The
following articles are from The Greens newsletter.
Climate
change or oil change?
Several stories have broken
over the last few weeks that has caused oil supplies and climate disruption
to make the news.
- Sweden is looking to be the first
western economy to wean itself off oil, setting a target of doing
so within 15 years - without recourse to more nuclear power stations.
- President Bush declared that the
USA needed to break its dependence on oil supplies from the Middle
East
- Tony Blair warned that "the risks
of climate change may well be greater than we thought," in a forward
to the report Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change that collates
evidence presented by scientists at a conference hosted by the
UK Meteorological Office in February 2005.
- James Lovelock's released his new
book The Revenge of Gaia, in which he argues that, with
carbon dioxide levels increasing, we will soon reach a tipping
point when global temperatures will abruptly soar.
- The World Bank acknowledged that
climate change is a real threat in a recent report and that urgent
action is needed to protect Pacific nations from increasingly
frequent tropical cyclones caused by the problem. Pacific Magazine
has a useful
backgrounder.
Meanwhile, closer to home,
- Jeanette gave climate disruption
and oil shortages centre stage in her State
of the Planet speech that she delivered at the Picnic
for the Planet, Waihopai.
- Victoria University are organising
a Climate Change and Governance Conference, March 28-29.
Details can be found here
Sweden plans to be world's first oil-free economy
(Guardian)
