Record sums were invested last year in coal power – the most carbon intensive form of energy on the planet – by the World Bank, despite international commitments to slash the carbon emissions blamed for climate change. The World Bank said this week that a total of US$3.4bn ย – or a quarter of all funding for energy projects – was spent in the year to June 2010 helping to build new coal-fired power stations. Over the same period the bank also spent $1bn ย on looking and drilling for oil and gas.
The programme is โyet another bung to industrial productionโ, experts say.
Critics say new LNG ventures in British Columbia saddle Indigenous communities with debt, opaque ownership structures, and financial risk that could leave them owing billions.
Campaigners have highlighted the irony of the Tory peer warning about threats to free speech at a think tank bankrolled by a repressive regime.
Corporate pledges to fight deforestation by turning degraded pasture into cropland seen boosting demand for harmful chemical inputs.
