Much as I’m an admirer of Wal-Mart’s ambitious sustainability goals, and its efforts to achieve them, there’s a glaring problem with the company’s “progress” to date that can be seen in the chart below. tweetmeme_url = 'here’; When it comes to climate change–the defining environmental issue of of our era -- Wal-Mart is moving in the wrong direction. As Gwen Ruta of the Environmental Defense Fund, a Wal-Mart partner, writes in her frank assessment of the company’s 2009 sustainability report, the problem is that all the good things that Wal-Mart is doing -- increasing its use of renewable energy, driving efficiency in individual stores, improving its fleet operations and pushing up its recycling rate -- are offset by the fact that the company is adding more stores and selling more stuff. So although WMT’s greenhouse gas emissions per unit of sales is decreasing (the bars on the right), its overall carbon footprint is growing (the bars in the middle). Click here for a full-sized version of the chart. Source: Wal-Mart 2009 Global Sustainability Report. Wal-Mart executives have a sophisticated response to this; they’ve told me that if the company takes market share away from other, less efficient retailers, it could actually be increasing its own emissions while reducing emissions in the aggregate because people are buying less stuff from its competitors. Certainly that’s possible.

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Climate change and the related regulations have strongly influenced the life of some major European companies. Energy efficiency measures are usually the main options pursued and new hires are avoided by retraining or "greening" existing employees, a new study has found. U.K.-based GHK Consulting, hired by the European Commission, has reviewed the cases of 15 companies, including Enel, Cadbury, Marks and Spencer, Carrefour, Air France-KLM and Virgin Atlantic, examining the ways in which climate change and related policies have influenced them and how they have responded. With the exception of Coca Cola, all are European companies. The reviewers found that these companies' major moves so far have been aimed at improving energy efficiency. "Energy efficiency is the first thing they look at," said James Medhurst, director at GHK Consulting. Power plants have become more efficient, companies have invested in new fleets of cars, airlines in new planes and transport companies in new trucks. The French retail group Carrefour (495,000 employees) has pledged to shave 20 percent off its energy consumption by 2015.

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The prime minister is to pledge UK leadership in the international battle against climate change. He is due to launch a document showing what the UK will offer to the Copenhagen conference tasked with forging a new global climate agreement. Climate Secretary Ed Miliband described the conference as "make or break time for the climate". The Road to Copenhagen document will outline plans for ongoing emissions cuts in the UK. It will also contain practical advice to people on how they can cut emissions and often save money too. The document will focus on UK ambitions for the Copenhagen conference and also for the G8 meeting, soon to take place in Italy. At that summit, leaders of the world's top polluting nations - including emerging economies - will attempt to clear a path for a global deal.

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WHEN the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change came into force in 1994, climate change's impacts seemed distant. Not any more. With daily reports of changes to glaciers, ice sheets, oceans and ecological systems, climate change seems upon us. As a result, the debate over what to do is changing. Geoengineering schemes, once considered nearly science fiction, are now discussed seriously. Most attention, though, has focused on reducing emissions of carbon dioxide. There is no question that to stop climate change in the long run requires a substantial reduction in CO2 emissions. However, significant opportunities exist to slow warming over the next few decades by reducing emissions of other greenhouse gases. Only about half the warming that has occurred up to now is due to CO2. The rest is caused by other greenhouse gases, particularly methane (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 97, p 9875). Similarly, less than half of the total warming expected over the next 20 years will be caused by CO2. Methane, along with other gases such as carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and black carbon particles, will cause most of the changes.

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High oil prices and the impact of a global recession halved yearly rises in global greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels in 2008, the first evidence of an impact from the financial crisis, a study said on Thursday. Also for the first time, the share of global carbon emissions from developing countries was higher than from industrialised nations, at 50.3 percent. China recently overtook the United States as the world's top carbon emitter. The recession's effect on energy consumption and carbon emissions is seen as temporary, and some scientists fear a rebound if the credit squeeze delays investments in more costly, low-carbon sources of energy such as wind and solar power. The rate of increase in 2009 will be lower again and absolute emissions may fall, depending on other factors such as winter temperatures, said Jos Olivier, chief scientist compiling the data for the study published by Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, using BP energy data. Carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas blamed for climate change. Negotiators from 190 countries are trying to seal agreeement by December this year on a new global climate pact in a U.N. process to replace or extend the Kyoto Protocol.

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Japan is ready to give technical and financial support to help developing nations cut their greenhouse gas emissions in a move that could help Japan revise up its recently announced emissions cut target by 2020, the environment minister said on Wednesday. Governments worldwide are currently in talks to agree a new U.N. climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol. One issue they are looking at is whether and how to enhance market mechanisms under Kyoto to enable rich countries to help others reduce emissions and in exchange receive emissions offsets. Japan, the world's fifth-biggest greenhouse gas emitter, has been under pressure from developing nations to go for deep greenhouse gas reductions by 2020 to show leadership in talks for a climate deal due to be agreed in Copenhagen in December. When Prime Minister Taro Aso unveiled Japan's 2020 target of cutting emissions 15 percent below 2005 levels on June 10, he said it would be achieved solely through domestic efforts to save energy and use renewable energy sources. He added that methods such as funding emission cuts abroad would be considered for additional cuts as the U.N. talks progress.

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Scottish lawmakers Wednesday backed a binding goal to cut greenhouse gases by 42 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels, edging Germany into second place in a ranking of the most ambitious developed world targets. Developing countries have demanded that rich nations take the lead in fighting climate change. They have so far been unimpressed with plans which show big gaps must be bridged to agree a global treaty in December to replace the Kyoto Protocol. Scotland's bill included an option to curb its ambition if no strong global climate deal is reached in six months' time. Environmental campaigners nevertheless hailed the decision by Scotland, which has ample potential for low-carbon wind power, having derided targets proposed earlier this month by Japan and Russia. "At least one nation is prepared to aim for climate legislation that follows the science," said Kim Carstensen, head of the Global Climate Initiative of the WWF International environmental group.

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Legislation approved this morning by a Senate panel would slash environmental agencies' spending by $200 million from the levels approved by House appropriators. The measure approved unanimously today by the Senate Interior Appropriations Subcommittee requests $32.1 billion to fund the Interior Department, U.S. EPA and U.S. Forest Service for fiscal 2010, compared with the $32.3 billion requested in the measure approved by the House Appropriations Committee last week. The Senate package is $225 million below President Obama's request and $4.5 billion above 2009 levels. The full Senate Appropriations Committee is scheduled to take up the measure Thursday, and floor consideration of the House bill is expected Thursday or Friday.

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The Polish Parliament has adopted a regulation on trading carbon dioxide emissions allowing selling the country’s extra credits for CO2 emissions in line with the Kyoto Protocol. Poland has curbed its emissions far below the set limit and according to the cap and trade approach it is able to sell its allowances, wnp.pl reports. The new regulation describes the mechanism of allocating funds obtained from selling the extra credits. They are to be earmarked for supporting air and climate protection. Under the act the Environment Protection Institute is established, designed to balance and manage emissions. The Institute is to run a national database of greenhouse gas (GHG) and other pollutants and a national register of Kyoto units. Its other tasks include developing emission indices, drafting reports and forecasts concerning emissions of GHG and other harmful substances. Information on industrial, transport, agricultural and service activity along with respective GHG emissions is to be gathered within the scheme. The ‘climate account’ into which funds obtained from selling emissions will be transferred, will be run by the National Fund for Environment Protection. The new law envisages setting up a national scheme for balancing and forecasting emissions.

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Access to green technology is becoming a growing stumbling block in global efforts to fight climate change, with US lawmakers bristling at what they see as China's attempt to "steal" US know-how. China and India have led calls for developed nations to share technology to help them battle global warming as the clock ticks to a December meeting in Copenhagen meant to seal a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. The US House of Representatives this month unanimously voted to make it US policy to prevent the Copenhagen treaty from "weakening" US intellectual property rights on a wind, solar and other eco-friendly technologies. Congressman Rick Larsen, a member of President Barack Obama's Democratic Party who authored the measure, said the United States was caught between concern both over the climate and its soaring trade deficit with China. "The US can be part of China's solution for the problems that they admittedly have with energy efficiency and emissions. And I think legitimately we want to be part of that solution -- we're the two largest emitters of C02 in the world," Larsen said.

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When European and Chinese scientists first agreed to collaborate on capturing carbon dioxide from power plants and storing it underground, China's entire carbon capture and sequestration "team" was composed of two Tsinghua University graduate students. Less than five years later, the landscape is markedly different. China's first near-zero-emissions coal plant won state approval this month -- an apparent formality, since construction already is far under way. Two other pilots are in the works, including one in inner Mongolia that could be the largest sequestration project in the world. Conferences on carbon capture in China now routinely feature high-level government and industry leaders. And one of those once-lowly grad students, analysts said, is among China's negotiators at the international forum of the world's 17 major economies meeting on energy issues next month in Mexico City.

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