“Probably only Dmitry”, one of the leaders said, referring to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, according to a G8 source. At the time, Medvedev was 42 and will be 84 in 2050.

At this year’s G8 summit, the discussion came up again when the leaders agreed other distant targets, including an 80 percent reduction in emissions by developed nations by 2050. (Critics said they should have focused more on 2020 goals that are most relevant to a new U.N. climate treaty due in December.)

“We probably have a second person — Barack will still be here,” one of the leaders said of U.S. President Barack Obama, who is now 47 and took over from former President George W. Bush in January.

But then Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, the oldest of the leaders at 72, piped up:

“I will still be here. Look at me — I don’t look old . That’s why I have so many problems with the ladies.”

(Picture: from L-R: Japan’s Prime Minister Taro Aso, Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper, U.S. President Barack Obama, France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy, Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev react as they pose for a group photograph at the G8 summit in L’Aquila July 8, 2009. Leaders from the Group of Eight major industrial nations and the main developing economies will hold talks from July 8-10. REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer)

So, how much do you want for your Aviator?

Once-proud SUV owners are gaining green street cred cashing-in on President Obama’s $1 billion “Car Allowance Rebate” program giving car and truck buyers a $3,500 or $4,500 credit to swap their aging gas-guzzlers for new, more fuel efficient models.

While not an alternative to highway approved cars, it won’t be surprising if those who value image most in switching to a more green way of getting around pass up Global Electric Motorcar’s GEM e4 or Ducati Enegria’s “Free Duck” quadricycle. Neighborhood Electric Vehicles have been the vehicles of choice for leaders at the G8 meeting in L’Aquila, Italy, who seem happy to sacrifice chic in the name of the planet and photo opportunities. Form aside, GEM cars get the equivalent of 150 miles per gallon, or two cents per mile, according to the company. And that’s a lot farther than the boat of a truck you bought before the tech bubble burst.

Are you willing to trade in your clunker, and for what? If you already have, how easy was it to get your credit?

Luckily, there’s no shortage of estimates of how much each individual in the United States might have to pay to curb the greenhouse emissions that spur climate change. One particularly pertinent estimate was delivered on Capitol Hill by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson at a Senate hearing geared to send the message that, yes, the United States Congress is getting serious about tackling the problem.

As Reuters’ Jasmin Melvin wrote in this story, Jackson said it would cost the average U.S. household about 50 cents a day to fight global warming, though wealthier households would probably pay more. Even if this cost doubled, Jackson told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, that would only be a dollar a day. Who wouldn’t pay that?

Apparently a fair number of people, according to Sen. James Inhofe, who cited a July 1 poll showing the 56 percent of Americans are unwilling to pay anything.

So what would you be willing to pay? Is a dollar a day too much? And if you shouldn’t pay, should anyone?

Photo credit: REUTERS/Romeo Ranoco (Worker inspects U.S. dollar bills in Manila, December 15, 2008)

The hill, in fact, masks what was once an illegal landfill filled with cast off debris. The garbage now lies beneath a thick clay cap to prevent the methane, a greenhouse gas on steroids, from seeping out. Natural grass has been planted on the top.

Nearby fish-filled ponds mark the gateway to a 6,000 acre ecosystem which is the largest urban hardwood forest in the United States. And it is all just minutes away from historically disadvantaged and mostly black neighborhoods on the south side of Dallas.

I had been meaning to visit the Trinity River Audubon Center, a partnership between the city of Dallas the National Audubon Society, since it opened in October of last year. I got a gap the other day and it was an eye-opening visit.

Basically, the city and the green group are transforming a wasteland into an urban oasis on the banks of the Trinity River which is a magnet for bird life and mammals such as beaver and white-tailed deer.

This is a “good news” green story that shines a spotlight on many different issues: the environmental costs of poverty (no illegal landfills in affluent white suburbs); the range of sources for the greenhouse gases linked to global warming (people think of cars and power plants, not garbage sites);and our ability to reverse environmental damage.

The center’s director Chris Culak showed me aerial photos which showed the gradual transformation as the garbage — which at one point had burnt off and on for several months — was buried, grass was planted and the center was built.

Among other things the center serves as an educational show piece complete with labs to provide inner city kids with a natural experience they wouldn’t otherwise get. This is important as environmentalism is sometimes seen as an “elitist” pursuit which doesn’t involve or engage poor and minority communities. (It brings to mind the green movement in South Africa, where I was based for many years. It was largely white and well-heeled and often seemed far removed from the country’s townships and squalid squatter camps).

In Phoenix, a similar project is under way near the downtown area, where a former dumping ground for industrial business is being transformed into a riverside park and nature center.

It all beats the hell out of a landfill or dump.

(Photo: Trinity River Audubon Center, courtesy of Audubon)

Instead of the two-tier world envisioned by the carbon-capping Kyoto Protocol — where developed countries have the lion’s share of responsibility for cutting emissions, while developing countries including China and India have few requirements — environmental strategists from Princeton, Harvard, the Netherlands and Italy say it might be better to track the wealthy, who live in every country.

On the grounds that individual rich people emit more carbon dioxide than most other people, these strategists suggest setting an international individual cap on the emissions that spur global warming. Rich people in rich countries are likely to hit this cap sooner than rich people in poor countries, so rich countries are likely to have to do something about their emissions before poor countries do. But eventually, every country that emits more than its share will have to take action, under this scenario.

At least one conservative blog has taken aim at this plan as a tax on the rich, but that’s not necessarily the idea, according to the study’s authors. They just want policy-makers to have this as an option to help persuade reluctant countries to join a global effort to reduce greenhouse emissions.

This report, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is meant to help climate diplomats figure out where to go after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. And if negotiators at this week’s climate meetings in Italy at the fringes of the Group of Eight industrialized nations take note, that would probably be fine with the study’s authors too.

Photo credits:
REUTERS/Regis Duvignau (Luxury yachts are moored in the port of Cannes May 11, 2009.)
REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni (Security guard stands next to one of Michael Jackson’s limousines on display in Beverly Hills, California April 13, 2009.)

The moose-hunting and ultra-conservative hockey mom shot to national prominence last year as John McCain’s vice presidential running mate on the losing Republican ticket. Palin, who in a surprise move said on Friday that she would step down this month as Alaskan governor, remains a political lighting rod who is loved and loathed in equal measure.

 This polarizing profile has made her a major fund raising force for the Republican Party. It has also made her a focal point for groups staunchly opposed to her politics and policies.

Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund has been using Palin’s support of the aerial hunting of wolves in Alaska as a peg to bring attention to the issue – and also it seems to drum up some donations amid the recessionary crunch.

The home page on its web site says: “Help Stop Palin’s Wolf Slaughter: DONATE NOW”.

The seven press releases it has issued so far this year on its online newsroom have one main topic: Palin and wolf hunting.

“Palin Administration Calls in the Helicopters for Sweeping Wolf Massacre,” says one.  Another talks about “Palin’s extreme Anti-Conservation Agenda.” The group has also distributed a graphic video narrated by Hollywood star Ashley Judd which takes aim at Palin and the aerial hunting of wolves.

Jessica Brand, a spokesperson with Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund, said :”It’s not really a personality thing … It’s an issue we will work on after she is governor and it is an issue we worked on before she was governor.”

Still, one has to wonder if they can really gin up this issue without Palin as a polar bear-sized target. Their “Eye on Palin” campaign has been a key part of their wider campaign against wolf hunting. That will be difficult to sustain with her no longer in a position to make or execute policy in Alaska.

Palin has also inadvertently helped to ignite other bases on the other side of the fence.  In September last year, Obama’s campaign said that after her fiery speech to the Republican National Convention, $8 million had poured into it from more than 130,000 donors within a matter of hours.

(Photo: A video frame grab shows former U.S. Republican Alaska Governor Sarah Palin announcing that she will resign this month and will not run for re-election as governor in Wasilla, Alaska, July 3, 2009. REUTERS/KTUU-TV (UNITED STATES POLITICS ELECTIONS)

It seems an unlikely path for environmentalists to take, but this WWF commissioned report warning that failure to take carbon risk into account could knock pension fund returns raises some interesting points.

"Carbon Risks in UK Equity Funds" by Mercer and Trucost "outlines how fund manager complacency on corporate carbon performance could put pension fund assets at risk as carbon-intensive companies face rising carbon costs and their company valuations fall in the short-term in anticipation of future carbon risk".

The report argues that fund managers "could dramatically reduce the carbon footprints of their funds through stock selection without the need to alter sector weightings or their overall investment strategy".

It also encourages them to engage with companies in their portfolios and calls on them to support mandatory reporting requirements for corporate greenhouse gas emissions.

The research says climate change is of "little importance in fund managers' investment decisions", with the main reason cited for this "a lack of confidence in government policies to address greenhouse gas emissions".

WWF wants fund managers to see there are financial incentives for pension funds and other institutional investors to consider carbon risk. If nothing else, it has learned to speak their language.

But how many of us are refilling our bottles with tap water rather than pouring money down the tube -- not to mention the cost of recycling the plastic bottles -- by buying a new bottle of water each day?

Cue the National Hydration Council whose eye-catching advertising campaign to encourage people to buy more "naturally sourced bottled water" -- on health grounds -- featured prominently on the underground network earlier this year.

The worrying thing for the bottled water lobby is not that people are doing what would appear to be the most sensible thing and refilling their bottles from the tap, but that Britons are replacing bottled water with sugary drinks instead.

We're told that sales of bottled water fell by 7 percent last year, with 71 percent of that decline the result of people buying sweet drinks instead. Good news for the soft drinks industry perhaps, but a worry for health officials.

Meanwhile, beneath the streets of London, the hot and flustered faces of fellow tube passengers shows just how dire it is on board the capital's underground trains when the mercury rises.

With a decent air-conditioning system on most lines a distant prospect, Transport for London (TfL) could show it cares by offering each of its cash-strapped passengers a free TfL water bottle and the opportunity to refill them at its stations.

For example, take Europe’s fourth biggest single source of carbon emissions, Britain’s Drax coal plant. It said in March that as a result of efficiency improvements it had cut carbon emissions equivalent to taking 195,000 cars off the road.  But of course that was a cut against a theoretical projection of rising emissions — not an absolute cut.

Take a similar announcement from Canada this week. The oil industry in Alberta is busy trying to extract oil from tar sands. That is a far more polluting, energy-intensive way than just sucking the stuff out of oil wells, because steam must first be injected into the sand to make the oil flow. Now Alberta is experimenting with a technology, called carbon capture and storage, with three test projects which by 2015 would “achieve annual carbon dioxide reductions equivalent to taking about a million vehicles off the road”, the province says.

Funnily enough, 2015 is also the year when a U.N. panel of climate scientists says global greenhouse gas emissions worldwide must stop rising to limit global warming to 2-2.4 degrees celsius, a widely perceived threshold for dangerous effects (page 20 here). It seems a little disingenuous — in that wider context — for  Alberta to talk of taking cars off the road from test projects to trim carbon emissions under a wider programme to expand one of the most polluting forms of oil drilling known to man.

The wider context does seem relevant if we’re not to pat ourselves on the back as catastrophic climate effects creep up. And it may be especially relevant this year, as climate talks and rhetoric ratchet up ahead of a meeting in December in Copenhagen, meant to seal agreement on a new climate pact to replace the Kyoto Protocol.