Start Your Engines! Green Vehicles Make the Running

Which came first - the petrol internal combustion engined car or one powered by electricity? If you thought the former, you would be wrong: Robert Anderson of Scotland made his first electric vehicle around 1834. It wasn't until 1885 that Karl Benz created the first petrol-powered car. In 1900 when Rudolph Diesel exhibited his innovative motor vehicle, it ran on peanut oil: he had envisioned it being powered by biofuels created locally from nuts or seeds.

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Oil hits $135 per barrel

Photo: Julian Jackson

The price of oil continues to spike upwards, reaching over $135 per barrel on trading in New York recently. This was an almost $20 surge during the week. Oil has gone up nearly 30% in four months. The effects of these prices are felt throughout the economy as oil is built into every product either as a raw material, eg plastics, pharmaceuticals, as well as a transport cost for the fuel to take the product from producer to end-user.

It is a general theory among many economists that oil price spikes cause recession. Professor Andrew Oswald, of Warwick University has studied the phenomenon. He says that slow-downs and recessions follow sharp increases in oil price, “We saw this most notably in 1974, 1979, and 1990. On each occasion, an oil price spike was followed by recession in the world economy.”

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Launch of 350.org - an organisation campaigning to reduce CO2 levels

350.org has been launched, to emphasise the need for humanity to reduce the carbon in our atmosphere to 350 parts per million (ppm). Scientists at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii say that CO2 levels in the atmosphere now stands at 387 parts per million (ppm), up almost 40% since the industrial revolution and the highest for at least the last 650,000 years.

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Major Windfarm Loses Investor as Costs Increase

Photo: Sandi Baker

The London Array – a major offshore development of wind turbines that could have powered every house in Kent and East Sussex has had one of its main investors, Shell, pull out, putting the whole project in jeopardy.

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Climate Change Bill reaches Parliament – UK first to set emission targets

Photo: FoE

The first Climate Change legislation to be enacted anywhere in the world looks set to be passed by Parliament by this summer. It sets a target of 60% reduction in C02 emissions by 2050, but the opposition and climate change groups are lobbying to make this an 80% reduction – to take account of newer scientific research which shows that 60% is too low to prevent damaging effects on the environment. It is also likely that the government will bow to pressure and set annual targets, probably a 3% reduction per year.

Tony Juniper of FoE, who have campaigned steadfastly for the bill, said at a packed meeting in Central London recently, “We have a popular mandate for what will be very likely the first law in the world setting a trajectory for carbon dioxide Greenhouse Gas Emissiona.”

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