Le Point International

Will the warming planet be able to sustain coming generations? Few questions about the future matter more. But although modellers can forecast temperature changes and even precipitation, they struggle to say how climate change will affect the factors that make the planet habitable, such as food and water availability. Last week at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany, researchers launched a fast-track programme to make their narratives of possible futures more coherent and useful to decision-makers.

The Durban climate talks are over, and many are celebrating. After repeatedly reaching the brink of collapse, the summit produced agreements on several counts. The Associated Press reported that it approved a “landmark deal” that was “meant to set a new course for the global fight against climate change for the coming decades”. Christina Figueres, head of the system that oversees the talks, heralded the arrival of a “remarkable new phase in [the] climate regime”.

NEW YORK – In May, the United Nations’ International Panel on Climate Change made media waves with a new report on renewable energy. As in the past, the IPCC first issued a short summary; only later would it reveal all of the data. So it was left up to the IPCC’s spin-doctors to present the take-home message for journalists.

As clean energy technology has globalized, innovation has followed. Government officials need to pay attention

HIGASHIDORI, Japan—A gubernatorial candidate promoting more nuclear reactors beat a rival who wanted to freeze them in a quake-hit northern prefecture Sunday, as Japan's troubled nuclear-energy industry faced its first major ballot-box test since the Fukushima Daiichi accident.

WASHINGTON, DC – The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear crisis in Japan has underscored the dangers of storing highly radioactive spent fuel in pools of water that are susceptible to breaches from natural disasters and hydrogen explosions from accidents. The crisis should serve as a wake-up call for governments and industry to take action to reduce the risks of spent-fuel storage.

Marie C.DONNELLY, DG Energy, reported that the EU is “unlikely to achieve a 20% reduction on the current set of policies” 1 by 2020. According to her, based on a modelling exercise, the estimate of energy savings “would be somewhere between 9 and 11% on current policies” in spite of the contribution of the economic crisis to decreasing the EU primary energy consumption.

Royal Dutch Shell officials faced tough questions from Dutch lawmakers on Wednesday over pollution from its oil operations in Nigeria at a conference convened in the Netherlands to shed light on the oil giant’s dealings in the West African country.