Sagging carbon prices lost nearly 14% of their value yesterday (2 April) as recession and a warm winter sparked a predicted 2.6% drop in carbon emissions from the 10,000 installations covered by the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) last year. The already-depressed carbon price dived from €7 to a record low of €6.14 by early afternoon.--
EurActiv, 3 April 2012An internal General Motors strategy paper reveals that the US automaker wants to close its plants in Western Europe and transfer production to low-cost countries. The document means that the future looks bleak for Opel's plant in Bochum and Vauxhall's factory in Ellesmere Port. --Dietmar Hawranek,
Spiegel Online, 27 March 2012
The British government, although not yet ready to say so, has finally rejected the bogus economics of climate change or, more likely, it always knew the figures didn’t add up but is now desperate for the internationally competitive cheap energy needed to keep our industrial base from wholesale emigration. --Dominic Lawson,
The Sunday Times, 1 April 2012Q-Cells, once the world's biggest maker of solar panels, is filing for bankruptcy. The German firm says it has abandoned an attempt to refinance its debts and will file for insolvency on Tuesday. Like other solar panel makers, Q-Cells has been hit by falling prices and last year the firm lost 846m euros ($1.1bn; £702m). The company started in 2001 with 19 staff and now employs more than 2,000 workers. --
BBC News, 2 April 2012
China has already cancelled orders for 35 European Airbus A330 jets, and is threatening to cancel on 10 more. India has just banned its airlines from submitting any carbon emission data by the EU’s March 31 deadline. In February, the two Asian giants, along with 21 other countries including the United States, signed up to the Moscow Declaration, a strategic blueprint for global trade ‘war’. It has a single aim: to make sure the EU’s Airline Tax never gets off the ground. --
Peter Glover, Energy Tribune, 30 March 2012
Middle East will go back to being an obscure backwater. It will attract scant attention in future, not because the region will have run out of oil — it will have found much more — but because the rest of the world will also be awash in oil. --Lawrence Solomon,
Financial Post, 31 March 2012
The dividing line between creative writing and climate science - sometimes thin - has been triumphantly dissolved. A new postgraduate course at the University of East Anglia hopes to bring together "researchers in the environmental sciences, philosophy, history and literature to develop new ways of thinking about environmental change and social transitions". And put that thermometer down. If you have experience writing "eco-poetry", then the UEA wants to hear from you. UEA, the heart of the Climategate emails, already runs a project in "eco poetry" aimed at primary school children, intended to "stimulate and strengthen children's environmental awareness". It isn't cheap, though. The course costs £5,000 for UK students and £11,900 for overseas students. –Andrew Orlowski,
The Register, 2 April 2012
