At last a piece of good news in the slow, uphill struggle for a better world - I mean, of course, our painful progress towards the Millennium Development Goals. On water, we are almost there! A report from the joint monitoring programme set up by the World Health Organisation and Unicef says "the world is on track to meet or even exceed the drinking-water target". Or even exceed. You don't see anything like that in reports on maternal mortality or HIV.

So celebrations are in order. The "Progress on Sanitation and Drinking-Water – 2010 Update Report," says that 87% of the world's population, which is around 5.9 billion people, have safe drinking water. But - oh why does there always have to be a but - alongside water goes sanitation. And sanitation, sadly, is a long way off target still.

Let's be clear here. We're talking about one of the last things people are willing to talk about. We're talking about shit. I sat next to a very interesting and dynamic doctor from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine last Wednesday night in the glitzy ballroom of London's Park Lane Hilton Hotel at the BMJ Group awards dinner, where the great and good of medicine were dressed up in black tie and glamorous gowns (not both at the same time) and we lamented the general willingness to talk about shit. It's her job, in a manner of speaking. Dr Val Curtis is a behavioural scientist and director of the London School's Hygiene Centre. She ought to know. Just one of the facts her unit promulgates - handwashing with soap could save perhaps a million lives a year. I hope to write more on what she is trying to do about it at a later date.

So back to the WHO/Unicef report which has dismal statistics on how far we have to go. Unhappily this is far more familiar MDG territory. Almost 39% of the world's population - more than a third of the people on the planet - do not have imporved sanitation facilities. "If the current trend continues unchanged, the international community will miss the 2015 sanitation MDG by almost one billion people," they say.

Open defecation, they say, is on the decline, from a quarter of people on the planet in 1990 to 17% in 2008. But this most risky of all sanitation practices is still widespread in southern Asia, says the report, where 44% of people still defecate in the open. Maybe it doesn't need spelling out for a sophisticated western audience who enjoy flush toilets behind closed doors, soap dispensers and taps that pour water if you so much as wave at them, but some of the worst diseases that kill small children are spread from hand to mouth - and that's unwashed hands that have been in contact with the shit that is lying around. I can't get the image of the sewage ditches running through Indian streets out of my head.

"Unsafe water, sanitation and hygiene claim the lives of an estimated 1.5 million children under the age of five each year," says the report. It may not be as big a conversational issue as Aids or malaria, but it sure matters, and this one is not just amenable to healthcare improvements. It needs poverty reduction and education - the basic stuff of development - just as much.

Read more »

Pressure is building on the French shipping company Delmas to cancel large shipments of rosewood, which was illegally logged in Madagascar during the nation's recent coup. Today two environmental groups, Global Witness and the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) called on Delmas to cancel the shipment, which is currently being loaded onto the Delmas operated ship named 'Kiara' in the Madagascar port of Vohemar.

Read more »

My brother, Stuart Tocher, who has died suddenly, aged 38, from cardiac sarcoidosis, was a gifted climber and all-round adventurous spirit. Having experimented with windsurfing, hang-gliding and snowboarding in his early 20s, he was introduced to rock climbing and it soon became his passion.

Born in Aldershot, Hampshire, he spent his working life as a highly skilled vehicle technician, working at various times on Honda, Citroën and Fiat cars (one year, he reached the British final of Fiat's top technician award). But he lived for his climbing and most weekends he would be off to places that offered fresh challenges: the Peak District, the Avon and Cheddar Gorges, Snowdonia, the Wye Valley, and especially to the sea cliffs near Swanage in Dorset (where he tackled climbs with names such as Hangover, Resurrection and Old Lag's Corner – and enjoyed cream teas in the local tearoom).

It was on trips abroad that he truly excelled and he climbed regularly in the French and Swiss alps, conquering, among other peaks, Piz Badile, Mont Blanc, the East Ridge of Aiguille du Chardonnet, the Dent du Géant, and the Contamine-Mazeaud Route on Mont Blanc du Tacul (an ice-climbing classic). Other trips saw him bouldering at Fontainebleau, climbing the Calanques (the sea cliffs of Marseille) and, only last December, trying new climbs in the Costa Blanca, Spain. One of his finest achievements was climbing in the beautiful Tuolumne Meadows, near the Yosemite Valley in California, where Cathedral Peak (including Eichorn's Pinnacle) was successfully tackled.

But Stuart was no solitary man of the mountains: he partied as hard as he climbed, was extremely gregarious and had the ability to make anyone laugh. He never married, but spent 14 years with his ex-partner, Lea, and was very proud of the role he played in helping to bring up her two children, Danny and Sabrina. He spent his last 18 months in Fareham, Hampshire, where he was happy socialising and passing on his climbing skills to younger friends.

On the Saturday before what would have been Stuart's 39th birthday, 31 of his friends and family members (and two dogs) hiked to the summit of Snowdon. Apparently the weather had been bad up there for months, but by the time we reached the summit, the sun had come out for us to toast Stu with a can of Guinness, his favourite drink, and eat a slice of birthday cake. He is survived by myself, our sister Janice and parents, Marion and Tom.

Read more »

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Thin-film solar maker First Solar Inc has struck a deal to sell a 30 megawatt power project to utility owner Southern Co and Ted Turner's Turner Renewable Energy, the panel maker said on Monday.

Read more »

The thousands of RVers who gather in Quartzsite, Ariz., every winter create in an impromptu community that might as well be in a Wal-Mart parking lot.

Read more »

(Reuters) - European carbon emissions futures rose above 13 euros on Monday, as German power and UK gas prices rallied, while the market shrugged off a decline in U.S. industrial output, traders said.

Read more »

OSLO (Reuters) - Levels of the main greenhouse gas in the atmosphere have risen to new highs in 2010 despite an economic slowdown in many nations that braked industrial output, data showed on Monday.

Read more »

BERLIN (Reuters) - Blackstone Group LP will be able to move forward with its 1-billion euro ($1.38 billion) project to build and manage a German offshore wind farm after a legal dispute was resolved, a company executive said on Monday.

Read more »

Ayrshire Power starts planning process for power station which would be UK's first to use carbon capture and storage

Climate activists are predicting a campaign of direct action against a new coal-fired power station that could be the UK's first to fit carbon-capture technology.

Campaigners say that if the proposed 1.6GW station in Ayrshire is approved, it will be the "new Kingsnorth", a reference to E.ON's controversial coal-fired plant in Kent that sparked battles between protesters and police before E.ON finally shelved it.

The warnings from Friends of the Earth (FoE) Scotland, WWF Scotland and the World Development Movement came as Ayrshire Power today took the first formal step towards applying for planning permission for the new station, at Hunterston on the Firth of Clyde.

The proposal has intensified the conflicts between green campaigners, power companies and the government over "decarbonising" energy supply and lessening the UK's heavy reliance on coal and gas for its electricity needs.

Juliet Swann, of FoE Scotland, said many local residents and a "large coalition" of environment groups would resist the scheme. It would increase the UK's use of coal, and, at first, use untested carbon capture and storage technology to tackle only a quarter of its CO2 emissions.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) involves trapping a percentage of the carbon dioxide emissions from power stations by collecting, transporting and then burying the CO2 so that it does not escape into the atmosphere and contribute to climate change.

Carbon capture should first be used on existing power stations, such as Longannet, which is one of two coal-fired stations in the running for a new carbon-capture demonstration project, Swann said.

"Carbon capture and storage is potentially a way to reach a low-carbon future," she said. "But it should be demonstrated on existing plants first, not least so we can share the technology with the rest of the world, and in doing so repay our debt to them for supplying us with so much of our dirty energy."

The dispute also focuses attention on the Scottish government's determination to abandon nuclear power, which generates at least 26% of Scotland's electricity, by increasing coal-fired production. The proposed station is near to Hunterston B nuclear station, which is due to close down in 2016; Scotland's other nuclear station, at Torness, will shut down in 2023.

Energy planning in Scotland is controlled by ministers in Edinburgh, while ministers in London control funding for carbon capture and energy taxation across the UK. The first minister, Alex Salmond, has championed carbon capture and the coal industry while at the same time insisting Scotland can become a "green powerhouse" from renewable energy.

To the fury of campaigners and local residents, Salmond's government aims to fast track the Hunterston proposal by using a new streamlined planning process, bypassing the often lengthy and expensive public-consultation rules that normally apply.

Residents are already challenging this move in court, claiming ministers illegally added Hunterston to the list of fast-track projects on the "national planning framework" without consulting them properly.

With the UK pledging to cut CO2 emissions by up to 42% by 2020, Ayrshire Power plans to make Hunterston the first newly built coal-fired plant in the UK to "capture" CO2 emissions and store them under the seabed.

New legislation requires power companies to fit carbon-capture technology for at least 300MW of its output. Ayrshire Power says 400MW (25% of its emissions) will be captured first, and, eventually, 90% of its CO2 emissions.

But Ayrshire Power admits it will need another £1bn – mostly from the UK government's carbon-capture funding programme – to pay for the CCS technology on top of the £2bn cost of building the power station.

The project has already suffered a serious blow after one of its original developers, the giant Danish power company Dong, withdrew from the proposal only days after E.ON suspended its plans for Kingsnorth.

Like E.ON, Dong also cited the recession and the heavy cost of investing in "clean coal". Ayrshire Power's sole owner, the Manchester-based airports and property firm Peel Holdings, admits it now needs significant new investors in the Hunterston project, feeding doubts that it will go ahead.

Ayrshire Power began the first stage in the fast-track process today under a new "gate check" procedure, where the government and statutory bodies check the company has the right documentation for the planning process. It has not confirmed when it will formally submit its full application.

Muir Miller, Hunterston's project director, said the plant would use up to 25% less coal than power stations now in use, by using biofuels and "supercritical" technology to burn coal at higher temperatures. The station would power 3 million homes.

"We believe our proposal supports the UK and Scottish governments' commitment to leading the way in developing CCS to assist in decarbonising the UK's electricity sector by 2030," he said. "We remain determined to deploy this technology at full scale on a modern supercritical power station, supported by appropriate regulatory and fiscal measures."

Read more »

A newly installed 637-kilowatt solar power system will supply the Port of West Sacramento with 100 percent of its electricity needs. It will cut the port’s energy costs by more than $20,000 annually and eliminate more than 34 million pounds of carbon-dioxide emissions over 25 years. The system consists of 3,536 solar panels covering 90,000 square [...]

Read more »