall emissions cuts has failed and will continue to fail. The current system of attempting to cap carbon emissions then allow trading …
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The shrinking planet.
Although the graphics are not as dramatic as a movie like Independence Day or even An Inconvenient Truth, they show simply and clearly the imbalance between the carrying capacity of the earth and the human population. They also show that the imbalance is growing, rapidly. The only real solution is to reduce the human population. …
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