Environmental Economics: Why would California ask for tighter tail-pipe standards when they are close to bankruptcy?

Environmental regulations increase costs. That may not be a bad thing, if the benefits of decreasing the environmental impact exceed those costs. But many of those benefits are nonmarketed benefits: that is, nonrevenue generating. Doesn't that undermine the more immediate goal of fiscal solvency for the state? Or am I missing something obvious?

Wind Watch: Parachute centre claims wind mast could force it to close

A parachuting centre is campaigning for protected status to help fight off a 150ft high mast application that could see it close down.

Wind Watch: 'Rewetting' could spell end for windmills

Scientists say that peatlands are the nation’s single largest carbon stores but following decades of air pollution and overgrazing, the bogs have been ‘significantly degraded’. If the moors can be rewetted or revegetated, they can act as a natural carbon storage device, which could forgo the need for controversial windmills.

Blue Energy Wonder Fuel Hoaxer Found Guilty

A man who tricked President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono into thinking that he could make fuel from water in the infamous “Blue Energy” hoax has been jailed for three and a half years.

In something the president could readily testify to, the Bantul District Court in Yogyakarta found that Joko Suprapto, 47, had been found guilty of “convincingly” committing a deception in breach of the Criminal Code.
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The case drew nationwide interest after Yudhoyono openly endorsed the fuel, with one of his close aids heading a team for the development of Blue Energy.

Several cars that were said to have been modified to run on the energy even made a convoy from the residence of the president to Bali, some 1,200 kilometers east, where Yudhoyono was attending an international conference on climate change in December, 2007. Yudhoyono was pictured waving flags as the convoy left.

The president later said that the fuel did not fail as critics have said but was merely encountering technical problems and urged people to give it more time.