OK so now it's official. We all knew that Americans drove gas-guzzling polluting vehicles, but now the Environmental Defence Fund has calculated just how bad things are. And they are bad.
Americans may only have 5% of the world's population but they drive a third of its cars. However because Americans drive further in big and inefficient cars they account for 45 per cent – or nearly half - the carbon dioxide pumped out of exhaust pipes each year, according to EDF's new report "Global Warming on the Road".

First the bad news. According to the US Energy Information Administration, energy use will increase by 71 percent by 2030, with the fastest growth coming from China, India and Latin America.

Now the good news. Energy consumption could easily be cut in half, if clean energy technologies that are currently available were applied now, according to the International Energy Agency.

Mountain glaciers are melting faster now than at any time in the past 5,000 years because of climate change, a new study has found. From the Andes to the Himalayas climate change is leading to a full-scale retreat of the world's tropical glaciers, meaning that we might have passed the critical threshold which could see most of the highest ice caps disappearing within the near future.

This is bad news on two fronts: Melting glaciers in South America and Asia not only contribute to rising sea levels, but they are also vital sources of freshwater for millions of people.

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Still don’t believe in global warming? Well, have an olive from England. Reflecting rising temperatures, Britain's first olive grove has just been planted in Devon, with a small-holder planting a grove of 120 olive trees.
The small-holder, Mr Diacono sees climate change as a "vast" problem for society but he told the Independent that it reduces "food miles" of produce brought into Britain. "If there's a restaurant or delicatessen specialising in local food, the first cop-out is always olive oil, because they have to get it from abroad," he said. “If we could source it from England, that would be great.”

Bring

Hold the front page: As the world warms to unprecedented levels and climate change begins to wreck havoc from the Arctic to the Alps, the US and the EU have agreed to radical plans… They have decided to work more closely to address the “serious and long-term challenge” of climate change.

Shell is embroiled in a major safety scandal after one of its senior consultants has disclosed to The Guardian newspaper that documents have been falsified and safety procedures ignored in the North Sea.
What’s worth, the consultant, Bill Campbell, who worked directly for Shell for 24 years, says he brought his concerns to the attention of Shell’s directors seven years ago in 1999 - and again in 2004 - but still feels safety is compromised.
Campbell alleges in a safety report that "violations include falsification of maintenance records for safety critical equipment". The report also talks about "inappropriate attitude, skills and behaviour"

Al Gore, in London for a meeting with British Chancellor Gordon Brown, said that President Clinton's failure to get Kyoto ratified was due mainly to the fact that many people in the US were then, and to a certain extent still are, in a state of denial about the severity of the crisis.

BP has announced that it is planning to spend $500 million to set up a biofuels research centre that will be attached to a major US or UK university. BP says the centre – which will be called the BP Energy Biosciences Institute – will focus on improving the efficiency of existing biofuels; developing new technology so that more of a crop can be used to make biofuels; and developing new high-energy species of plants.

But what does BP mean by “high-energy species of plants”? It means biotech plants. Last week, the US Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) announced that BP had

The dragon is thirsty. China's consumption of oil has risen exponentially in the past decade and by last year it was the largest oil importer after the US.
Slowly but surely China is buying up foreign oil and gas reserves to fuel its rapidly growing economy. In little under a year, Chinese firms have signed oil deals worth over $7 billion in Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Syria and Equatorial Guinea. Now they have ventured into Russia. China's state oil company has bought a £1.6bn Siberian oil field from TNK-BP, sealing access to Russia's huge reserves. Sinopec, also known as CNPC, defeated a

European politicians may talk up the progress they are making on climate change, however the biofuels sector is still struggling to meet targets. A new survey by Paris-based consortium Eurobserver, has found that EU production of biofuels in 2010 is projected to be just over half of the European commission’s target of 18m tonnes oil equivalent (Mtoe).