Speaking for Europe

If you’re still making up your mind on Lisbon, see here for the dozens of pleas from pro-democracy people all over the EU, urging a ‘no’ vote:
http://www.europesaysno.org/index.html

Here’s a handful of some of the latest comments:

Leo Beata, Sweden:

“To the Irish people, please vote “NO” .. for Europe, for a little bit of democracy, for sovereinity, for some power to the small countries…In Sweden we were promised exceptions when we were to vote for the EU-membership 14 years ago. Today they are all gone, and EU roles our lives and we just have to obey… For a peaceful future, please vote “NO” on friday.”

Ninetta Donizetti, Italy:

“Europe has been bullying Ireland for too long! It’s time Ireland and its people were treated with respect.”

Tim Spencer, UK:

“Everyone in Europe should have the right to vote on this treaty. We are being treated with contempt. Where is the democracy in the EU?”

Gudrun Sievers, Germany:

“All european People looked for Ireland because in Germany we can not speak for yes or no to die Lisbon Treaty. The Idea of EU is fantastic, but not enough democracy - but we can not vote! Many Peoples (80%) are not for die Treaty! in Germany! Good Luck for the Vote. Please say no!”

Lave Broch, Denmark:

“Lisbon Treaty is the wrong way for Europe. The treaty does not make changes to EU’s custom union towards the rest of the world and it strengthens the militarization of EU. It is also very undemocratic that only the Irish people got a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty and it is even more undemocratic that the Irish no in the first referendum was not respected.”

G. Kissamitakis, Greece:

“IRELAND PLEASE VOTE NO!!! Greece, the place where Democracy was born, denied our right to vote!!! I ASK YOU TO VOTE NO to the LISBON TREATY ON BEHALF OF ALL GREEKS AND EUROPEAN CITIZENS!!!”

Martha Browne, Ireland:

“An appeal to my fellow citizens, cast your vote correctly in the NO box. If not, it could be the last chance to vote for anything meaningful ever again.”

Lisbon in action

As Irish voters go to the polls today for the second time on the Lisbon Treaty (welcome to Venezuela the European Union), there is growing coverage of the news that Tony Blair is in all liklihood set to become the first EU President within a matter of weeks. This news was first uncovered by Open Europe as we reported on secret meetings hosted by the Swedish EU Presidency.

Most people in Britain and indeed Europe thought they’d seen the back of Blair when he left the House of Commons in 2007, saying, “That’s it - it’s the end.”

But no doubt partly thanks to the invaluable work of his good friend Peter Mandelson in keeping the flagging Labour government alive long enough to get Lisbon enforced, Blair could be flying around the world in Blair Force One before we’ve started saving up for Christmas.

Assuming that the new EU President will be paid the same as the President of the European Commission, Jose Barroso, this means he or she will receive roughly the same basic salary as Barack Obama - the democratically-elected President of the United States.

Just think about that for a moment. A man voted in after years of high-profile campaigning and public debate and with the support of 69 million people, will be rubbing shoulders on the world stage with a man who just weeks before his election has not had a public word to say about the idea, and who will be nominated by 18 people (a majority of Heads of State, as per the Lisbon Treaty) behind closed doors in a meeting in Brussels, with no public input, not even from national parliaments.

And the people pulling the strings in the corridors of Brussels are amazingly arrogant about it. This week an unnamed senior French diplomat commented that although most people in Europe will be against the idea of Blair for EU President, because of his position on the Iraq war, that makes no difference at all, because “only public opinion is concerned about this, not the 27 Heads of State and Government that will vote him in”.

Who, among the ‘yes’ campaign can honestly say this is not a step backwards for democracy in Europe? Amont many others, Brigid Laffan of the Ireland for Europe campaign has marked her campaign with shrill and hysterical outbursts against British people calling for a ‘no’ vote. If she is so anti-British, how can she possibly support the idea of Blair as EU President for the next two and a half years? Because that is what Irish people will be voting for today if they approve the Lisbon Treaty.

The same goes for all those Lib Dem delegates at conference a couple of weeks ago, who supported a motion saying Blair must not become EU President. Bit late for that, Lib Dems. It’s precisely thanks to your “leader” Nick Clegg that such a position can even be created in the first place, given that he controversially allowed the Lisbon Treaty to sail through Parliament without the referendum he promised in his manifesto. Even if we wanted to, Britain wouldn’t actually be able to stop Blair becoming EU President, because he only needs the support of a majority of EU heads of state.

This is probably just the first of many, many concrete and all-too-real examples of why Lisbon is bad news that will, if the Treaty is passed, start to hit us one by one over the coming months and years as we face up to the full implications of what we have done by allowing this to happen.

Nike said to be quitting Chamber of Commerce post over climate controversy

As Exelon becomes the latest energy firm to quit the business group over its anti-climate legislation stance, pressure mounts on Nike to follow suit.
From BusinessGreen.com, part of the Guardian Environment Network
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 1 October 2009 12.58 BST

Nike ‘We Run Together’ advert: reports suggest Nike will no longer run together with the US Chamber of Commerce because of its stance on climate change.
The US Chamber of Commerce’s controversial calls to put the latest climate science “on trial” as part of its campaign to block proposed carbon legislation could yet prompt another high-profile walk out, after reports emerged that Nike was to quit it’s post on the trade group’s board.
According to reports on the Politico blog, the company is to release a statement relinquishing its board position at the Chamber in protest at the group’s lobbying against tougher US climate change legislation. However, it will stop short of leaving the group altogether so that it can “advocate for climate change legislation” from within the group.
The news comes after shareholder groups yesterday wrote to Nike calling on the sportswear giant to quit the trade group.
According to reports, three socially responsible investor groups - Green Century Funds, Newground Social Investment and the Basilian Fathers of Toronto - have written to the company arguing that it is no longer in the firm’s interest to be associated with a group that is lobbying to block US climate change legislation.
In an open letter to Nike chief executive Mark Parker, Kristina Curtis, president of Green Century Equity Fund, said that the investment firm was “dismayed that Nike has not taken a more aggressive stance” against the Chamber, particularly given that it has been a vocal supporter of tighter climate change legislation through its position as a founding member of the Business for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy group.
Curtis added that the decision last week by US energy firms Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG &E) and PNM Resources to leave the Chamber of Commerce over its climate change stance had set a “new standard for corporate responsibility in the face of profoundly unsustainable actions” that Nike should now follow.
Earlier this month, the Chamber’s vice president for environment, technology and regulatory affairs gave an interview to the Los Angeles Times in which he called for a series of public hearings on the science the EPA used to justify its recent decision that carbon dioxide represents a health risk and can be regulated under the Clean Air Act.
Likening the proposed hearings to the 1920s Scopes Trial on evolution, Kovacs said that the hearings would represent the “science of climate change on trial” .
The Chamber has since tried to soften its stance slightly, arguing that the analogy was “inappropriate” and that it is simply calling for hearings on the extent to which global warming poses a threat, rather than on climate science itself.
But the move has still prompted a flurry of high-profile walk outs from firms lobbying for more ambitious action on climate change. In the latest development, US nuclear energy giant Exelon this week announced that it will join PG&E and PNM Resources in not renewing its membership.
Speaking at a meeting of the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, Exelon chairman and chief executive John W. Rowe said that the company had left the chamber as a direct result of its “stridency against carbon legislation”, adding that putting a price on carbon emissions through a national cap-and-trade scheme was “essential” to tackling climate change.
• This article was shared by our content partner BusinessGreen.com, part of the Guardian Environment Network

France Backs Battery-Charging Network for Cars

By DAVID PEARSON
PARIS — The French government Thursday said it plans to spend €1.5 billion (about $2.2 billion) on creating a battery-charging network for electric vehicles as part of a broader state plan to encourage the development of clean vehicle technology and battery manufacturing.
It also said it would seek financing of €900 million for its €1.5 billion plan from a state loan that’s planned to be launched next year.
The government will make the installation of charging sockets obligatory in office parking lots by 2015, and new apartment blocks with parking lots will have to include charging stations starting in 2012.
A group of public and private fleet operators has already identified a need to purchase 50,000 electric vehicles through 2015, Environment Minister Jean-Louis Borloo told a press conference, and the government reckons that by pooling purchasing there is potential to reach a fleet of 100,000 vehicles by that date.
The plan involves setting up a battery manufacturing factory at a Renault SA facility at Flins, west of Paris, at a cost of €625 million, of which €125 million will be contributed by the French state’s strategic investment fund.
The plant will have an annual production capacity of 100,000 batteries and will supply other French electric vehicle manufacturers, including PSA Peugeot-Citroen.
Peugeot-Citroen chief executive Philippe Varin said his company will have four small electric vehicles ready for sale in 2010, including two small city cars, one of which will be based on a vehicle that Peugeot-Citroen will be buyin from its Japanese partner Mitsubishi Motors Corp., as well as small utility vehicles for both brands.
Renault’s chief operating officer Patrick Pelata said Renault will have four mass-market electric vehicles on sale in 2011 and 2012.
He reaffirmed that Renault and its alliance partner Nissan Motor Co. together plan to invest a total of €4 billion in developing electric vehicle technology.
Write to David Pearson at david.pearson@dowjones.com

The global north-south carbon divide

Climate change talks must not be allowed to degenerate into a blame game: we need imaginative solutions for all economies

Jayati Ghosh
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 1 October 2009 09.30 BST
The global discussion on climate change has quickly degenerated into a north-south confrontation, for perhaps obvious reasons. On average, carbon emissions per capita in the developed world are about five times those in developing countries. Between some countries the differences are even starker: in 2006, the US per capita emission of tonnes of CO2 equivalent was 15.2, compared with 1.1 in India.
Obviously, the developed world has been and continues to be the basic cause of the problem. In the developing world the conclusion is obvious: rich nations must take on the basic burden of mitigation, consume less of the world’s resources and reduce their contribution to global warming absolutely. That is why attempts to declare common goals of emission reduction across all countries are seen not only as unequal and unfair but even imperialist.
But the issue cannot be treated in simplistic terms. While they did not create the problem, the negative contribution of developing countries has been growing recently. Between 1980 and 2006, per capita carbon emissions declined slightly in developed countries (even the US), but they doubled in developing countries as a group, and nearly tripled in China. And the people of developing countries have a real stake in global action on this front, for they are already the worst affected by climate changes, as shown by the growing incidence of climatic shifts, especially in tropical and semi-tropical zones.
The problem is that the development project, in terms of ensuring basic needs to all the population, is still far from complete in many parts of the world – and certainly in India. Even without trying to replicate western standards of living, just to provide every citizen with the minimum decent standards of living that contemporary technology can offer, such as permanent housing, electrification, access to clean water, sanitation and sufficient food, will necessarily require more natural resource use and result in more carbon emissions.
To deal with this problem we need more imaginative responses in both north and south. First, GDP growth should not be an end in itself, since it is now widely recognised that it does not necessarily create more life satisfaction. It is not really clear why rich countries with falling populations need to increase their GDP, and why they should not focus instead on internal redistribution and changing lifestyles – which could in fact improve every citizen’s quality of life.
Second, in the developing world, and especially in India, which is still a very low carbon emitter, there is now an opportunity to reorient growth in cleaner and greener directions: not just by changing energy sources at the margin, but also by emphasising cleaner and more public rather than private-based transport systems, better urban and regional planning and protecting and nurturing water and other natural resources. This also requires income distribution shifts and changes in socially created aspirations. This cannot be left to the market, because since the international demonstration effect and the power of advertising will continue to create undesirable wants and unsustainable consumption and production.
A dimension that is often missed is that CO2 emissions account for only about half of the global warming story. Ground-level ozone (from transport and biomass burning), black carbon (from motor vehicles) and methane production (from agriculture, cattle and wood burning) also play roles. And these are much easier to deal with in an overall growth framework using available technologies; indeed, reducing these should be an integral part of the development project because they are also human health hazards.

Lies Behind Darfur Campaign in Sudan

Lies behind Darfur

Once again, a manipulated truth for lucrative gains

Omar Al-Ramlawi
Sep 21

Darfur is a region of Western Sudan, an African country that has been plagued by wars and civil unrest since its independence from the United Kingdom in 1956.

Sudan is a country with a diverse ethnic and religious population. In the north the majority of the population is Muslim, while the majority of Christians and other native religions occupy the south. Southern Sudan has its own share of sorrows and now maintains an autonomous region with a self-ruling government awaiting a referendum to gain independence from Sudan in 2011.

It is safe to say that Sudan is a country, which, if taken a closer look at, reveals a more complicated situation where greed and foreign interests overlap, where the friends of yesterday become the enemies of today.

The current unrest in Darfur started in 2003. The origins of the conflict trace to constant environmental degradation, lack of water and, most importantly, the lack of funding from the central government in Khartoum to help the region economically and environmentally. There are two main groups in Darfur: the Furs and the Arabs; Arabs are generally herders, Furs typically farmers. This distinction is not ethnic, but rather cultural as both groups are not racially different.

The media has played a vital role in this conflict by manipulating the facts, causing many to believe what happened in Darfur was genocide, where hundreds of thousands died as a result of the government-backed militias Western media has relied on the short memory of its viewers in order to successfully feed them false information to stir reactions and later when the truth comes out it is not given adequate coverage.

This can be seen with the recent announcement by a group of former Sudanese activists who admit that the figures of those reported dead and displaced in the Darfur conflict were exaggerated. These former activists formed the National Group to Correct the Track on the Darfur Crisis (NGCTDC) as an attempt to end the crisis. Group members include former NGO employees who admitted to local news network “We used to exaggerate the numbers of murders and rapes … If the figure was 10, for example, we asked people to say two or three hundred.”

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) in the UK has also called Save Darfur campaign, which has raised hundreds of millions of dollars, into question According to a recent announcement made by the ASA, Save Darfur should not advertise the figure of 400,000 deaths, as it is not a fact, but a disputed opinion. In their ads they imply that the deaths are direct results of massacres committed by the Sudanese government and its militias, rather than due, at least in part, to hunger and disease, blindly simplifying the conflict into Good vs. Evil, Furs vs. Arabs.

Alexander de Waal is a British writer and a researcher on African issues. De Waal has researched and studied this conflict extensively. He has concluded that, at most, there were 200,000 deaths, of which roughly 50,000 were a result of direct military attacks, as opposed to the 400,000 deaths that Save Darfur likes to propagate. This does not mean that the central Sudanese government should be immune from blame, since it has made many mistakes in dealing with the Darfur conflict.

The question is why are governments, such as the U.S. government, so focused on raising awareness globally by attempting to demonize one particular party and dividing the Sudanese population in half. If it was really to fulfill a humanitarian cause, why doesn’t the U.S. focus on countries such as Congo where deaths are counted up to five million? It seems to me that this is a pattern and an attempt, on behalf of the U.S. government, of “dividing and conquering,” in order to achieve their lucrative goals.

Sudan happens to lie on some of the world’s biggest oil reserves. It has been known since the ‘70s that the area in southern Sudan and Darfur contain large amounts of oil. Since then, wars over oil and control of the land have started.

For example, Chevron, an energy provider based in the U.S., found oil in the south of Sudan after spending some US$1.2 billion in 1983. This discovery is considered the catalyst of the civil war of 1983.

Today history repeats itself in Darfur. In Sudan’s neighbouring country, Chad, President Deby, has been accused of supplying the rebels in Darfur with U.S. arms and has by many accounts been responsible for launching the initial strike to set off the conflict in Darfur. It was the US support for Deby’s action against the Sudanese government that led to the severity and violence of the current conflict in Darfur. Coincidentally, Chad has recently completed building a $3.7 billion pipeline, with the help of American sponsorship and funds, in order to carry hundreds of thousands of oil barrels daily across Chad, starting in the East near Darfur and destined for U.S. refineries.

It is oil, rather than human misery, that NATO and UN troops are called to guard in Darfur. Sudan is at war on three fronts with three neighboring countries: Chad, Uganda, and Ethiopia. Each of those countries has a significantly strong tie with the U.S. military. The war in Sudan involves both American stealth operations and U.S.-sponsored “rebel” factions coming in from those neighboring countries.

In this case, mass media was obviously used to spread the lies and propaganda of specific groups that all share the same lucrative interests. My question is when will the media be held accountable for propagating false information and for being an extension of corrupt governments and big conglomerates?

Omar Al-Ramlawi is the Managing Editor at the Manitoban.

32http://www.themanitoban.com/articles/20171

Ten percent of world’s major species ‘at threat’

The “Number of Living Species in Australia and the World” study found 0.9 percent of the world’s 1.9 million classified species were at threat, including 9.2 percent of major vertebrate species. (Left: Peary caribou)

Australia’s government-funded Biological

Pohls sea urchins found off Lizard Island

Resources Study, the world’s only census of animal and plant life, found 20.8 percent of mammals were endangered, as were 12.2 percent of birds and 29.2 percent of amphibians.

Of reptiles, 4.8 percent were considered threatened, along with 4.1 percent of fish species.

“In Australia and around the world, biodiversity is under huge and growing pressure,” said environment department secretary Robyn Kruk.

“The pressures are pervasive and chronic in many places; invasive species, habitat loss and climate change in particular.”

The underside of a Nardoa Rosea, or sea star, in the waters off Heron Island

Australia was found to be home to 7.8 percent of the world’s known species. Environment Minister Peter Garrett said the study had shown its wildlife was highly unique, with 87 percent of mammals and 93 percent of reptiles found nowhere else in the world.

However, the study also showed Australian species accounted for 9.1 percent of the world’s threatened flora and fauna, and Garrett said vigilance was essential.

“We have a long way to go, we have discovered and named only about a quarter of Australia’s estimated number of flora and fauna,” said Garrett.

“We need this essential information to do a better job of managing our biodiversity against the threats of invasive species, habitat-loss and climate change.”

According to the report there were likely to be some 11 million species on Earth of which only 1.9 million had been discovered, with millions of invertebrates, fungi and other organisms yet to be found and named.

Source:
Google News, “Ten percent of world’s major species ‘at threat’“, accessed October 1, 2009

BA wages new class war on climate: fly or watch your business nosedive

Aviation industry is using the recession to frighten businesses into flying to keep clients instead of using videoconferencing
You could be forgiven for thinking the aviation industry was giving out mixed messages about climate change. Last week they announced that they would halve emissions by 2050, but as the targets rely on offsetting, the plan was described as a “huge get-out”. Meanwhile, the industry is still planning to expand which would wipe out any planned efficiency savings anyway.
Then British Airways appeared to undo all their good work this week with a new luxury service and a business-class service called Face to Face. UK short-haul specialists FlyBe have also launched their Business is better face to face to wage war on the upsurge in videoconferencing in the name of saving the planet.
FlyBe spouts a host of dubious data on the importance of “in the flesh” meetings for building better business relationships and winning new clients and contracts.
They say, for example, that face to face meetings will turn 40% of potential customers into customers, compared with only 16% without face to face contact. But they fail to mention that this figure comes from an non-peer reviewed US study sponsored by two industry groups, the US Travel Association and the Destination and Travel Foundation. The latter’s website says it exists to “bolster the destination marketing profession and travel industry”.
What about the numbers though? Well the 40% figure comes from an online survey of 500 US business travellers and it doesn’t specify what they were comparing face to face meetings with — sending an email perhaps? In any case, it begs the question how many customers you could rake in via videoconferencing while you are stuck at Heathrow check-in and squashed next to the fat bloke in row 56 of cattle class half way over the Atlantic.
And that’s the point. Both campaigns ignore the fact that videoconferencing has come of age. Gone are the days of stuttering, pixellated images, out-of-synch audio and visuals — like a badly dubbed foreign film, and unreliable connections. Hyperspeed broadband and new technologies like HP’s Halo and Skyroom allow such effectively intimate, eye to eye, literally across-the-table communications between participants it’s hard to see what other advantages actually being physically in the same room might bring (what do you want to do? Smell your client?).
The airlines have also had some highprofile support from climate contrarians such as Boris Johnson, who recently popped over to New York in business class courtesy of BA to promote business travel. Though this might have been a clever strategy by BA to get back in the mayor’s good books after refusing to upgrade him on a flight to Beijing for the Olympics last year, forcing poor old BoJo to fly cattle-class. And this is all before considering the disproportionate carbon impact that business class seats on planes have, as BA’s latest luxury transatlantic service demonstrates.
The BA and FlyBe campaigns both deploy scare-mongering by playing on struggling businesses’ anxiety during a world recession: that either their clients won’t take them seriously, or their competitors will outflank them unless they rock up in person to a pitch or meeting. I wonder whether this is really the case. My personal experience would suggest otherwise.
I have “spoken” at conferences in the US by using the cost of my flight and hotel to pay for making a film of my speech and then doing Q&A via teleconference. I’ve also pitched for and won contracts in both Montreal, Canada and Inverness in Scotland via video-conference and on all these occasions the very fact I didn’t fly not only reinforced my company’s own environmental commitment and responsibility but also impressed the client and arguably gave us a competitive advantage.
Wider use of videoconferencing could generate truly dramatic carbon and financial savings, generating a robust business case for change. It’s good for employee wellbeing too, putting an end to those red-eye/sleazyjet trips away from home, loved ones and the team back at base. I think intelligent, strategic use of videoconferencing over business travel full stop is an increasingly sensible and enlightened option, but over business aviation it is a no-brainer.
The FlyBe campaign aims to collect and collate people’s stories of “video-conferencing disasters” and good news stories about why flying to that supposedly crucial meeting won new business.
I’d love to hear your experiences of positive video-conferencing benefits, or tales of when not making that dubious business trip by plane turned out to be a blessing in disguise!
• Ed Gillespie is a director at communications agency Futerra and has travelled the world without planes for his Slow Travel series

India challenges US over ‘measly’ climate change efforts

Jairam Ramesh, India’s environment minister, says the US must move more forcefully to reduce emissions
Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 1 October 2009 18.48 BST

India demanded today that America step up its “measly” efforts to combat global warming – or risk jeopardising an international deal to avoid catastrophic climate change.
The challenge from Delhi’s environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, and recent moves from China, mark a deliberate ratcheting up of the pressure on Barack Obama to move more forcefully to reduce America’s greenhouse gas emissions.
It comes barely 24 hours after Democratic leaders introduced a climate change bill in the Senate which – they hoped – would convince the international community that America was prepared for to take strong action.
But Ramesh dismissed the bill, which proposes to cut US greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2020, compared to 2005 levels. He said it was too little to persuade India to make serious commitments of its own at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen that aims to seal a global treaty.
India – like other major developing countries – has been demanding that rich, industrialised countries pledge cuts of 25% to 40% in Copenhagen in December.
“The bill that was with the Senate yesterday talks about a 20% cut on 2005 levels, which is really only a measly 5% reduction on 1990 levels,” Ramesh told a US-Indian energy conference in Washington, put on by Yale University and The Energy and Resources Institute in Delhi.
He added that America and other developed countries had to commit to deep emissions cuts in the next decade – not by 2050 – if they wanted to see India and China take serious action to contain the rise in their future emissions, as their surging economies expand.
“If we are serious about climate change we should stop talking about 2050. I laugh when countries put up numbers for 2050,” Ramesh said.
However, he was almost immediately rebuffed by Obama’s climate change envoy, Todd Stern, who said that such a narrow focus on 2020 actions could wreck the prospects of reaching a deal at Copenhagen. “We can talk about that all the way to Copenhagen and for the next two or three years and get nothing done,” Stern said. “We have to be practical.”
Ramesh’s comments were the most forceful expression of a new diplomatic push by India to avoid being cast as the spoiler of the Copenhagen process. Ramesh insisted, however, that India was well aware of the threat posed to its own people by the change in rainfall patterns and rising sea levels brought by climate change. This summer saw the worst monsoon since 1972, a major setback for a country which remains heavily dependent on rain-fed agriculture.
India sees its economic growth as non-negotiable, given the large number of citizens it wants to lift out of poverty. In the past fortnight, India has offered to undertake a series of measures that would see it embarking on a less polluting course of future growth – but these are firmly tied to action from America.
Ramesh spelled out some of those commitments in an interview with the Guardian last week. They include: legislation on fuel efficiency for cars by 2011 and new building efficiency by 2012, getting 20% of energy from renewable sources by 2020; and expanding forest cover. India also plans to get 15% of its electricity from nuclear power by 2020.
But Ramesh ruled out any possibility that India would agree to an absolute cap on emissions in the future. “N-O, No,” he said. The position was endorsed by RK Pachauri, who heads the IPCC. “Obviously you are not going to ask a country that has 400 million people without a lightbulb in their homes to do the same as a country that has splurge of energy,” he told the conference.”

UK set for new green trains

As Britain struggles to reduce its CO2 emissions, Siemens launches its next generation of ‘Desiro City’ electrical trains to the UK.

Source:
Reuters, “UK set for new green trains“, accessed September 30, 2009