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By Aaron Fu on 15 Jun, 2009 - 14:01 UTC

Today, Japan is contributing to our potential for a further reduction in emissions – Martin Bursik, Czech Environment Minister

Solar Heating: Now Subsidized
To fulfill its target to buy 100 million metric tons of Carbon Emission Rights, Japan has bought 40 million metric tons of these rights from the Czech Republic at a cost of $500m. The Eastern European country sold the ‘redundant’ rights it had earned by reducing its carbon emissions by a decent 24% (from 1990), significantly above its pledge (Kyoto) of 8%.

To put the reduction in perspective, Germany reduced its emissions in the same period by approximately 22% but will unlikely engage in a similar trade as its Kyoto pledge was a significantly higher 21%.

The Ministry of Environment, led by Green Party leader Martin Bursik, will use the substantial financial inflow to subsidize Czech households’ building or installing environmentally friendly heating or insulation systems.

The move will not only reduce the country’s energy use and carbon emissions but, perhaps more importantly for the regular Czech household, significantly reduce their heating bill during the current downturn.

In the final months of the Bush administration two bipartisan diplomatic missions headed to Beijing to negotiate a US-China deal on carbon emissions.

 

According to the Guardian's report, John Holdren, now the White House science adviser, and other members of the current administration were involved in the initiative.

 

A memorandum of understanding has been drafted but not yet signed. Bill Chandler, director of the energy and climate programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, is confident a deal can be struck by the fall.

Companies have been told by the police and municipality in Ajman to pay workers their wages or else send the workers back home.

 

Some firms have not paid wages to workers for periods of several months, prompting protests and a 40% increase over the last three months in reported incidents of theft, robbery and shoplifting.

 

Three quarters of the UAE's population comprises foreign workers.

 

Authorities have promised stiff penalties and closure if workers' wages are not paid on time or if workers' living conditions are not up to standard.

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The Seminal has a nice piece on the disconnect between the hoopla over the new green economy and the ways in which green workers can expect to be treated by their employers.  The focus case here is that of Republic Windows and Doors of Chicago (of the famous employee sit-in when the factory closed its doors)and their new employer, Serious Materials.  While Serious recently reopened the Chicago factory, leaving its union agreement intact, they also reopened a shut factory in Pennsylvania whose union contracts they completely disregarded, apparently because they could get away with it in Pennsylvania but not in Chicago. 

 

This "test case" makes clear that the The Employee Free Choice Act is a necessary measure to ensure that America's workers are valued as much as her non-human natural resources in the growing green economy.

UAE Minister of Labour HE Saqr Ghobash announced yesterday that new minimum standards will be set for all labour camp accommodation in the Emirate.

 

According to the article from Construction Week, the office of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, will set accommodation standards including "the highest standards that have been established internationally".

 

The move follows a BBC documentary that highlighted what it alleged were filthy and overcrowded conditions in the camp run for workers of construction firm Arabtec.

Anwar Gargash, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, says luring foreign construction workers to the UAE under false pretences is human trafficking.

 

Workers often pay a high fee by recruitment firms on the promise of high wages. The reality is a cycle of debt.

 

The Minister points out that the overseas firms cannot be prosecuted in the UAE, but that local partners could be and should be prosecuted.

 

The plight on construction workers in the United Arab Emirates has received more attention since a recent BBC documentary looked at their living conditions in a couple of camps in Dubai.

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Member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council are considering the imposition of a "green tax" on environmentally damaging products.

 

A green tax in one of the world's biggest communities of oil producing states? This should be interesting.

In a move that will surely force action on reining in CO2 emissions, the EPA has declared CO2 and five other heat-trapping gases to be pollutants.

 

Pollutants represent a threat to human health and welfare, and acknowledging that cliamte change-contributing gases fall into that category brings them within the EPA's regulatory remit.

 

This development means that the US Congress will come under intense pressure to agree on climate change legislation, and probably in time for the UN climate hange conference in Copenhagen in December.

Journalists have been given a tour of the worker camp in Dubai that was a subject of the BBC Panorama documentary "Slumdogs and Millionaires".


The unsanitary conditions shown in the documentary have been largely rectified, though incidents of overcrowding were still witnessed by the journalist who wrote this piece in the Khaleej Times.


The article refers to other steps being taken to prevent breaches of Dubai worker regulations.

Intervale Green is a new, low-income, green housing complex in the Bronx.  Regina Cornwell profiles Intervale, and its creator, Nancy Biberman, founder of the Women’s Housing and Economic Development Corporation (WHEDCo).  (Via Alternet)

Nigerian opposition parties are threatening to disclose names of Nigerian recipients of KBR bribes.

 

President Umaru Yar'adua has already indicated that he has asked US authorities for the names and will make them public. The US Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission arrived at a $402 million settlement earlier this year with KBR and its former parent Halliburton. The companies were accused of breaching the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by bribing Nigerian public officials.

 

The opposition argues that the President Yar'adua is dragging his feet, and claim to be in a position to release the names themselves within the next few days if the President does not do so first.

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