Climate Riders, I recently conducted an audio interview with representatives from Carbon Trust about their efforts to help companies clean up CO2 and cut costs. You may be familiar with their work from the recent New York Times article on calculating the carbon footprint of Tropicana orange juice. Talking with Carbon Trust left me optimistic about getting corporations to adopt product life-cycle analysis, carbon labeling, and major emissions reductions. What is your reaction to their efforts in the United Kingdom and how they relate to the U.S. market? EVAN O'NEIL: Good afternoon. I'm Evan O'Neil, Managing Editor of the Carnegie (more...)

By ClimateBiz Staff View the article on Climate Biz here. The advocacy group Business for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy -- also known as BICEP -- flexed its muscle Thursday with a new crop of members to help push for aggressive climate change policies. Gap Inc., eBay and Symantec joined the four-month-old coalition whose founding members include corporate heavyweights Levi Strauss & Co., Nike, Sun Microsystems, Starbucks and The Timberland Co. The group, organized by nonprofit Ceres, subscribes to a set of climate change principles that are, in some ways, more progressive those of President Barack Obama. For instance, BICEP (more...)

Reposted with permisson from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark. The original article can be viewed at Denmark's COP15 website. By Marie Sauer-Johansen First priority is security – especially if Heads of States and Governments are going to participate. Unfortunately, there just aren't that many armoured limousines that are environmentally friendly. If, for example, Obama is here, it simply isn't safe enough to drive him around in a car like the Toyota Prius – although it's a great hybrid car. Secondly, practicalities must not stand in the way of achieving a good conference result. For example, some delegates prefer (more...)

By GreenerDesign Staff Wal-Mart and Kmart are adding full lines of organic jeans made by Washington-based Greensource to their private label clothing lines. Greensource provides T-shirts, jeans and other apparel made from a variety of greener sources, including organic cotton, bamboo and recycled polyester. The cotton Greensource uses is grown in accordance with organic standards, and how the company processes and manufactures the jeans meets the voluntary Global Organic Textile Standard. All five of the company's manufacturing facilities have been certified to the standard. Wal-Mart's Faded Glory label and Kmart's Route 66 brand will each offer men's, women's and children's (more...)

Climate Biz: By Tom Stoddard Offsetting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is like public education: Everyone is an expert on it, and opinions are posted all over the Internet like celebrity photos. In GHG compliance markets, governed by treaty and law, strict criteria are put in place to define what types of offset projects are acceptable and what conditions -- real, permanent, additional, etc. -- they must meet. Not everyone agrees with the rules. Discussions of additionality are tortuous. There are inevitable reports of imperfections in projects resulting from the protocols that are now in place. Nonetheless, projects designed to create (more...)

New York Times By STEFAN MILKOWSKI ~ TOKSOOK BAY, Alaska — Beyond the fishing boats, the snug homes and the tanks of diesel fuel marking this Eskimo village on the Bering Sea, three huge wind turbines tower over the tundra. Their blades spin slowly in a breeze cold enough to freeze skin. One of the nation’s harshest landscapes, it turns out, is becoming fertile ground for green power. As interest in cleaning up power generation grows around the country, Alaska is fast becoming a testing ground for new technologies and an unlikely experiment in oil-state support for renewable energy. Alaskans (more...)

Financial Times~ By Clive Cookson in Chicago The world is warming far more quickly than scientists forecast just two years ago when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its last reports, according to a series of assessments presented over the weekend. Chris Field of Stanford University, a senior member of the IPCC, told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science that the unexpectedly rapid increase in the burning of fossil fuels, especially coal, since 2000 would have dire consequences because of "feedback loops" in the global -climate. "We are looking now at a future (more...)

Reuters~ SOMETIMES it is worth looking at the big picture. That is the idea behind monitoring greenhouse gases from space. In January the Japanese space agency, JAXA, launched Ibuki, the first satellite dedicated to monitoring carbon dioxide and methane. Later this month the American space agency, NASA, is due to launch the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO), which is also designed to monitor carbon dioxide. The new satellites will work as carbon accountants by keeping a close eye on how the Earth breathes and returning regular audits. Ibuki, which means “breath” in Japanese, orbits the Earth approximately every 100 minutes at (more...)

From the Economist ~ The president directs the EPA to reconsider standards AS A senator, during his campaign for the presidency and in his inaugural address, Barack Obama repeatedly pledged to reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil and to tackle global warming. On January 26th he made what he called “a down-payment” on those pledges, signing two executive orders concerning greenhouse-gas emissions. The move signalled a break with George Bush’s foot-dragging and hinted at grander things to come. The first order instructed officials to come up with a federal fuel-economy target for 2011. Mr Bush had signed a bill in (more...)

NPR Morning Edition · When Vice President Al Gore returned from Kyoto, Japan, with a climate treaty in 1997, it was already a dead letter. The Senate, which ratifies treaties, strongly opposed the deal even before Gore signed it. On Wednesday, Gore returned to the Senate to offer advice about how to arrive at a different outcome as a new climate treaty is negotiated this year in Copenhagen, Denmark. The federal calendar is packed with pressing business in 2009. One of the toughest deadlines is to lay the groundwork for the international climate talks in Copenhagen. Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), (more...)

By JOHN M. BRODER, New York Times WASHINGTON — President Obama is moving quickly to act on the environmental promises that were a centerpiece of his campaign. But tackling global warming will be far more difficult — and more costly — than the new emissions standards for automobiles he ordered with the stroke of a pen on Monday. Already, the Congressional Democrats Mr. Obama will need to carry out his mandate are feuding with one another. By coincidence or design, most of the policy makers on Capitol Hill and in the administration charged with shaping legislation to address global warming (more...)

PORTSMOUTH, NH – Susan F. Tierney, one of the founders of Clean Air - Cool Planet and immediate past chair of the Portsmouth-based climate non profit, will be named as deputy secretary of the US Department of Energy according to reports from sources close to the Obama transition team. Tierney was assistant secretary of energy for policy in the Clinton administration and more recently an energy and economics consultant with Boston-based Analysis Group. “It speaks well for the intentions of the Obama Administration to tackle the climate issue that someone of Sue Tierney’s caliber is named to a top position (more...)

As supporters of Barack Obama celebrated around the world on November 4, climate activists were particularly moved to hear him declare that helping a "planet in peril" would be one of his administration's top priorities. Since then he has restated his commitment to renewing America's leadership in international climate negotiations, and he has pledged to pioneer a "hybrid economy" where protecting health and the environment is not at odds with prosperity. But as the election elation fades, recession deepens, and the transition team plows through its roster of appointments, Obama is missing the bus on an obvious upgrade in U.S. (more...)

In addition to our regular bloggers (see right sidebar), we are inviting a few Climate Riders to share their perspectives. Today's piece is from Evan O'Neil, who works at PolicyInnovations.org, the online magazine of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. Also, here is his blog. The following is a little background about my motivation for doing the Climate Ride, how you can get involved and go green(er), and why it's critical that we act now. There are also some very concrete outcomes I hope to achieve (no, I'm not talking about my thighs). (more...)