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Green Notes - 08 Jul 08

By Chinthana ⋅ July 8, 2008 ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

• The price of meat, milk and other British farm products will have to rise to reflect the environmental cost of producing them, a government study has concluded. Britain’s Cabinet Office released a sweeping report on the country’s food policy, and determined that Britons are wasting too much food.

A third of the food bought for home consumption is wasted – 6.7 million tonnes. Most of this could have been eaten. Wasting food costs the average UK family £420 a year. Eliminating the unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions that this wasted food produces would be equivalent to taking one in five cars off UK roads. By using 60% of food thrown away by households, enough energy could be generated to provide power for all the homes in Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Some of the key points highlighted in the report can be viewed here.

• Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said emphatically that India would not accept any targets that may be set by international bodies reducing its carbon emissions. Speaking at a press conference onboard a special Air India aircraft flying him to Japan for meetings on the margins of the G-8 summit, where climate change and curbing of carbon emissions are expected to be hot issues of debate, Dr. Singh said, “Our position has been made very clear.”
  Related: The G8 + 5 group brings major developing emitters like China and India into the fold, and the Major Economies Meeting (MEM), George  W. Bush’s brainchild, adds three other big carbon emitters—Indonesia, Australia and South Korea—into the mix. Together, the groups account for 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.
• A confidential World Bank report published by the London newspaper, the Guardian, has blamed production of biofuels for the global food crisis. According to the Wall Street Journal - “Without the increase in biofuels, global wheat and maize stocks would not have declined appreciably and price increases due to other factors would have been moderate,” says the report. The basket of food prices examined in the study rose by 140% between 2002 and this February. The report estimates that higher energy and fertiliser prices accounted for an increase of only 15%, while biofuels have been responsible for a 75% jump over that period,“. Reuters reports that “Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75 percent — far more than previously estimated — according to a confidential World Bank report published in a British newspaper on Friday.The assessment is based on a detailed analysis by Don Mitchell, an internationally respected economist at the Washington-based global financial body, the Guardian said.”
  Related:Grow more food instead of biofuels, World Bank head tells rich countries- The Telegraph
• According to several reports, Toyota’s next-generation Prius, due out next year, will have the option for solar panels on its roof. Japanese newspaper Nikkei and Reuters are reporting that Kyocera will provide the solar panels, which would be able to power part of the 2- to 5-kilowatt air conditioning system. Prius was first introduced in December 2007 in Japan, and by April 2008, the hybrid vehicle managed to pass the 1 million mark of units sold worldwide. In North America alone, Prius sold in over 591,000 units since it began selling in 2000. The car has now found owners in over 40 countries around the world.