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.

COPENHAGEN – Advocates of drastic cuts in carbon-dioxide emissions now speak a lot less than they once did about climate change. Climate campaigners changed their approach after the collapse of the Copenhagen climate-change summit last December and the revelation of mistakes in the United Nations climate panel’s work – as well as in response to growing public skepticism and declining interest.

The European Commission is planning an EU-wide minimum tax on carbon as part of the EU's green energy agenda - but the UK opposes such a move.

THE insight that nature provides services to mankind is not a new one. In 360BC Plato remarked on the helpful role that forests play in preserving fertile soil; in their absence, he noted, the land was turned into desert, like the bones of a wasted body. The idea that the value provided by such “ecosystem services” can be represented by ecologists in a way that economists can get to grips with, though, is rather newer.

Rich countries are being asked to raise their pledges on tackling climate change under a draft text of a possible final deal at the Copenhagen summit.

THE mountain bark beetle is a familiar pest in the forests of British Columbia. Its population rises and falls unpredict­ ably, destroying clumps of pinewood as it peaks which then regenerate as the bug re­ cedes. But Scott Green, who studies forest ecology at the University of Northern Brit­ ish Columbia, says the current outbreak is unprecedented in recorded history: a nat­ ural background­noise disturbance has be­ come a major outbreak. We’re looking at the loss of 80% of our forest cover. Other parts of North America have also been af­ fected, but the damage in British Columbia is particularly severe, and particularly troubling in a province whose economy is dominated by timber.

Non credo al riscaldamento globale causato dall’uomo e dunque alla origine antropica dell’effetto serra. Non credo, pertanto, alla teoria che ne discende messa a punto negli ultimi anni dall’IPCC-International Panel on Climate Ch’ange (ONU): il cambiamento climatico, andrebbe stabilizzato, secondo l’IPCC, riducendo e governando i gas a effetto serra nell’atmosfera, e, come prima misura, stivando nelle miniere dismesse il surplus di CO2 prodotto in questi anni.
Il clima è sempre in cambiamento. Pretendere di determinarlo è un atteggiamento prometeico. La sua evoluzione dipende da molti fattori: certo anche dalla composizione chimica dell’atmosfera, ma egualmente dalla dinamica delle grandi masse oceaniche, dai campi magnetici prodotti dal “vento solare”, dalla traiettoria che la terra percorre nella galassia, solo per ricordarne alcuni.