Party tussle ensnares Obama’s climate goals

Democrats are fighting over control of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the outcome could affect President-elect Obama's efforts to limit the heat-trapping gases blamed for global warming.

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Local government in the deep end. Local governments, by providing many of the essentials for everyday living, are at the sharp-end of temperature changes, increasing water levels, drought and storms. [News Source]

Top quality water worth conserving. Water is becoming a scarce and valuable resource. Population growth, climate change, growth of industry, agriculture and sprawling cities all put serious strain on resources globally -- you know there's a problem when one country buys tankered water from another. [News Source]

Using the sea a tempting answer. The worst drought in a century, especially in Australia's most populated and fastest growing regions, has forced state governments to make expensive, and in some quarters unpopular, decisions to secure water supply. [News Source]

Obama’s chance. Voters chose a greener White House and Congress, but what does the election mean for clean energy and climate change—and how might measures to cap carbon emissions and advance renewable energy fare? [News Source]

Extreme events claims mounting. Climate change costs insurance companies billions, so they are developing plans to avert its adverse effects. [News Source]

In search of the missing Stone Age tribes. Little evidence has been unearthed of those who lived in Europe during the last big bout of climate change. Have we been looking in the wrong place? [News Source]

Melbourne sheds wet reputation. The Roaring Forties that used to bring Melbourne's cold, wet weather have moved south. Since 1997 Melbourne has been in an extended dry that David Jones, head of climate analysis at the Bureau of Meteorology, describes as exceptional and unprecedented. [News Source]

Garnaut’s grim reality here to stay. The Garnaut report says that without mitigation, within the next two decades urban water supplies will be stressed, and agriculture will be affected. By mid-century irrigated agriculture in the Murray-Darling Basin will be halved. [News Source]

Opportunity in carbon-conscious economy. The current financial crisis may reinforce the notion that carbon is the commodity of the future. [News Source]

BP pulls out of bidding for U.K. climate-change project. The UK's hopes of becoming a world leader in the battle against global warming suffered a double setback when British oil major BP PLC said it would exit the UK wind power market and pull out of a competition to design the country's first carbon capture and storage project. [News Source]