Articles by Stephen Leahy
We found 17 results.
Carbon Emissions on Tragic Trajectory
Stephen Leahy, IPS – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Nov 2013
Burning of fossil fuels added a record 36 billion tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere in 2013, locking in even more heating of the planet.
→ read full articleDoha Climate Summit Ends With No New CO2 Cuts or Funding
Stephen Leahy – Inter Press Service-IPS,
17 Dec 2012
The United Nations climate talks in Doha went a full extra 24 hours and ended without increased cuts in fossil fuel emissions and without financial commitments between 2013 and 2015. “This is an incredibly weak deal,” said Samantha Smith representing the Climate Action Network, a coalition of more than 700 civil society organisations.
→ read full articleLimited Liability – Nuclear Energy’s ‘Mother of all Subsidies’
Stephen Leahy – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 May 2012
The nuclear energy industry only exists thanks to what insurance experts call the “mother of all subsidies”, and the public is largely unaware that every nuclear power plant in the world has a strict cap on how much the industry might have to pay out in case of an accident. In Canada, this liability cap is an astonishingly low 75 million dollars. In India, it is 110 million dollars and in Britain 220 million dollars. If there is an accident, governments – i.e. the public – are on the hook for all costs exceeding those caps.
→ read full articleNo Magic Solutions for the Extinction of Species that Produce Our Air, Water and Water
Stephen Leahy – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Apr 2012
Is There a Middle Ground Between Economic Interests, Livelihoods and Conservation? An exclusive interview with Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias, executive secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.
→ read full articleExtreme Weather is the New Normal
Stephen Leahy – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Apr 2012
Extreme weather is fast becoming the new normal. Canada and much of the United States experienced summer temperatures during winter this year, confirming the findings of a new report on extreme weather.
→ read full articleREDD: The New Beast in the Forest Brings Hope and Threats to Indigenous Peoples
Stephen Leahy – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Apr 2012
Deforestation gobbles up an area the size of Greece (13 million hectares) every year. It also produces huge amounts of greenhouse gas emissions — a whopping 15 to 20 percent of all global emissions. In an attempt to reverse this, countries in the United Nations have agreed to create a financial value for the carbon stored in forests in a program called REDD: Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation. But “REDD will fail if forest peoples are kept out of the negotiations and if states do not ensure that our right to free, prior and informed consent is properly respected,” said Tauli-Corpuz, a member of the indigenous Kankana-ey Igorot community in the Philippines. That includes the right to say ‘no’.
→ read full articleToxic Electronic Waste Grows by 40 Million Tonnes a Year — Poisons Kids in Africa
Stephen Leahy – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Feb 2012
Mountains of hazardous waste grow by about 40 million tons every year. This waste, mostly from Europe and North America, is burned in developing countries like Ghana in a hazardous effort to recover valuable metals.
→ read full articleDraft Climate Deal Dubbed a “Death Sentence for Africa”
Stephen Leahy – Inter Press Service-IPS,
12 Dec 2011
No one is happy late Friday [9 Dec 2011] at the very contentious U.N. climate talks that went into extra time on Saturday. As the lights flicker on a rainy night here, the partial power failure echoes the failure of the multilateral process, according to civil society and some countries. “If countries agree to the text as it stands, they will be passing a death sentence on Africa,” said Nnnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends of the Earth International and a Nigerian activist.
→ read full articleRadical Change Needed at Durban Conference, Experts Say
Stephen Leahy – TerraViva Europe,
28 Nov 2011
Global leaders gather in Durban, South Africa [from Nov 28 to Dec 9, 2011] to determine how to cap global warming at two degrees Celsius. After 17 years of negotiations, the 193 nations in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) charged with developing a strategy have failed to curb the growth of carbon emissions. No one thinks that situation will change anytime soon. Radical changes needed:
→ read full articleChina, India, Brazil Doing More to Cut Carbon Emissions Than USA, Canada, Australia
Stephen Leahy – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Sep 2011
Negotiations over a new international climate agreement are on the brink as new analyses show that carbon emission reduction promises by industrialised nations are actually lower than those made by China, India, Brazil and other developing nations.
→ read full articleKeystone XL: A Pipeline to Europe?
Stephen Leahy, Tierramérica – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Sep 2011
The promoters of Keystone XL, a huge new oil pipeline from northern Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast, claim that it will reduce U.S. reliance on oil imports from unfriendly countries. But based on falling U.S. oil demand, the controversial Keystone XL pipeline may simply allow tar sands oil currently landlocked in Alberta, Canada to be exported to Europe, say U.S. and Canadian environmental activists.
→ read full articleClimate Change: Welcome to Bizarro World
Stephen Leahy – Inter Press Service-IPS,
15 Aug 2011
Canada and the United States are now the centre of Bizarro World. This is where leaders promise to reduce carbon emissions but ensure a new, supersized oil pipeline called Keystone XL is built, guaranteeing further expansion of the Alberta tar sands that produce the world’s most carbon-laden oil.
→ read full articleLimited Liability – Nuclear Energy’s ‘Mother of All Subsidies’
Stephen Leahy, International Environmental Journalist – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 May 2011
The nuclear energy industry only exists thanks to the “mother of all subsidies”. Every nuclear power plant in the world has a strict cap on how much the industry might have to pay out in case of an accident. Japan has the largest liability cap, of 1.2 billion dollars, but that is not nearly enough for the estimated 25 to 150 billion dollars in liability costs at Fukushima. No one knows when the reactors will finally be in cold shutdown. One report suggests decommissioning will take 30 years.
→ read full articleA Fatal Addiction to Plastic – Trashing the Oceans and Our Own Health
Stephen Leahy – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 May 2011
With 440 participants from 35 countries, including experts from governments, research institutes, corporations like the Coca-Cola Company, and plastics industry associations such as Plastics Europe and the American Chemistry Council, the conference was the first major international effort to tackle the issue in 11 years. The end result was the Honolulu Commitment, which invited everyone to work on “a global platform for the prevention, reduction and management of marine debris” called the Honolulu Strategy.
→ read full articleWho Controls the Nuclear Control Agencies?
Stephen Leahy – Inter Press Service-IPS,
28 Mar 2011
As Japan struggles to confront a nuclear disaster that could be the worst in history, it seems clear that any discussion about the safety of nuclear energy should address the independence of regulatory agencies.
→ read full articleBiodiversity at the Cliff’s Edge
Stephen Leahy – Inter Press Service-IPS,
25 Oct 2010
What nature gives us is often taken for granted, but if its basic elements disappear, human life on Earth would not be possible. The mission of the biodiversity summit under way in Nagoya is to reverse the headlong rush towards the precipice
→ read full articleBiodiversity: We Can Live Without Oil, but not Without Flora and Fauna
Stephen Leahy – IPS,
17 May 2010
The policies and deals that contributed to the massive oil spill under way in the Gulf of Mexico are also jeopardising the Earth’s vital biological infrastructure, according to the Global Biodiversity Outlook 3, published Monday [10 May 2010].
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