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The Guardian
The roads were unusually clear but skies remained stubbornly smoggy in Beijing today at the start of an attempt to curb smog before the Olympics begin in three weeks.
The final stage of the programme, which began yesterday, saw half the city’s 3.3m cars banned from the roads each day, depending on whether their number plates end in an odd or even digit.
The Globe and Mail
One day after a long-term target for combatting climate change was adopted by the Group of Eight, the world’s main developing countries refused to sign on because they want wealthy countries to commit to taking on a heavier burden over the next decade.
The Globe and Mail
Tackling climate change has never come easy to George W. Bush — Texas oil man, global warming skeptic and Kyoto killer.
But yesterday in Japan, the U.S. President joined Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the other Group of Eight leaders in setting targets for the first time to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050, helping to bring the United States back into the climate change fold.
The Guardian
The rising demand for flat-screen televisions could have a greater impact on global warming than the world’s largest coal-fired power stations, a leading environmental scientist warned yesterday.
The Globe and Mail
Already under the microscope for greenhouse gas emissions, oil sands companies suffered a major public relations setback when images of ducks soaked in tailing pond oil emerged. Now, they’re striking back with a campaign to show how they can produce oil and manage the environmental impact.
DOT EARTH – New York Times
Global warming has felt like breaking news a few times in recent years. But the first big pulse of coverage and public attention came in 1988, when the Amazon rain forest and Yellowstone were ablaze, a searing drought had farmers kicking dusty fields in frustration, and global temperatures had seen enough of a rise that a NASA climate expert, James Hansen, asserted before a Senate panel that statistics showed “the greenhouse effect has been detected and is changing our climate now.”
BBC News
Japan will aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 60-80% by 2050. Announcing the target, Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said Japan could match the EU in cuts over the next 10 years, but did not set targets on this timescale.