(c)yomiuri online The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) won 308 of the 480 seats though the ruling bloc of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and New Komeito got only 140 seats in the Lower House election on Sunday. This is a landslide victory for DPJ, as DPJ had only 115 seats while the ruling bloc [...]

Last week the US state department approved an oil pipeline which will carry tar sands oil from Alberta across Canada down to Wisconsin. The move follows long term plans between the US and Canada over energy deals, with tar sands already a key part of the US’s current oil provider. For environmentalists the move is [...]

There are only a few months left until leaders of the international community convene in Copenhagen to agree upon a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol. Prime Minister Rudd has already declared that Australia will not go to the convention empty-handed. So far, Australia’s climate change legislation has faced some hurdles with its CPRS bill. However, [...]

Following on from Derek Piper’s article on Canada’s proposed Cap and Trade system for this fall, environmentalists and policy makers will be left to wonder at whether Prime Minister Harper’s effort is part of a more serious effort to tackle green house gas emissions or simply keeping up with Jones’. Some of the most far-reaching [...]

The Canadian Government is adjusting its climate plans to more closely resemble those proposed in the US.  This summer Environment Canada is conducting a series of consultations with respect to its greenhouse gas emissions policies for heavy polluting industries and an announcement is expected in the fall outlining the new regulations.  Climatico has learned from [...]

On Thursday (13/08/09), the Australian Senate defeated the Rudd Government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS), a legislative package made up of a Carbon emission trading scheme and ten related bills (click here for previous developments). The Opposition, Greens, and the independents, Nick Xenophon and Steve Fielding, voted to defeat the package 42 to 30. Prime [...]

A government panel has suggested that France should aim to tax greenhouse gas emissions by 2010. This tax is lauded as a mechanism to encourage clean and greener habits among the French population. But the big questions remain: how effective will the tax be and who will it affect? The panel concluded that: “carbon dioxide [...]

Rich countries, led by the US, have opposed discussing proposals from various poor countries around the reform of intellectual property rights (IPR). These discussions are crucial to technology transfer efforts. This document is quite useful as a primer on IPR and climate change.Technology transfer (as I’ve written before) will be crucial for helping poor countries [...]

Following two days of high-level discussions held in Washington at the beginning of last week, the U.S. and China signed an agreement to increase cooperation on climate change and energy. These discussions were the first meeting in the China-U.S. Economic and Strategic Dialogue which was launched by Hu Jintao and Barak Obama at the G20 [...]

Two weeks ago, the U.S. super-giant Wal-Mart announced plans to develop a worldwide sustainable product index that will record the ecological impact of every product the retailer carries. The sustainability of a product’s history will then be translated onto a label which the customer can see as they make their purchasing decisions. This sustainability index [...]