Climate At APEC Summit - Technology blahblahblah Clean Coal blahblahblah

[hatrack]

EDIT

APEC members account for nearly half of the world's global trade and include some of its top polluting nations – the US and China – as well as major energy suppliers such as Canada and Australia.

In the draft statement, the group "encouraged member countries to transition to low-carbon energy systems and called for rapid transfer of low-carbon technologies to lower-income economies." They also asked APEC energy ministers to assess how the group could promote cleaner energy and address climate change in 2007.

EDIT

In Hanoi, Mr Howard has pressed his case for a six-nation alliance of the world's biggest polluters – China, India, the United States, Australia, South Korea and Japan – to promote new technologies to tackle climate change. Howard said he and Chinese President Hu Jintao agreed during their talks to establish a joint working group on clean coal technology.

The Australian leader also won support from US President George W. Bush. "John has got some very strong ideas about the use of technologies to enable countries like our own and the rest of the world to be able to grow, and at the same time, protect the environment," Mr Bush said. "I share those views," Bush said, pointing to his Government's funding of research on alternative fuels and clean coal technology.

EDIT/END

http://www.news.com.au/sundaytelegraph/story/0,,20782711-5001028,00.html

[YankeyMCC]

1. Ugg...

I must admit I know little to nothing about Australian politics but the more I read about Mr Howard the more he appears to be in the exact same mold as * . At least we're not alone in having a incompetent, destructive head of state. Cold comfort indeed.

[hatrack]

2. He's a somewhat more intelligent Bush

Same arrogance, same swagger, same Bible-thumpiness - or so say my friends in Australia.

[YankeyMCC]

3. "somewhat more intelligent bush"

Well that's not much of a bar to hurdle now is it? lol

[hatrack]

4. Yes, it is rather like challenging someone to leap a phone book from a standing start

:eyes:

[sam sarrha]

5. clean coal is a scam, they get BIG TAX CUTS for spraying water in it.. to make it clean.. no shit..

they add a minuscule amount of resin to the water and call it clean coal.. and make billions of which we have to pay in increased taxes.. and there is no proof what so ever it works

[IDemo]

6. Regardless of how cleanly they burn it, coal extraction is truly filthy

Mountaintop coal removal in West Virginia (first picture below) and coalbed methane wells in the mountain west (second picture) and elsewhere are wreaking ecological catastrophe. West Virginians are witnessing, sometimes from their own front porches, the leveling of the hills that are part of the heritage of their state. Along with the destruction of vegetation and wildlife habitat, water tables vital for human drinking water are being dried up and/or poisoned by the runoff, and “The impact of mountaintop removal on nearby communities is devastating. Dynamite blasts needed to splinter rock strata are so strong they crack the foundations and walls of houses."

In Wyoming and elsewhere where coalbed methane extraction is used, noise pollution and water poisoning occurs also. "CBM wells often require water-pumping and compressor equipment, operating continuously, noisily, and often for the life of the field. Compressors can produce high levels of low-frequency noise, often felt rather than heard by humans. Drilling and well stimulation can produce noise as loud as a jet engine." As with mountaintop coal removal, coalbed methane extraction results in the draw down of water tables, and polluted water.

Despite what that homework happy 11 year old girl on TV would like you to believe, there is nothing whatever clean about coal.