Agence France-Presse: Major airlines warned on Wednesday that failure to agree a global approach to emissions trading in climate change talks could hurt their industry by leading to increased taxes and regulation. "I think Copenhagen is very important for the airline industry, we must play our part," British Airways chief executive Willie Walsh said at a conference in Geneva, referring to the UN’s climate change talks in Copenhagen in December. "If we don’t see progress at Copenhagen, I think the …

Business Green: Tesco has today announced plans for a trial scheme that will effectively encourage customers to leave unwanted and excessive packaging at the check out. Mirroring the high profile Women’s Institute campaign launched back in 2005, which asked shoppers to leave packaging they regarded as unnecessary in store, the pilot scheme will be undertaken for six weeks at Tesco Extra stores in Guildford and Ilminster. Tesco said the trial would form part of a wider research project designed …

Detroit Free Press: Future federal fuel-economy standards would have to match the global-warming gas reductions of California’s controversial limits on cars and trucks under a draft energy and climate-change bill unveiled Monday by House Democrats. The bill, spearheaded by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., would also preserve California’s power to set new standards on vehicle emissions — a key contention for automakers and dealers pressing for a single national …

Reuters: Aviation leaders called on Monday for a global carbon emissions scheme for their industry, arguing that an emerging patchwork of regional and national systems could bring more, not less, environmental damage. The call, from airlines, plane and engine manufacturers, air traffic control organizations and airports, was twinned with a pledge to push ahead rapidly to achieve widespread use of biofuels on commercial flights. Delegates at a two-day "Aviation and Environment" …

Environmental Health Perspectives: As traditional petroleum supplies dwindled and prices soared over the past few years, oil companies have shifted their attention to oil sands, a mix of sand, water, and a heavy, viscous hydrocarbon called bitumen that can be converted to oil. With the plunge in oil prices in fall 2008, many producers began canceling or postponing plans to expand oil sands development projects, but this turn of events could yet reverse, as Canada’s vast oil sands deposits are lauded as a secure source of …

Guardian: London is less vulnerable to rising sea levels caused by global warming than experts realised, according to a new analysis. Experts at the Environment Agency said the Thames Barrier will protect the city for decades longer than engineers thought, with a six-year study revealing that the barrier’s original designs overestimated the threat from climate change. Rather than becoming obsolete by 2030, as its designers thought, the barrier will not need to be replaced until 2070, the …

Guardian: I was waiting with bated breath. Last week the Cato Institute — one of the scores of wildly rightwing lobby groups that masquerade as thinktanks in the US — circulated an ad that it intended to place in American newspapers. It was the same old rubbish, debunked a thousand times: We, the undersigned scientists, maintain that the case for alarm regarding climate change is grossly overstated … no net global warming for over a decade .. computer models failing to explain recent climate …

BBC: Labels showing products’ carbon footprints will not help tackle climate change, says Alex Kasterine. In this week’s Green Room, he argues that carbon labelling schemes will harm exports, especially from developing nations, without making much impact on emissions. Carbon labelling schemes have been developed in order to show how much carbon dioxide (CO2) has been emitted during the production, processing and transport of a product. Retail giant Tesco is trialling carbon labels …

SciDev.Net: A remote Chinese island is installing a power station that will harness the wind, sun and waves to produce energy and fresh water. Situated on Dangan Island in the South China Sea, the station should provide 80 per cent of the energy requirements of its 300 inhabitants. A desalination facility will provide 10,000 tons of water per year. "Before this, there were only [power stations] combining wind and solar [energy]," says You Yage, an ocean energy researcher at the Guangzhou …

BBC: There are already too many people living on Planet Earth, according to one of most influential science advisors in the US government. Nina Fedoroff told the BBC One Planet programme that humans had exceeded the Earth’s "limits of sustainability". Dr Fedoroff has been the science and technology advisor to the US secretary of state since 2007, initially working with Condoleezza Rice. Under the new Obama administration, she now advises Hillary Clinton. "We need to …