Federal tax credits implemented to encourage solar energy development and use

After years of failed attempts, the U.S. Congress passed comprehensive energy legislation last summer. Spurred by record prices for oil, natural gas and coal, lawmakers developed a tax package of $14.5 billion, the bulk of the incentives targeting mature, traditional energy industries. Yet the solar industry was able to win the strongest federal provisions for solar in two decades: a 30 percent federal investment tax credit for residential and commercial installations. These new incentives have been implemented from the 1st of January 2006.

The existing 10 percent tax credit for commercial solar installations rises from 10 percent to 30 percent for two years, with no cap on the credit. The incentive applies to all property placed in service after Dec. 31, 2005, and before Jan. 1, 2008. It switches back to the permanent 10 percent credit thereafter.

The policy includes a 30 percent tax credit for residential solar installations for two years, capped at $2,000. It applies to all property placed in service after Dec. 31, 2005, and before Jan. 1, 2008

For more information on solar energy and solar panels visit Siemens Solar

Global Warming Force Islanders to Move Inland, Says UN

Rising seas have forced 100 people on a Pacific island to move to higher ground in what may be the first example of a village formally displaced because of modern global warming, a UN report said.

With coconut palms on the coast already standing in the water, inhabitants in Lateu settlements on Tegua island in Vanuatu started dismantling their wooden homes in August and moved about 600 meters inland.

“They no longer live on the coast,” Taito Nakalevu, a climate change expert at the secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Program (SPREP), said during a 189-nation conference in Montreal on ways to fight climate change.

So-called “king tides” often whipped up by cyclones, had become stronger in recent years and made Lateu uninhabitable by flooding the village four to five times a year.

“We are seeing king tides across the region flooding islands,” he said.

The UN Environment Program (UNEP) said in a statement that the Lateu settlement “has become one of, if not the first, to be formally moved out of harm’s way as a result of climate change.”

The scientific panel that advices the United Nations projects that seas could raise by almost a meter by 2100 because of melting icecaps and warming linked to a build-up of heat trapping gases emitted by burning fossil fuels in power plants, factories and autos.

Many other coastal communities are vulnerable to rising seas, such as th U.S city of New Orleans, the Italians city of Venice or settlements in the Arctic where a hawing of sea ice has exposed coasts to erosion by the waves.

Pacific islanders, many living on coral atolls, are among those most at risk. Off Papua New Guinea, about 2000 people on the Cantaret Islands are planning to move to near by Bougainville Island, a four hour boat ride to the south west.

Two inhabited Kiribati islands, Tebua Tarawa and Abenuea, disappeared underwater in 1999.

“In Tegua, the dwellings are moving first. The chief has moved, he has to start the process, so his people are now following,” Mr. Nakalevu said.

A church would also be dismantled and moved inland.

Mr. Nakalevu said the rising seas seemed linked to climate change.

It was unknown if the coral base of the island, about 31 square km, might be subsiding. Most villagers rely on yams, beans and other crops grown on higher grounds…

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is attempting to weaken the Clean Water Act’s pollution controls on selenium, a metal that in high doses has caused deformities and death in fish and waterfowl.
Numerous scientists with years of experience examining the impacts of selenium on fish, birds, and other wildlife–including the author of a key study that is the basis of the new regulation–believe the EPA made egregious errors when developing the proposed selenium limit. In addition, they worry that it will not be easily implemented and will ultimately fail to adequately protect the health of organisms that could be poisoned or even killed by unsafe levels of selenium in their food. More…

In Canada’s Manitoba province, clearcut logging, roadbuilding and industrial hydropower development have devastated the old-growth boreal forest habitat of the woodland caribou, cutting the provincial population of this majestic species in half in the span of just a few decades. Now numbering roughly 2,000 animals, Manitoba’s last remaining woodland caribou survive hard winters by feeding on abundant lichens in our Heart of the Boreal Forest BioGem and other boreal woodlands.

According to scientists, a dwindling caribou population serves as an alert that the health of other forest wildlife is in jeopardy as well. But despite warnings from federal and provincial endangered species committees about the impacts of habitat loss on woodland caribou, the Manitoba government still refuses to list woodland caribou as threatened under its Endangered Species Act. Please take action now to ensure the protection of this sensitive boreal species in Manitoba.

Human damage to Earth worsening fast-report
Reuters AlertNet, UK
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent. OSLO, March 30 (Reuters) – Humans are damaging the planet at an unprecedented rate and …

Earth’s health deteriorating, warns UN study
Hindu, India
London, March 23.(AP): Growing populations and expanding economic activity have strained the planet’s ecosystems over the past half century, a trend that …

Earth has suffered irreversible changes, study finds
ABC Online, Australia
A big scientific investigation into the impact of human activity on the natural environment has concluded that the damage is threatening the ability of the …

Eco changes threaten development
Aljazeera.net, Qatar
Nearly two-thirds the ecosystem services that support life on Earth are being degraded or used unsustainably, and the harmful consequences of this could grow …

Dim future for life on Earth – study
Edmonton Sun, Canada -
OTTAWA — Human activity is putting so much pressure on ecosystems that the survival of life on Earth cannot be taken for granted, says a UN study synthesizing …

Earth is at risk, scientists say
Kansas City Star, MO
WASHINGTON — We are using the Earth to improve our lives, but our children and grandchildren will live in a worsening environment that endangers their …

Deteriorating ecosystem endangers global development: report
Xinhua, China
TOKYO, March 30 (Xinhuanet) — The world’s ecosystem is facing growing degradation in the following 50 years, a trend that would put the realization of the …

Report on Global Ecosystems Calls for Radical Changes
Washington Post
By Shankar Vedantam. Many of the world’s ecosystems are in danger and might not support future generations unless radical measures …

Planet Earth on cusp of disaster, say leading scientists
New Zealand Herald, New Zealand
By Steve Connor. Planet Earth stands on the cusp of disaster and people should no longer take it for granted that their children …

What on Earth are we doing to our planet?
Scotsman, UK
HUMANS are damaging the planet at an unprecedented rate and increasing the risk of abrupt collapses in nature that could spur disease, deforestation or “dead …

‘It can no longer be deinied that ‘human influences” is the culprit in a damming assessment of the global health of our world. Its been reported around the nations of the world after the release of a commissioned UN report the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment program that we can no longer take it for granted that the earth will be sustainable in the very foreseeable future but will our nations policy makers have the will to make a significant attempt to alter the course of our doomed destiny.
Particularly when the United Nations is itself embarking on questionable enviromental strategys with its (E)mission creep
And don’t forget that worlds top polluter, the United States and Australia have turned its back on the 1997 Kyoto agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions 5.2 percent by 2012 on the grounds that it would be too costly .
Perhaps the only solution is affected peoples such as the Inuits of Alaska to take offending countries like the US to court for Human Rights Violations .If money is the cause of the richest nations reluctance to implement sustainable policys then a myriad of lawsuits just may make it viable for them.
It seems a human rights issues when a nation of people can no carry on their traditional culture and way of life because Global warming has significamtly changed their enviroment.

The Wall Street Journal, John J. Fialka and
Jeffrey Ball, 28 Mar 2005
Bipartisan coalition presses Bush to get behind oil-use reduction

Lambasting U.S. oil addiction: It’s not just for America-hating radical homosexual vegetarian Schiavo-killing eco-terrorists anymore! A growing bipartisan coalition is arguing that U.S. dependence on
foreign oil is a serious national security threat. Today, a letter signed by 26 former national-security officials from both Republican and Democratic administrations is winging its way to the White House, bearing a plea for President Bush to kick off “a major new initiative to curtail U.S. consumption.” “I don’t often find myself in agreement with those at the Natural Resources Defense Council, but … I do think there is common ground,” said neocon Frank Gaffney, a former Reagan administration official. The letter was organized by the
bipartisan Energy Future Coalition, which arose in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks to advocate for tighter fuel-economy standards and higher subsidies for alternative fuels. Auto-worker unions, automakers, and farming groups — traditional foes of environmental groups — are on board, perhaps more comfortable around the manly men of the national-security apparatus.See also grist.org

Critics question World Bank’s role as carbon trader, fossil-fuel funder
By Daphne Wysham
25 Mar 2005
For as long as it’s been around, the World Bank has been prone to mission creep. Since its founding 60 years ago, the World Bank has shifted its focus from rebuilding war-torn Europe to aiding developing countries. Now the organization is brokering deals in the fledgling carbon-trading market, some of which could harm the very people it’s supposed to help. At the same time, the bank continues to fund fossil-fuel extraction projects that create the emissions carbon trading is intended to fight. Of course, more carbon emissions mean more carbon-market profits … Daphne Wysham takes a look at the troublesome cycle Read More..
Why can’t they just invest in providing cheaper and better solar panels?

Sixteen years ago this week, the Exxon Valdez oil spilled 11 million gallons of oil in Alaska’s Prince William Sound and horrified Alaska and the world.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is running a special series on
the environmentally precarious state of modern oil-tanker transport.
Some key findings of its investigation: Post-Valdez initiatives
intended to reduce crew hours, require more tug escorts for tankers,
and crack down on alcohol use are all regularly dodged. Many West
Coast officials have been lobbying to loosen tug-escort rules meant
to help shepherd tankers safely to port. Also, even 16 years later,
Exxon still hasn’t double-hulled any of its Alaskan tankers. And
even modern double-hulled tankers are still vulnerable to spills thanks to human fallibility.
Interviews with crew members and internal company documents reveal serious safety lapses on vessels that are considered to be the best tankers in the world.

“…The stakes are very high. ConocoPhillips ships each carry nearly 38 million gallons of oil into some of Washington’s most delicate waters.Experts say a spill of just 1 million gallons in any portion of Western Washington’s waterway would be impossible to control and would devastate wildlife, fishing, commerce, tourism, ferry traffic and the daily enjoyment of the state’s most precious asset for months, perhaps years….”Read More..

Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Eric Nalder