Climate Climate & Energy

Happy birthday!

Peter Madden, chief executive of Forum for the Future, writes a monthly column for Gristmill on sustainability in the U.K. and Europe.

"Sustainable development" is 20 years old this week.

On April 27, 1987, after four years of deliberation, the World Commission on Environment and Development released its report. The inquiry -- also known as the Brundtland Commission -- was led by the prime minister of Norway, Gro Harlem Brundtland.

I was at university then, and devoured the contents of the report, which was later published as the book Our Common Future. Here, at last, was someone tying together the environment and development agendas. The report had much to say, too, about the relationship between poverty and environmental degradation. And as a female leader, Brundtland was such an antidote to our own prime minister; she was pretty much everything Margaret Thatcher was not.

The report gave us an enduring definition of sustainable development: "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own need."

So 20 years on, what is the legacy of sustainable development as a concept?

Some miscellaneous but connected items

The daily news is never short of articles on biofuels these days, but these three caught my eye today.

Getting the Fax Straight

New Canadian climate policy leaks out, is kinda leaky Canada’s Conservative government, known for consistently pooh-poohing the Kyoto Protocol, planned to unveil emissions-reduction targets today and urge participation in carbon markets, a la Kyoto. But the news got out early when a draft of the speech was accidentally faxed to the Liberal Party on Tuesday. […]

He Also Tried “Climate Fun Time Happypants”

Wolfowitz deputy allegedly tried to weaken climate-change message The brouhaha over World Bank head Paul Wolfowitz giving financial favors to his lady friend is spreading into a look at whether he’s been pushing the Bush administration agenda on family planning and climate change. The bank’s chief scientist, Robert Watson, says Wolfowitz deputy Juan José Daboub […]

Hustle and Muscle

Schwarzenegger, frustrated by inaction, threatens to sue U.S. EPA In a smackdown between U.S. EPA head Stephen Johnson and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R), who would you bet on? It’s OK if you need time to ponder, because their battle is unfolding in slow motion. On Tuesday, Johnson said he had begun the process of […]

New island ‘made’ by global warming

In the same week that science discovers a new, earth-like planet, we get a new island off the coast of Greenland. From The Independent:

The map of Greenland will have to be redrawn. A new island has appeared off its coast, suddenly separated from the mainland by the melting of Greenland's enormous ice sheet, a development that is being seen as the most alarming sign of global warming.

Yikes.

Ts. Munkhbayar fights destructive mining in Mongolia

Ts. Munkhbayar. Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize. Born into a family of Mongolian herders, Ts. Munkhbayar remembers when the livestock was healthy, the water was clean, and kids went ice skating on the nearby river. “I had a very happy childhood,” he says. In the early 1990s, a gold-mining boom overshadowed all that; because of widespread […]

But By All Means, Keep Filling Your Tank

Gunmen attack Ethiopian oil field run by Chinese company A story unfolding at press time gives a taste of that global energy-security issue everyone’s worried about: according to news reports, gunmen attacked an oil field in eastern Ethiopia run by a Chinese company, killing 65 local workers and nine Chinese workers, and taking seven Chinese […]

I guess engineers don’t like land-based turbines anymore

Recently, I posted about a Canadian group that created a helium-filled floating wind turbine. On the opposite side of sea level, a Virgina-based team has installed several underwater turbines in New York's East River. Posted today on MIT's Technology Review (a good technology publication btw).

Oh, China, China, China

First, I see this: China warned on global warming effects And then this: China detains environmental activist Guess he shouldn’t have warned them!