Stuff.co.nz - NZ, Aust urged to join Asean green deal

Southeast Asian leaders are urging New Zealand and Australia to make deeper cuts in carbon emissions as part of a "Green New Deal" covering the region.

Brisbane Times - Piecemeal approach will kill the response to climate change

Meanwhile, the coalminers have figured in large advertisements placed by the mining lobbyist the Australian Coal Association. Its point, as expressed in those advertisements, was that the Rudd Government's carbon pollution reduction scheme would threaten jobs in the coal industry. On the North Coast of NSW it is homes; in the coalfields of Queensland and NSW it is jobs; all across the country other aspects of life are being transformed utterly by climate change. Rural Victoria is questioning the settlement and bushfire management policies that contributed to loss of life during last summer's fires. Towns in western NSW are contemplating life without water as dams lie empty with summer approaching. Many other similar processes are going on elsewhere. Climate change is the thread that runs through them all. Most aspects of modern life will be affected by it and by the national response to it. And as changes become apparent, different interest groups are emerging, each arguing their own case with little reference to the wider problem.

China's push for oil in Gulf of Mexico puts U.S. in awkward spot

Reporting from Beijing - A Chinese company's gambit to drill for oil in U.S. territory demonstrates China's determination to lock up the raw materials it needs to sustain its rapid growth, wherever those resources lie.

The state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corp., or CNOOC, reportedly is negotiating the purchase of leases owned by the Norwegian StatoilHydro in U.S. waters in the Gulf of Mexico, the source of about a quarter of U.S. crude oil production.

China's push to enter U.S. turf comes four years after CNOOC's $18.5-billion bid to buy Unocal Corp. was scuttled by Congress on national security grounds. The El Segundo oil firm eventually merged with Chevron Corp. of San Ramon.

New Agency to Lead Global Energy Push

PARIS — The International Renewable Energy Agency, set up this year to lead a global crusade for renewable energy development and sharing of technology between the developed and developing worlds, has come a long way in a short time.

Signed into existence in January at a founding conference in Bonn, the agency — known by its acronym, Irena — now has 137 member states, including the United States, which joined in July. Mexico has said it plans to join shortly.

Oil prices hit high but report warns of supply crunch

A report from the non-governmental organisation Global Witness – famous for its exposé of so-called "blood diamonds" – pointed to an impending supply shock that could be so severe that many of the world's poor countries would simply be shut off from the world of energy by sky-high prices.

Two years in the preparation, Global Witness's report, Heads in the Sand, accused governments of ignoring the fact that the world could soon start to run short of oil. This would lead to huge consequences in terms of price shocks and much higher levels of violence around the world than last year's food riots.

"There is a train crash about to happen from an energy point of view. But politicians everywhere seem to have entirely missed the scale of the problem," said the report's author, Simon Taylor.

"We are all addicted to oil but if you look at the mathematics of the problem, they simply don't add up in terms of future supply and demand."