News from around the planet today:
Disney goes green? The happiest company on Earth is planning to cut their greenhouse gas emissions in half over the next four years, but the Guardian’s Fred Pearce calls BS, asking: just how green can they be if they still rely on people travelling around the world to visit their resorts? The folks at Green Daily are also sceptical, doubting their ability to “cut 100% of their landfill waste” and noting the lack of timeframe put on the project.
On the other four-fingered hand, EcoSalon comes to Disney’s defence, noting their wildlife conservation area in Florida and the work done by their Worldwide Conservation Fund.
So is it just corporate greenwash in the face of a sinking stock price, or better than nothing?
The Terminator forms green army. Governator Ah-nuld is launching a ‘Green Corps’ in California, training at-risk young people for green jobs, like producing solar panels and producing wind turbines. A good work-for-the-dole idea for Australia?
Shell switch to biofuels. Oil giant Shell are dumping investment in wind and solar power to focus on biofuels, reports the IHT. Comments TreeHugger:
The thing that’s astounding in all that isn’t that Shell’s primary objective is making money for investors, nor that it may have difficulty developing wind and solar power at the moment. What boggles my mind is that despite all the evidence that biofuels show less promise than we once thought at reducing carbon emissions (for the most part, there are exceptions) and have a number of unintended land use consequences, that despite all the evidence that wind and solar will only take up a greater portion of our energy needs, that despite its own CEO saying that peak oil will be upon us within six years, Shell remains stuck in the past.
George Monbiot also questions Shell’s motives:
You’ll notice than in the newsletter he switches from “renewables” to “alternative energy and CO2 technologies”. Alternative energy is not necessarily renewable energy. The figure might include the cost of assessing the prospects of exploiting oil shales, for example – an extremely polluting fuel source, from which it takes a great deal of energy to extract liquid fuels.
… Shell is consolidating: has it stopped pretending to be anything other than a liquid fuel and gas company?
