Source: Globe and Mail

Very few environment-related provisions were included in the Canadian federal budget announced yesterday, “except for $240-million to help Saskatchewan develop a clean coal power plant with an underground carbon dioxide sequestration system, $250-million over five years for automotive research on clean car technologies, $66-million to develop regulations for a carbon emissions trading market, and $500-million on public transit.”

The Financial Times

Investors are using information on companies’ carbon dioxide emissions to manage their portfolios, according to an annual survey of the world’s leading businesses.

The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), backed by hundreds of institutional investors, asks the world’s biggest companies to report their greenhouse gas emissions. This year, almost two-thirds of the 385 institutional investors behind the project, whose findings are published today, said they used the survey to identify companies not adequately addressing climate change.

ABS/CBN News

“What’s with the electric toothbrush?” Ramon Sales, convenor of the Philippine Network on Climate Change, asked as he wondered at people’s seemingly growing fixation on anything that could be plugged in.

He mused on another device, the electric peeler, and laughed at the idea that man could not anymore “naturally” remove the skin off a vegetable or fruit with his own hands.

Green Biz

Thirty-one percent of Chinese consumers rated the environment a higher priority than the economy compared with 17 percent of consumers in the U.S. and 28 percent in the U.K., according to recent surveys.

The findings of green brands research in China and their comparison with results of similar surveys conducted this year in the United States and Britain were presented yesterday at the Economist Conferences’ Fifth China Branding Roundtable in Beijing.

The Guardian

Lavish parties tend to leave a hangover as the problems of daily life, put aside for the celebrations, come crowding back. China’s Olympic party is not likely to prove an exception. The full legacy of the extraordinary events of 2008 in the People’s Republic of China will take many years to emerge, but in the short term, a number of pressing problems are clear.

BusinessGreen

Companies operating in China are to face tough new green legislation after the country’s top legislature passed a package of laws designed to underpin the government’s climate change strategy.

Over the past year, the Chinese government has set out a range of targets designed to shrug off its tag as the world’s largest polluter, including goals to reduce energy consumption per unit of GDP by 20 percent, double renewable energy capacity and cut pollution levels 10 percent by 2010 compared to a 2005 baseline.

GreenBiz

The U.S. could feasibly halve its gasoline consumption if the country switched to hybrid and plug-in electric vehicles by 2035, according to a new MIT report.

For too long, automakers have focused on improving performance at the expense of efficiency, said the report from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A large part of the challenge will involve convincing consumers that they don’t need fast, gas-guzzling cars.

Market Watch

Going clean and green means more to Rocio Garcia, a 19-year-old girl from the Dominican Republic supported by Children International, a U.S.-based humanitarian organization. River clean-up and tree-planting campaigns have propelled the teen from a slum outside Santo Domingo to the United States to attend International Youth Day on August 12 at the United Nations.

The Globe and Mail

Eco-activists and other crusaders often rely on high-profile stunts to generate funds and media buzz for their causes: dangling from smokestacks, chaining themselves to trees, dressing up as fuzzy mascots for “die-ins.”

Environmental Leader

Four out of five IT decision makers across government and corporate sectors said implementing green IT solutions in their organizations is important, with almost half citing positive reputation as the main benefits of adopting green IT, according to a new survey by CDW Corp.