US update

US update

31st May 2007

US president Bush's "offer" at the G-8 summit to broker global meetings with the world's biggest greenhouse polluters, has been widely condemmed as a feeble attempt to justify his administration's abject failure to reduce the US's own massive contributions to global warming.

Residents in one of the world's biggest "hot spots" - the derelict uranium mining areas of New Mexico - have resolved to fight the apparent indifference of regulatory authorities to water contamination.

Last week, we critiqued (on this site) plans by Rio Tinto and BP to construct a supposedly "carbon free" coal fired power plant in Australia. Now, the UK's leading oil company has set out plans to drill for coal-bed methane in Canada, and many across the US border in Montana are against it, including some in government. Accessing coal-bed methane is arguably less destructive than mining for coal, but still creates major disturbances to land, and potential threats to water resources.

Ironically, however, Montana has also given permission for a coal-fired power plant to be constructed atop a National Historic Landmark.

Thanks to opposition from the UK, plans to send nine ships contaminated with asbestos, and other toxics, for breaking-up across the Atlantic have been rebuffed.