Australian Broadcasting Corporation: New research has found the Victorian Government’s goal of halving carbon emissions by 2050 could easily be met 30 years earlier. Environment Victoria’s report is based on the same modelling the State Government used to calculate its targets. The report has found that Victoria’s emissions can be slashed from 125-million tonnes to 49.5-million in 2020. That is a drop of 60 per cent from 2006 levels. The organisation’s Campaigns Director, Mark Wakeham, says large …

Guardian: When the Observer reported the growing threat of ecoterrorism this weekend, most readers will have felt a nervous chill. For many of us, after all, the word terrorism summons up images of suicide bombers, dead bodies, bereft relatives. It’s hardly surprising that we should feel anxious at the idea of rabid environmentalists roaming the country, dynamite in one hand and molotov cocktail in the other. But this is completely wrong and ecoterrorism is itself one of the most pernicious …

Guardian: It is quite utopian, in its way: Boris Johnson and Rosie Boycott, in her first major initiative since being appointed chair of London Food, announced this week that they would aim to have 2,012 new green spaces growing food for Londoners by the 2012 Olympics. They even hoped, in a slightly literal manner, to be able to feed some of the resulting fruit and vegetables to visiting Olympians. There are official allotments, of course, but in London keen gardeners are currently waiting up …

Mongabay: The first shipment of palm oil certified under the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) is expected to arrive in Europe Tuesday, but an environmental group is already criticizing the initiative’s credentials. Wetlands International warns that the batch of certified palm oil originates from a plantation which has palm oil grown on peatlands, a carbon-rich ecosystem that releases massive amounts of CO2 when cleared, drained, and converted for agricultural use. It says that RSPO …

Reuters: Greenpeace has blocked three tankers due to transport crude palm oil to China and Europe from leaving an Indonesian port in a bid to highlight deforestation caused by the cash crop, the environmental group said on Monday. The rapidly expanding palm oil industry in Southeast Asia has come under attack by green groups for destroying rainforests and wildlife, as well the emission of greenhouse gases. The blocked ships included Gran Couve, owned by the world’s largest listed palm …

Reuters: Protesters forced the evacuation of an Australian power station on Friday, attempting to chain themselves to a coal conveyor-belt and ratchet up pressure on an industry blamed for half the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions. The incident, the latest in a series of environmental protests against Australia’s coal-fired power stations and coal export industry, disrupted production at the state-owned Tarong power station in northern Queensland state. "Australia’s greenhouse …

National Public Radio: The recent run-up in gasoline prices was a not-too-subtle reminder that there’s a limited amount of oil on Earth. Someday soon, we’re going to need a new source of fuel. Part of the answer could be fuels made from the plant material cellulose. Researchers at the new Energy Biosciences Institute at the University of California-Berkeley are working on a recipe for this biofuel. From Plant To The Pump The institute is trying to make at least part of the economy run on fuel …

Reuters: A rock found mostly in Oman can be harnessed to soak up the main greenhouse gas carbon dioxide at a rate that could help slow global warming, scientists say. When carbon dioxide comes in contact with the rock, peridotite, the gas is converted into solid minerals such as calcite. Geologist Peter Kelemen and geochemist Juerg Matter said the naturally occurring process can be supercharged 1 million times to grow underground minerals that can permanently store 2 billion or more of …

Greenpeace: Greenpeace activists today prevented a palm oil shipment from departing for Europe from Dumai, Indonesia’s main palm oil export port, to protest against the ongoing destruction of Indonesia’s forests. Earlier, activists painted "Forest Crime" and "Climate Crime" on the hull of three palm oil tankers and a barge full of rainforest timber. One Greenpeace activist is chained onto the anchor chain of the Gran Couva that is carrying palm oil owned by the Wilmar group to stop it from …

Guardian: While the country was gripped by American election fever this week the government was trying to slip out the latest news on its sinking flagship initiative – eco-towns. As Chris Ames noted on Comment is free Gordon Brown’s eco-towns programme is slowly dying, but like so many of Labour’s pet projects it is being kept alive for political reasons. A statement and a series of documents released on Tuesday revealed that the government misled us all by previously releasing …