Green Options

With an international deal in doubt, India and China look to increase cooperation in areas like renewable energy, climate change research.

After playing leader in global climate change negotiations, United States is now under pressure to respond to India and China’s announcements of mitigation measures.

India is refusing to use its ‘low per capita emissions’ argument to dodge demands of emission reduction goals even as its carbon emission output continues to rise.

The U.S position on Climate Change is overshadowing all other discussions in the lead up to Copenhagen, even at a conference I recently attended in Melbourne Australia - the 5th Australia-New Zealand Climate Change & Business Conference, August 24-26th. The Australian position requires global consensus for a greenhouse gas emissions target by 25% with a successful Post 2012 Agreement in place, but only 5% if that is not concluded. It all depends on what the U.S does in Copenhagen according to their minister Penny Wong.

The European Union is the only group that will continue with strong commitments independent of the U.S position with a 20% reduction of greenhouse gases on 1990 levels by 2020 and 30% if a global agreement is concluded.

This column highlights the top economic stories of the week.

Reports of the demise of the U.S. dollar may be premature. But when some of the world’s most powerful investors are warning of the currency’s decline, investors take notice. More on this story here.

There are many cynics out there that critique and question the future of sustainable products and businesses. It’s easy to side with them, mostly because it’s difficult to understand what comprises a “sustainable” product which in turn creates a domino chain of skepticism about achievability. The industry is in self-defining mode and most of us lack the degrees in chemistry, biology, natural sciences or any other course of study that might support our inclination to trust what marketers tell us is “safe” and what is not. More on this story here.

Mumbai, India’s commercial capital, has grown quickly in recent decades - at the expense of its estuaries, environmentalist advocates say. More on this story here.

Wastewater treatment facilities end up dumping a lot of mud that is extracted from the in-flowing water. And, like everything else, that mud takes up space. Space that could be used for other things, even at the dumping yards. But researchers from the Rovira i Virgili University (URV) have suggested, and successfully shown, that the waste mud doesn’t need to be taken to a dumping ground; rather, it can be used as fuel.

They are everywhere. We can’t see them, but little by little they are destroying our way of life. But for the first time ever, they are being caught red-handed. They are greenhouse gases. And today Deutsche Bank unveiled the world’s first real-time carbon counter to measure these microscopic murderers.

Developed nations have proposed weaker carbon emission reduction goals at the Bonn climate negotiations. If the rising carbon emissions are to be tamed it is necessary that they set ambitious targets.

As we evolve towards a new global climate change policy regime at Copenhagen later this year via the negotiations currently going on in Bonn, a willingness to step in each other’s shoes gets more and more critical and primary.

Fifteen months ago, U.S. negotiators were booed at at Bali, Indonesia, that U.S. when they threatened to veto an accord laying down a two-year negotiating process to replace the Kyoto Protocol. Yesterday, the U.S.A was applauded at a 175-nation U.N. meeting in Bonn as Todd Stern pledged to “make up for lost time” in reaching a global agreement on climate change.

United States is looking to levy tax on imported goods while China is holding the high demand from developed nations responsible for a major portion of its carbon emissions.