Word: coal
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...China goes, so goes much of Asia, because the mainland's booming demand is critical for regional industries as diverse as Malaysian palm oil, Korean steel and Japanese high-definition TVs. Optimists point out that the impact of the oil-price spike may be softened by the fact that coal, not oil, generates most of China's electricity, somewhat shielding its factories from the effect of rising oil prices. The government also limits the impact of rising fuel costs by dictating the price of gasoline and diesel at the wholesale level each month. Wholesale gas prices in China are currently...
...slight? At what point do we start to alter the functional ecology?" The loss of the diminutive snails, fish and other organisms that dwell in desert springs would be important to more than just ecologists and taxonomists. Those tiny animals are indicator species, the canaries in the environmental coal mine that provide the first warning that the whole system is coming unhinged. "When these organisms disappear," says University of Michigan zoologist Gerald Smith, "it will signal the end of water quality and water permanence for humans in desert regions...
...cost competitiveness is within reach. Panel costs have fallen 66% over the past decade. Company executives and outside analysts estimate that a further 50% reduction, which would make solar-powered-electricity costs comparable with other types of fuel, is possible within the next decade. And because natural-gas and coal prices are increasing along with oil prices, the cost competitiveness of solar power could come a lot earlier...
...cost competitiveness is within reach. Panel costs have fallen 66% over the past decade. Company executives and outside analysts estimate that a further 50% reduction, which would make solar-powered-electricity costs comparable with other types of fuel, is possible within the next decade. And because natural-gas and coal prices are increasing along with oil prices, the cost competitiveness of solar power could come a lot earlier...
...Environmental groups defend Kyoto and see nothing but backpedaling in the new arrangement?if not something worse, like a protection of coal industries in Australia, the U.S., China and India. Paul Epstein, associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, says he sees a single advantage to the new approach: that the Bush Administration is finally acknowledging that global warming is real and that fossil fuels play a role. "But this dual pact approach is not helpful," he says. "The entire world community needs to come together on this issue. The pattern...