China emerges as a leader in clean coal technology. China has emerged in the past two years as the world’s leading builder of so-called clean coal power plants, mastering the technology and driving down the cost. [News Source]

Buzzwords: Rephrasing Obama’s lexicon. In the debate over his top environmental goals, President Obama is backing away from "cap and trade." Not the policy. It's the phrase itself, deemed confusing by Democratic pollsters, that has all but disappeared from the president's vocabulary of late. [News Source]

Drought, politics trouble farmers in California. California is in its third year of drought, and many farmers in the state's crop-rich Central Valley are looking at dusty fields, or worse, are cutting down their orchards before the trees die. [News Source]

The dangers of a carbon licence to spill. At $10 a tonne — a figure plucked from the smog — the Rudd Government has undercut the emerging market for carbon credits, analysts say. [News Source]

Canadians barely support carbon tax, poll finds. Canadians are willing to flirt with a nationwide carbon tax to fight climate change, but bets are off when it comes to paying the bill, a new poll has found. [News Source]

Report calls for overhaul of global institutions to combat climate change. The report recommends the creation of powerful surveillance and enforcement mechanisms, which would ensure countries honour their commitments to cut carbon emissions. [News Source]

Darker times for solar-power industry. The global recession and tight credit conditions have cast a chill on the solar-power industry after years of breakneck growth, and could usher in long-term changes in the industry. [News Source]

Power firm to invest $20-M for coal plant. Conal Holdings Corp. will spend $20 million more for its 200-megawatt coal fired power plant in Sarangani to reduce emission way below the allowable level and in setting up a 800-hectare carbon sink. [News Source]

Global ocean talks underway in Indonesia. A key global conference on oceans has opened in Indonesia with a warning that climate change will accelerate the destruction of precious marine resources. [News Source]

Tracking polar bears, an environmental barometer. The threatened polar bear has become an icon for the potentially devastating effects of global warming. The animal depends on sea ice for its survival, and this ice is disappearing, no more so than in the Chukchi Sea — the remote stretch of ocean between Alaska and Russia. [News Source]

Paradise lost: Islanders prepare for the flood. As leading climate models predict that sea level rise will make the Maldives uninhabitable by 2070, 2050 or even as early as 2030, the country is striking back with an ambitious programme of island restoration. But will it be enough to keep the ocean at bay? [News Source]