Pollution

submitted by Albert Gomez

environmentalleader.com - March 15, 2012

Dow Chemical, which was named the Official Carbon Partner of the XXII Olympic Winter Games, plans to mitigate the carbon footprint of the Sochi 2014 Games using its energy-efficient technologies.

Dow will apply its technology to target areas, such as building infrastructure, industry and agriculture within Russia. Improvements may include adding Dow’s air-sealing technologies to buildings and insulation materials for energy efficient and affordable housing, the company said.

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The cleanest form of petrochemical energy is clearly past its peak and is causing significant damage to ecosystems all over the planet.  That is why risky and incredibly expensive resource extraction, such as Deep Water Horizon, is becoming the new reality of oil production.  The impacts of climate change are now escalating rapidly.  But the bigger problem lies in the extents to which the largest and most profitable businesses in the world in the petrochemical industry are willing to go to continue their profitability against all rationality in terms of the  mass extinction and the impact on health and human security. 

Image: One plume of oil from BP's 2010 Deepwater Horizon well blowout produced a slick 22 miles long and a mile wide. Photograph: Ted Jackson/Times Picayune/AP

guardian.co.uk - October 31st, 2012 - Daryl Hannah

Extreme killer superstorms, historic drought, vanishing sea ice, an increase in ocean acidity by 30%, the hottest decade on record and mega forest fires have increasingly become our new reality.

"That's all happened when you raise the temperature of the earth one degree," says author Bill McKibben, "[t]he temperature will go up four degrees, maybe five, unless we get off coal and gas and oil very quickly." Additional temperature rises could compromise our safety and cause incalculable damage from a large number of billion-dollar disasters in coming years – if we don't address our emissions, insist upon an appropriate climate policy and curtail the rogue fossil fuel industry.

greenbiz.com - Bruce Kennedy - July 31st, 2012

The European Union’s new plan to shore up its Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) following a plunge in carbon prices underscores just how volatile – and vulnerable – the carbon emissions trading market has become.

Battered by global economic uncertainty, an overuse of allowances and political polarization, the ETS will probably remain in limbo until at least September. That’s when the EU’s climate change commission next meets.

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