The French government is working towards implementation of a direct carbon tax by July 2010. France’s Constitutional Council struck down the first version of the carbon tax bill last 29 December. On 21 January 2010, the government proposed a number of amendments to the original legislation, which is aimed at encouraging French consumers to be [...]

In January 2010, California passed regulation over Green House gases by determining the pollution of fuels coming into California: LA times has coverage here: “The Air Resources Board voted 9 to 1 in favor of the complex new rule, which is expected to slash the state’s gasoline consumption by a quarter in the next decade” [...]

Canada has slightly adjusted its mid-term climate mitigation targets to match US pledges. Canada’s Environment Minister, Jim Prentice, recently announced that Canada has changed its mitigation goals in an effort to harmonize with the Obama administration. Canada’s new emissions reduction target for 2020 is a cut of 17% on 2005 levels. Heading into the Copenhagen [...]

The United Nations’ Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) adopted a novel project approach to countering or offsetting developed countries’ emissions.  The most visible and controversial component of the Kyoto Protocol has made large political and regional advances since its inception. However, when it comes to global distribution of the projects that are actually generating carbon offsets, [...]

China’s Copenhagen pledges, along with fifty four other nations, have recently been announced. China has pledged to reduce its carbon dioxide emission per unit of GDP by 40-45% by 2020 compared to 2005 levels, raise the level of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to 15% and increase forest coverage by 40 million hectares with [...]

Australia’s cap and trade system, the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS), is being reintroduced into Parliament this week, after two rejections in 2009 (see here and here). However, it is almost certain that it will fail again, following decreasing public support for the policy after the Copenhagen conference and Tony Abbott’s ascension to the opposition [...]

The extremely high hurricane season of 2005 highlighted the vulnerability of coastal communities to extreme weather events.  The costliest (Katrina) and the most intense (Wilma) hurricanes were recorded in this season. Hurricane formation is closely linked to sea surface temperature. Climate models agree that the intensity and frequency of hurricanes will increase over the next [...]

Back in the mid-2000s China began to experiment with the notion of Green GDP as a new way of accounting for its growth in an environmental context. This was touched on in a previous blog post, but I thought a more in depth look into exactly what Green GDP showed and why it failed would [...]