Protecting the environment with intelligence
This week saw the death of one of the great scientific pioneers of modern environmentalism – F Sherwood Rowland, a Nobel Prize-winning chemist who, along with his student Mario Molina, identified the link between CFCs and ozone destruction and in doing so not only helped to alert the world to an environmental disaster but became [...]
What is the most environmentally destructive industry? After oil and gas, a strong contender has to be ‘Big Fluorine’, a collection of chemical companies that have profited, and continue to profit, from some of the most environmentally damaging technologies on the planet. From ozone destruction and climate change to toxic waste and dodgy carbon credits, [...]
As I write this, COP17, the international climate conference which began two weeks ago under a big storm cloud and torrential flooding, is about to enter the home stretch. The sense of surrealism I mentioned in an earlier post reached its apex today. Just to the right of the bench I’m on, an amateur pianist [...]
Durban was hot and steamy yesterday – it’s getting on for high summer in the Southern Hemisphere – and I spent the best part of the afternoon in a glorified prefab (aka the “EU Pavilion”). COP17 has been mercifully light on air conditioning, a huge relief after the two weeks spent shivering in Cancún last [...]
Last Sunday night, flash floods killed eight people in and around the city of Durban and left thousands homeless. Just one in a series of recent extreme weather events here in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal Province, it probably wouldn’t have crossed most people’s radar screen were it not for the fact that thousands of foreign delegates [...]
As regular visitors to this blog will be aware, as part of our Global Environment Campaign, EIA has been fighting an ongoing battle against the illegal trade in ozone depleting substances for many years now. An unfortunate – yet avoidable – consequence of the global phase out of first CFCs, and now HCFCs, black market [...]