Just last month, Walmart announced that it would be moving to eliminate non-biodegradable plastic bags from stores across the United States to reduce their collection in landfills. While they’ve demonstrated positive green initiatives, this week there’s been accusations of hypocrisy because they’ve been passing off a harmful, manufactured textile as sustainable.

Environmental advocates had been applauding Walmart for their plastic bag reduction goals and the installation of more energy-efficient systems. For example, coolers that only light up when a shopper’s presence is detected. So this new accusation from the Federal Trade Commission comes at a bad time.

Walmart, along with many other big box and chain stores across the United States, has been selling products as bamboo that are actually rayon. It is a textile shrouded in debate, because it contains cellulose that is naturally occurring. However, it does require an extensive manufacturing process to produce.

Regardless of whether rayon is natural or not; it’s definitely not bamboo. This labelling misleads consumers who think that they’re purchasing clothing and other home goods made from one of the most sustainable materials on the planet.

As we’ve seen a lot lately, proper regulation and disclosure is a common issue when it comes to things labelled green.

See the original version of the story at GlobalPost.com.

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David Rockefeller, Jr., a philanthropist, is sponsoring a year-long sailing trip around the Americas looking at environmental impacts on the oceans — from melting ice to fish farms. Here are his thoughts after stepping aboard the voyage for two weeks around Cape Horn.  The views expressed are his own.

For climbers, there is just one Everest.  For sailors, there is just one Cape Horn – the southernmost piece of the American Continents, and often the windiest, most treacherous place in all the oceans.

Eight of us voyagers recently sailed around “the Horn” on a boat called Ocean Watch.  We flew a billowing spinnaker with a graphic of the two American continents and a mainsail sporting our own expedition logo, “Around the Americas, 2009-2010.”  A flock of thirty albatross rode the surprisingly benign ocean swells.  Two breakfasting cruise ships gave scale to the forbidding cliffs.

Ten years ago I sat on the Pew Ocean Commission and learned in startling detail that our boundless seas had become imperiled by the careless behavior of a rapidly expanding human population and its post-industrial habits of taking, making and disposing.

As a result, I determined to do something to let other sailors know what I had learned: for example, that hyper-efficient fishing vessels had removed 90 percent of the large fish from the world’s oceans in just fifty years.

I created Sailors for the Sea, a non-profit organization designed to turn recreational boaters into Ocean Stewards.  Then, four years ago in the port of Naples, Italy – Mark Schrader, David Treadway and I (all members of the crew that just rounded Cape Horn) came up with an idea to circumnavigate the two American continents by sail and draw attention to the serious health challenges faced by the world’s oceans.

In partnership with Seattle’s Pacific Science Center we would call the expedition “Around the Americas.”  We are making fifty stops along the way, meeting with and listening to fishermen, scientists, schoolchildren and public officials at each stop.  We’re conducting scientific experiments on board – measuring water temperature, salinity and acidity – and telling our story at Yacht Clubs and Museums.

Ocean Watch left Seattle, Washington, under the command of Captain Mark Schrader on May 31st of last year.  It made its way through the shifting sea ice of the Northwest Passage, gales west of Greenland, adverse ocean currents off the coast of Brazil, and finally arrived at the southernmost tip of Patagonia, Chile, where the crew waited out a twenty-four hour gale before rounding Cape Horn.

So what have we learned?  The sea ice is melting, and ships are making it through Arctic waters as never before. Farmed fish have now surpassed wild caught fish as a source of human protein.  Cruise ships have become the tour buses of the sea.  CO2, when it descends into the sea in great amounts, can threaten the viability of corals, shellfish and – indeed – the entire web of ocean life.

As Ocean Watch now begins its passage north from Cape Horn to Seattle, we have many stories to tell: of bravery, of natural wonders and dramatic weather; but also of  an ocean in trouble.  Watch this space, Mate, I will be writing pieces about fish farms and what observations  are telling us about the health of our seas.

Photos show the view from the Ocean Watch as it sails around Cape Horn on Jan 24, 2010. Image below shows Captain Mark Schrader. REUTERS/Handout/David Thoreson

- Luuk van der Wielen is at BE-Basic and Delft University of Technology; Roger Wyse is Managing Director, Burrill & Company, San Francisco. The opinions expressed are their own.-

Today the global megatrends of food security, energy security, global climate change and sustainability command the attention of nations worldwide.  Confronting these challenges will test political systems, drive policy and stress international relations.

To address them successfully, nations and companies are making massive investments in R&D, seeking solutions that will drive global innovation for decades.  The application of modern discoveries in biology and biocleantechnology will be a major enabling force to address these issues.

Indeed, the application of bio-clean technology can potentially mitigate many of Europe’s ecological and economic challenges.  The markets for bio-based (or green) products and technologies made from agricultural waste -- instead of oil -- are currently large and open.

However, the public and private sector must act now otherwise we will miss a huge opportunity to generate economic value and delay will only worsen our environmental predicament.  Access to innovation must be global in nature as no country has the resources necessary to discover, develop, and implement solutions.  Furthermore, the problem and therefore the solution knows no national boundaries.

The Netherlands are a first-class example of how bio-clean technology can and should drive a new wave of innovation.

Much of the Dutch economy is founded on the immediate post-Second World War industrial wave that brought the likes of Shell, DSM, Phillips and Unilever to global prominence.  In recent decades, the economy consolidated with competitive and entrepreneurial potential under-utilised.

A new wave of industrial innovation for the country is now badly needed to tackle the rise of the BRIC-economies (Brazil, Russia, India and China), the recent financial down-turn, not to mention the vulnerable, climate-sensitive Dutch delta region (with about 50 percent of the country below the rising sea level) which will be affected by the consequences of energy security and climate change.

Bio-clean technology can power that new wave of innovation.  The Netherlands have consistently worked to implement a number of national public-private innovation programmes around the topic of bio-based and other clean technologies that are now starting to pay off in a major way, and within which there will be attractive near- to mid-term private-sector investment opportunities.

Earlier this month, a new wave of public-private R&D investments exceeding 0.5 billion euros was launched, including:

*       large-scale initiatives on industrial biotechnology and biorenewables (BE-Basic),
*       direct solar to chemicals and energy production (Biosolar),
*       process intensification, carbon capture and storage (CATO) and others.

This large package of bio-clean technology also forms the backbone of the recently awarded CLIMATE KIC by the European Institute of Technology.

The participants in the Netherlands’ public-private programmes include major Dutch companies (DSM, AKZO Nobel) and Universities (Delft University of Technology as well as Groningen, Utrecht and Wageningen Universities) and also other premier European academic institutes such as London’s Imperial College, the German technical universities of Dortmund and Karlruhe, and also a number of institutions outside Europe such as the Energy Bioscience Institute of UC Berkeley.

An important driver is the potential to establish a sustainable bio-based economy for the production of chemicals, materials and transportation fuels.  This could also add further value to the residues of a food producing agricultural sector.  We are well on our way to converting biomass into a range of renewable chemical and materials.

Applications of biotechnology in the chemical and energy industries are already resulting in sustainable sources of second generation biofuels, biocatalysts and renewable chemicals, meeting the growing demand for energy and renewable materials.

Thus, bio and clean technologies will be major contributors to addressing the challenges posed by the global megatrends of food security, energy security, climate change, and sustainability.  With the continued success of these technologies, exciting investment opportunities exist within and across the agricultural, chemical and energy sectors.

Prudent investments in technology-rich, private companies that contribute viable solutions should generate attractive returns to venture investors while addressing important societal issues.

This requires investments in companies at two stages;

*       early on, in companies with potentially disruptive or broadly applicable technologies, and,
*       later on, in the adaption and commercialization of proven technologies for new markets.

Companies invested in this way will be well positioned to succeed in global markets and be attractive acquisition targets for global chemical, energy and agricultural companies or for IPOs in ready markets throughout the world.  At present, Northern Europe is a most promising place for these governmental and private investments given the solid home market with a clear consumer awareness about sustainability and resource security, a world class R&D potential, and a well established industry and logistic infrastructure, that needs to be reshaped toward the challenges of the future generation.

However, two key challenges lie in the way of us realising this vision.

First, Europe needs to better connect the flow of scientific and technological concepts from the large pool of sustainable bioclean technology initiatives into the generation of new companies, jobs and economic growth. Given the substantial amount of public resources in these programmes, novel mechanisms will have to be implemented to guarantee clear returns to the public purse.

The second challenge is to stimulate activities that also lead to climate adaptation (most bioclean tech programs target mitigation only).  This is crucial, for instance, for the Netherlands given that 50 percent of its land is below the rising sea-level.

The well known Dutch expertise in water and delta management -- much of which was developed at Delft University of Technology -- has to be advanced further.  Interesting examples have arisen, for instance, in the BE-Basic program from the exploration of biogrouting,  bioconstruction materials and other completely new bio-based mechanisms leading to new ways to build dikes and enforce weak soils.

If we can surmount these twin challenges, and by harnessing the major biocleantech innovation wave, the prize for Europe will be not only positive climate effects and energy security but the foundation-stone for a new generation of sustainable, economic growth.

If the scientific evidence for manmade global warming is so compelling, why do so many people still have their doubts?

Why do politicians and the media often discuss global warming with such certainty, ignoring the scientists' carefully worded caveats?

And how much harder will it be to persuade the sceptics after the uproar over whether scientists exaggerated unreliable evidence or colluded to withhold information to strengthen their case?

Those tricky questions were raised at a sometimes fractious news conference in London to discuss the future of climate science.

Three leading British scientists told reporters the science behind anthropogenic global warming was "overwhelming", but admitted they are struggling to get their message across to a sometimes doubtful public.

"We have a very confused public out there about climate change and science," said Julia Slingo, chief scientist at the Met Office. "We've got a real issue about communicating science in a very clear way that different levels of the public can understand. "

The problem, the panel suggested, lies not in the raw data but in how the information becomes garbled between the researchers and the public.

The executive summaries of lengthy scientific reports that are presented to politicians tend to iron out the experts' nuances and uncertainties. Media reports can then further simplify and exaggerate the evidence, the panel said.

"Uncertainty tends to get lost in the headline," said Professor Sir Brian Hoskins, Director, Grantham Institute for Climate Change, Imperial College London.

Confusion over the difference between long-term climate patterns and short-term weather has further muddied the waters, they said. If parts of the world had a particularly cold winter or a rainy summer, why should anyone believe the evidence behind manmade global warming, doubters ask.

That sort of confusion can only be addressed by getting basic scientific messages across to the public more clearly, Slingo added.

"(We must) expose the fundamental science behind climate change, which is very robust actually," she said.

The scientists said they must also regain the public's trust after damaging headlines about hacked emails from the University of East Anglia's climate research unit and the reliability of evidence used by the United Nation's climate change body in its key report on the topic.

Hoskins said the IPCC's mistaken claim that the Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035 should not be allowed to undermine the  rest of the U.N. panel's work or the broader evidence for climate change.

"Just because you have a miscarriage of justice, it doesn't mean you throw away the whole legal system," Hoskins told the briefing at the Science Media Centre, part of the historic Royal Institution, the world's oldest independent research body.

The questions grew tougher when none of the panel members agreed to discuss the leaked email row, dubbed "Climategate". One reporter from a national newspaper said the scientists had failed to explain why internet forums are full of people who just don't believe the science behind manmade global warming.

“Call me naïve, but I came here today expecting a confident fightback from climate science and I haven’t heard that," the reporter said. "You are not addressing head on and robustly the issue of perception in the way you need to do."

The panellists refused to budge, however. They would not talk about the leaked emails until an inquiry reports its findings.

They also refused to say if the IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri should resign over the glacier claim.

They wanted to stick firmly to the science and said they would always be willing to examine any credible evidence from climate change sceptics.

"I'm sorry if you feel it is not adequate, but it is where the scientific community has to be. We just simply have to do the research and bring the scientific evidence to the table," said Professor Alan Thorpe, a climate scientist who is also chief executive of the Natural Environment Research Council.

Chinese solar power companies have shone amid the downturn in the solar industry,  converting their low cost advantage into bigger market share and profits.

Now, China’s Yingli Green Energy Holding Co Ltd is making a play to raise its global profile.  It’s taking its solar panels to the world’s biggest sporting event, the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, and has signed up to help sponsor the event.

The news makes Yingli the first renewable energy company to sponsor the World Cup — where the world’s best football (or soccer for U.S. fans) teams compete —  as well as the first Chinese company to seal a global sponsorship deal with FIFA, the world’s governing body for football.

(The Wold Cup this year, coincidentally, is in South Africa, which announced last year government support for solar akin to solar incentives in Germany, the world’s largest market.)

The move reflects Yingli’s desire to increase its brand awareness. And that could pay off, Piper Jaffray analyst Jesse Pichel says.

“With a minimal investment, (Yingli) will be able to leverage the FIFA marketing machine, the Yingli brand will catch millions of viewers’ eyes, sitting side by side with the most powerful consumer brands in the world like Coca Cola, Adidas, and Sony, and (Yingli) will further improve its bankability,” Pichel said in a note.

Some solar power companies — such as Silicon Valley-based SunPower Corp — already have branding and marketing campaigns targeted at consumers.

We were wondering whether readers think Yingli’s move with the World Cup will push more solar players into the marketing field, and how key will that be in an industry that wants to drive down costs?

(Photo credit: Indonesian Football Association chief Nurdin Halid gestures beside the FIFA World Cup trophy in Jakarta. The trophy arrived in Jakarta in January as part of its world tour. Photo credit: Crack Palinggi / Reuters) 

Nicky Loh presents a series of time-lapse sequences of a solar power plant in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.

Asia's Largest Solar Power Plant in Kaohsiung, Taiwan from Nicky Loh on Vimeo.

The first time lapse sequence was shot over a period of one hour at 1 frame every two seconds on a lens baby. I chose to use still photography to capture the time lapse over video as the movement of the panels was so small that a continuous one hour raw video file on the 5D MKII would have crashed my computer.

The second time lapse sequence featuring the overview of Kaohsiung City, used to illustrate a city gaining electricity, was shot over a 3 hour period, at 1 frame every 4 seconds, from inside a hotel with an overview of the city. Because the hotel room lights reflect on the glass panel of the hotel room window which I shot through, I had to sit in the dark for nearly two hours for the camera to finish snapping.

- Juliet Davenport is founder and CEO of Good Energy, a renewable electricity supplier. She is unique in being the only female founder in the UK of an energy supply business, traditionally a male-dominated sector. The opinions expressed are her own. Reuters will host a "follow-the-sun" live blog on Monday, March 8, 2009, International Women's Day. Please tune in. -

Regardless of their views on climate change and man’s contribution to it, most business leaders agree on one point – as fossil fuels get scarcer and the UK decarbonises our economy, our energy prices will continue to rise.

The UK’s recent cold snap gave us a foretaste of what we could be in for – with some businesses having their gas supplies cut to relieve pressure on pipelines - although it appears that the widely reported claim that the UK had just eight days’ gas supply left was political bluster and scaremongering.

The Department of Business, Energy and Regulatory Reform’s 2008 Energy Markets Outlook projects that the UK could rely on imports for 80 percent of its gas needs by 2020, with huge implications for cost and energy security – and that income pouring out of the country.  And the International Energy Association forecasts serious energy "crunches" occurring within the next 10 years.

As all effective CEOs know, good business isn’t just about keeping your costs down, it’s about forecasting your costs with a degree of certainty.

When it comes to energy, investing in decentralised renewable generation doesn’t just give businesses good environmental credentials – increasingly important for today’s consumers – but control over their energy costs, with accompanying financial and competitive benefits.

Such investments - where the fuel, be it wind, sunshine, biomass or water, is effectively free - can enable a firm to set its energy prices with relative certainty for the next 20 years, providing an effective hedge against the unpredictable gas and electricity markets.

So, it’s not surprising then that the UK’s more enlightened and forward thinking businesses are taking steps now to safeguard their future energy security, by investing in their own renewable generation capacity.

BT is a prime example: its wind farm initiative, Wind for change, claims to be the UK’s biggest corporate green energy project outside the energy sector. It’s aiming to meet a quarter of its very large electricity needs from renewables by 2016 – that’d be enough to power 122,000 homes.

But it isn’t just the big behemoths that are sitting up and taking notice. Among Good Energy’s community of over 1000 independent generators are several small businesses who recognise that generating their own power makes sound commercial sense.

For example, Mackie’s, an ice cream manufacturer based in Aberdeenshire, has three wind turbines generating 7,500 MWh a year – the equivalent to powering 2,000 homes.  This powers their factory and provides them with an additional income from their land for power that they export.

And what is good business sense, is good for the economy too. We’ve been hearing lots lately about how the green sector is going to lead the UK out of recession.

A recent report from the Renewable Energy Association strengthens the case for green economic investment by crunching some numbers – it forecasts that by 2020 the UK’s trade balance could benefit to the tune of 12.6 billion pounds a year simply by implementing better energy efficiency and investment in renewables.

Worth thinking about?  Rather than British Steel or British Coal – we should start thinking about British Wind and British Sun as a future resource base for the UK – it’s a shame to waste cash from UK industry on someone else’s oil and gas.

This article by Paul Ames originally appeared in GlobalPost.

The terrace of the elegant 18th-century chateau offers views over the formal French garden and fields filled with neat rows of vines.

This idyllic scene could be reminiscent of Bordeaux or the Cotes du Rhone … were it not for all the snow.

Wijnkasteel Genoels-Elderen is the biggest and best-known vineyard in Belgium. It is one of a growing number of wineries taking root in parts of northern Europe once considered too chilly to produce drinkable wine.

“We can compare this region with the Champagne region or Burgundy, or the Chablis,” said Belgian winemaker Joyce Kekko-van Rennes. “If you are in period of warming, we are in a fantastic place for winemaking.”

The extent to which global warming has encouraged the expansion of winemaking in northern lands better known for their beer is up for debate.

There is no doubt, however, that it was perfectly possible to toast the arrival of 2010 with some very drinkable English bubbly, Dutch riesling or even Swedish chardonnay.

“In less than a generation, English wine has gone from being a joke to a serious investment prospect,” wrote The Financial Times’ wine critic Janice Robinson.

A 2006 report by a group of U.S. scientists found that average growing season temperatures in 27 of the world’s top wine regions rose by 1.3 percent in second half of the 20th century, with warming well over 2 percent in parts of France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and the U.S. west Coast.

In most cases the warming has had a positive impact on wine quality, the study concludes, but it warned that accelerated temperature changes over the next 50 years could wipe out production in parts of Spain, Italy or Australia while boosting grape growing further north.

“It is getting hotter around the Mediterranean, and that’s not good for wine production,” said Ingrid Dahlberg, owner of the Wannborga vineyard on Sweden’s Oland Island, who is working with experts from Spain to develop production from her 5,000 vines.

Recent temperature changes may be helping the northern vintners, but they are quick to point out that wine production there is nothing new. Dahlberg said Bronze Age Scandinavians were growing grapes more than a thousand years before she and her husband started planting vines in 2001.

“The area here used to be a wine region since the Romans, who knew that it was good for vines,” said Kekko-van Rennes during a tour of her vineyard close to the Dutch border in eastern Belgium.

“It all stopped at the time of Napoleon who wanted to protect his wines from competition and made all the vineyards here disappear … . He had them burned or taken out.”

Kekko-van Rennes’ parents were fascinated to discover the wine-making past of the chateau in 1990. They toyed with the idea of planting some vines for fun but after consulting a French expert decided to set up a commercial vineyard, planting the traditional Burgundy grapes chardonnay and pinot noir. Daughter Joyce headed to France to learn the art of winemaking.

Today they have 20 hectares producing 100,000 bottles of red, white and sparking wines, picking up international prizes and earning a place on the wine lists of some of the top restaurants in Belgium and even in the hallowed wine cellar of the Tour d’Argent in Paris.

Belgium now has four French-style appellation d’origine controlee wine regions to ensure quality control. The system was introduced in the late 1990s after an adventurous merchant sought to pass off cheap German and Chilean imports as Belgian wines to profit from the growing interest, and rising prices, of indigenous tipples, causing a scandal.

Of course, the northerners still have a way to go before they start to rival some of the more established wine growers.

Denmark produces about 75,000 bottles a year, Sweden 92,000 bottles a year and England an impressive 2 million. However they represent a drop in the ocean compared to the about 8 billion produced by both France and Italy.

In the rolling countryside of Belgium’s Haspengouw region, Joyce Kekko-van Rennes said the Wijnkasteel Genoels-Elderen is increasing its acreage to meet effervescent demand. She insisted however that they are in no hurry for any increase in the temperature to boost production.

“A normal average year here is perfect for winemaking,” she said over a glass of 2006 chardonnay. “The really hot years we’ve had like 2003 were too extreme for us, so global warming can stop right here, it’s more than enough.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with a reference to the 2006 report on temperature changes in winemaking regions.

More from GlobalPost.com:

Why China’s wine will not soon rival Chile’s

In Australia, green wine is good

A glass of wine with your samosa?

In Bordeaux, a glass half-empty

Photo: A wine selector tastes red wine from the latest vintage at Bonini winery’s wine-cellar in the village of Brestovitsa, about 150km (93miles) east of the capital Sofia, December 8, 2009.  REUTERS/Oleg Popov

We’re told that President Obama is getting ready to propose a tripling of government loan guarantees for new nuclear reactors to the tune of more than $54 billion.

The move is likely to win over Republicans who want to see nuclear power playing a larger role in a climate bill for the country. Another group of Senators earlier this week said they would support a comprehensive climate bill based on Obama’s State of the Union speech that opened the possibilities of nuclear expansion.

Certainly, the Nuclear Energy Institute would agree the technology is the United States’ largest source of clean-air, carbon-free electricity, producing no greenhouse gases or air pollutants.

The problem, of course, there’s no such thing as a small nuclear accident, and what are we supposed to do with all that radioactive waste, argue opponents.

More than two decades following the accident at Chernobyl, discoveries are still being made of horrific carcinogenic aftereffects.

And many Americans still remember the Three Mile Island accident of 1979, in Goldsboro, Pennsylvania, with memories awakened just last year with a non-threatening leak of radiation.

Staunch opponents of nuclear technology, including Greenpeace, say it is an expensive diversion from the task of developing and deploying renewable energy.  They point to geothermal as one safe and viable alternative required for a low carbon future.

Friends of the Earth president Erich Pica said it’s disheartening. “President Obama’s support for all these dirty energy sources was a big win for corporate polluters and their Washington lobbyists, but it was a kick in the gut to environmentalists across the country.”

What do you think? Is this the way to go?

File photo shows a view of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant from Goldsboro, Pennsylvania, March 22, 1999. REUTERS/

This commentary by Stephan Faris originally appeared in GlobalPost. The views expressed are his own.

Most people wouldn’t consider an earthquake to be an environmental issue. But while the tremors that shattered Haiti early this month have nothing to do with the island’s degradation, the extent of the suffering they unleashed is a direct result of the country’s ecological woes.

The reason can be seen from the sky. The devastated nation shares its island with the Dominican Republic, but misfortune always seems to strike on its side of a border that is demarcated by an abrupt shift from lush green to bare brown. While the Dominican Republic has largely managed to preserve its trees, Haiti has lost 98 percent of its forest cover.

In 2004, Hurricane Jeanne struck the Dominican Republic, and killed 18 people. In Haiti, where the storm didn’t even make landfall, more than 3,000 lives were lost under floodwater and mudslides. Deforestation had left the slopes too weak to be able to retain the downpour. But while some of the extra body count can be attributed to barren hillsides giving way, the true cause goes deeper. The country’s environmental troubles have become entangled in its economic and political problems, making all of them harder to fix.

It’s no coincidence that Haiti is both the poorest country in the western hemisphere and the most environmentally devastated. Decades of poverty, population growth and near anarchy have stripped the countryside of its forests and split farms into small, infertile plots. “What you see in Port-au-Prince — the concentration of people in the slums, which creates violence, which creates disease — it’s because the people cannot produce more in the countryside,” Max Antoine, executive director of Haiti’s Presidential Commission on Border Development, told me when I visited the country in 2007.

If deforestation has made the country poor, the resulting destitution exasperates the environmental degradation. Forests disappear. The slopes lose their soil. Farm land slips away. Entire villages disappear under mudslides. Roads and bridges are wiped away. The slums continue to swell. The country sinks deeper into poverty. Pressed to survive, another farmer chops down another tree to sell in the city as charcoal. “It’s not a vicious circle,” said Philippe Mathieu, the Haiti director for the Canadian charity Oxfam-Quebec. “It is a spiral. Each time you make a turn, you have less space.”

This month’s tragedy showed how tight that space has become. On Sunday, the official death toll climbed to 150,000, and the government suspects the figure could double. Many lost lives could have been avoided if buildings in the capital had been built to withstand earthquakes. Many others could have been saved if systems for emergency response and medical care had been in place. As a point of comparison: In 1989, an earthquake of exactly the same strength struck San Francisco at almost exactly the same time of day. The death toll was 63.

But unlike San Francisco, Port-au-Prince doesn’t have building codes. And if it did, its residents couldn’t afford to comply; most concrete blocks in the capital are handmade, with cheap, light materials. Even the buildings built by the United Nations couldn’t withstand the quake. As for coordinating an emergency response, Haiti wasn’t able to maintain much of a police force — never mind staffing a system of first responders or supporting a strong medical infrastructure. So when the earthquake struck, the residents of the capital were left pretty much on their own.

The way that Haiti’s challenges have interlocked has made them particularly difficult to overcome. The country has tree-planting programs, but they haven’t been able to keep up with the rate of deforestation; nor are they likely to as long as the poor depend on the charcoal trade for their income. Even before the earthquake, Haiti’s government was unable even to keep order on the streets of the capital. It’s no surprise that it couldn’t solve two seemingly intractable problems at once.

As the rescue effort in Port-au-Prince wraps up, the focus is turning to rebuilding the country. There’s talk of reconstructing its agriculture, its educational system, its housing, its infrastructure. The effort is expected to cost billions of dollars. It’s also expected to take decades. That’s enough time to grow some trees.

Stephan Faris is GlobalPost’s environmental columnist. This article is based, in part, on his book, “Forecast: The Surprising — and Immediate — Consequences of Climate Change,” which was published in paperback in September.

More from GlobalPost:

Haiti’s earthquake creates long-lasting environmental issues

Opinion: Haiti’s cycle of disaster

Haiti: Help with money, not stuff

Haiti’s roller-coaster public image

Haiti: A long survival story

(People stand next to a tent at a makeshift camp in Port-au-Prince January 26, 2010.  REUTERS/Carlos Barria)

U.S. billionaire Ted Turner is taking a shine to solar power — again.

Back in 2007, Turner sold solar developer Turner Renewable Energy to solar panel maker First Solar for $34.4 million — which has since ramped up its push into developing its own solar power projects.

Now Turner is teaming up with Atlanta-based utility Southern Company to develop renewable energy in the United States. To start, they will focus on large-scale solar farms in the U.S. Southwest, where solar development is already heating up in states like California and Arizona.

Some of the projects could end up on Turner’s land. He is the largest individual land owner in North America with more than two million acres.  

The move could expand the reach of Southern Company, which serves customers in Georgia, Mississippi and Florida and has more than 42 gigawatts of generating capacity.

(Photo: Philanthropist Ted Turner speaks during a panel discussion at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York in September 2009. Photo credit: Chip East / Reuters)

Hopes are fading that a climate bill to cap and price greenhouse gases will make it into law. But the fight is far from over.

Topping the list of supporters of some form of the bill is President Obama. In his first State of the Union address, he focused on the bill’s potential to fuel a domestic clean tech industry lush with jobs, and said he still supported the bipartisan effort on the climate and energy bill, which would incorporate energy policies favored by Republicans.

(See also: Obama sticks to climate before divided Congress and Obama supports climate bill, but how clean will it be? )

On Thursday, echoes of commitment came from a group of senators including John Kerry, who  said they were looking at possible alternatives to the cap-and-trade plan for reducing carbon dioxide emissions. “People need to relax and look at all the ways you might price carbon. We’re not pinned down to one approach,” Kerry told Reuters.

Senator Lindsey Graham supplied Climate Progress with their quote of the week: “The idea of not pricing carbon, in my view, means you’re not serious about energy independence. The odd thing is you’ll never have energy independence until you clean up the air, and you’ll never clean up the air until you price carbon.”

And the New York Times last week published their editorial on the case for a climate bill, weighing in favor of the cap and trade system. “The only sure way to unlock the investments required to transform the way the country produces and delivers energy is to put a price on carbon.”

Of course, there are vocal opponents .

Business executives and policy officials at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, said a U.S. cap and trade scheme must give way to a clean energy law. Tom Donahue, President of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said: “We are in search of a solid domestic bill, whether its cap and trade or cap and carbon tax or however these things are put together. We just don’t want a bill like the one that came out of the House.”

Just last week, Senator Byron Dorgan, told reporters in a telephone conference call he doubted the Senate would pass climate change legislation this year after going through the contentious health care debate.

What do you think? Does the bill in its current format stand a chance?

Failure to agree a successor to the Kyoto protocol would lead to countries pursuing their own objectives and expose world economies to protectionism, CEO of business software company SAP Léo Apotheker said while in Davos to attend the World Economic Forum.

"Copenhagen was supposed to be the big successor of Kyoto but, as we all know, it was not a big success," Apotheker said. "I felt already at Copenhagen that this was midnight. Now it is probably already a minute past midnight and we cannot afford yet another failure."

"The danger of not coming to an agreement is that many countries will go on a unilateral path to achieve their own objectives at which point in time we might fall into protectionism," Apotheker added. This situation, combined with the effects of climate change, would be a "double whammy disaster."

Apotheker went on to say that regulation within a global framework was needed before the Kyoto agreement runs out. Watch the video clip at the top of the page for more.

Apotheker also said that SAP had reduced its carbon footprint by 15 percent by adopting responsible business practices and embracing the need to adapt. "This, by the way, saved us 80 million euros so it's good for business and it's easy to do," he said.

In the video clip below Apotheker calls for businesses to move their agenda forward and do what world leaders were not able to do in Copenhagen -- "take their responsibilities seriously."

In the next video clip Apotheker talks about the carbon targets he has set for SAP.

In this final clip, Apotheker discusses the need to agree a price on carbon and why a cap and trade system is an effective way to control emissions.

It may have contributed less than any other continent to CO2 emissions, but Africa is on the front line when it comes to the impact of climate change.

Just ask Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete.

"It is a threat for us," he told a panel at the World Economic Forum.  "On Kilimanjaro the snow is fast disappearing, sea levels are rising -- we have one island that has already been submerged -- and we've towns around the coast where we have to incur huge costs of adaptation to erect walls."

In theory, Africa is also in a strong position, given its virgin forests that represent one of the world's great carbon sinks. But setting up workable offset-trading schemes is easier said than done.  "I can assure you, it is so difficult to access these facilities," Kikwete said.

Reuters photo: A truck passes Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania's Hie district

(Reuters) – Several countries have introduced subsidies or incentives to encourage clean energy production, such as feed-in tariffs or green certificates. Listed below are countries which have established renewable energy targets from 2013 to 2020.

Source: Reuters, Renewable Energy Policy network (www.ren21.net)
(1) See individual EU member state targets here
http://ec.europa.eu/energy/renewables/ta rgets_en.htm)
(2) The Japan target may be subject to change as the Japanese government
plans to submit Climate Change Law to parliament in coming months
(3) In pending climate change legislation, the United States has proposed a
target of 15 pct by 2020. Twenty-nine out of 50 U.S. states have set targets for
minimum amounts of electricity generation from renewable sources, while another
five states have voluntary goals.
(Compiled by Nina Chestney; Editing by Sara Ledwith)