Simon

The Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama has chosen Joe Biden as his running mate and Vice President. But how green is really Joe Biden? Well, it seems he is green enough for the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) to applaud Barack Obama's choice and to hail Joe Biden in regards to his environmental records. "With a lifetime LCV environmental score of 83%, Joe Biden recognizes that ending our addiction to oil is vital to our national security," LCV President Gene Karpinski said. "Senator Biden is a long-time leader on key energy and environmental issues, and the members of LCV enthusiastically support Senator Obama’s choice." ScienceSays.net lists "Biden's awesome environmental record" saying he is just as strong on the environment as Obama and that Biden "isn't afraid to say it": Supports an 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050 Supports 40 miles-per-gallon fuel efficiency standards by 2017 Wants the US to use 20% renewable energy by 2020 Opposes offshore drilling or drilling for oil in the Arctic (ANWR) Take Big Oil’s $2 billion dollar tax breaks to pay for offshore wind farms Ensured protection of 100% of the coastline in his home state Wrote a plan to exchange debt-relief for rainforest protection Believes polluters should pay Superfund fees to clean up their toxic waste Wants the US to take a stronger stance to end commercial whaling The League of Conservation Voters also says that Obama's Energy Plan for America "is the most substantive, comprehensive plan ever put forward by a nominee for President," and that Biden's "progressive energy stance" will help to boost Obama's "visionary plan." "They will usher in a new era of environmental leadership," Gene Karpinski said. Image credit: Barack Obama @ Flickr. Image licensed under a Creative-Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license.

The Flock browser is based and built on from Mozilla, the same engine that powers the popular browser Firefox. But even so the two web browsers are very much different. Flock's slogan is "the social web browser." And that is very much true. Flock is a browser for more social-minded people and bloggers, like me, who like to keep everything just a few mouse clicks away. With the Flock browser you can stay connected with all your friends from the major social websites such as Digg, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and Twitter, for example. You can easily share photos, links, text and videos with your friends. With its built-in blog editor you can post to your blog over at Blogger, Livejournal, Typepad, Wordpress and many more. Flock also has an awesome RSS reader, which looks great if you got a larger monitor. And with Flock's eco-edition you can browse the web a little "greener." The Flock eco-edition is packed from the start with green blogs, green RSS-feeds, and news sites such as National Geographic, Treehugger, Ecorazzi, Green Yahoo! and many others. If you decide to use the eco-edition 10% of all search engine-earnings generated by you and others who use the same edition will go towards an environmental charity. "Flock believes in providing users who download the Flock Eco-Edition a means to give back by donating 10% of search proceeds to the environmental charity of choice, as deemed by the voting of the community of Flock’s Eco-Edition users at the end of this year. Flock makes money when people search through the browser. So the more you search via Flock Eco-Edition, the more we're committing to give back." The eco-edition will also come with its own "green" skin. I personally don’t like this skin. And because somehow you can’t change to the more pleasant and default Flock browser skin I had to delete the eco-edition and download the default Flock browser. Of course I still kept all the green bookmarks and RSS-feeds. The Flock eco-edition is a great browser if you can tolerate the "green" skin it comes with. It does misses a few good features that it's "cousin" Firefox 3 has, but I guess that will be fixed when Flock 2 is released. I really recommend this browser to bloggers or people who often hang out at places such as Digg, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr. The browser is free to download and use. It works on Windows, Mac and Linux.

Professor Will Steffen, head of the climate change unit at the Australian National University and science adviser to the Federal Government in Australia, says that sea levels around the world could rise by 4 meters this century. He also claims that the scientific community underestimates how fast our climate is changing. "The evidence over the past 12 to 18 months suggests that we have underestimated how fast this aspect of the earth's system can change," he said. "We see things happening much faster than we thought." Professor Steffen raised this concern at the Coast to Coast Collaboration Conference in Darwin where he said "a four-metre rise could have devastating effects."

The polar bear to the left holds a sign where it says "Homeless". Photo by: Mimo. Last week the climate organisation Klimax (climax) held a large demonstration in central Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark. The demonstration was the first of many more planned by the organisation before December 2009 when the top UN climate meeting Cop15 will be held. "Denmark is to host the UN COP15 climate summit in the late winter of 2009. We are going to make that summit one the leaders will never forget. We are going to raise our voices in ways they cannot escape. We are going to tell them that we are not going to accept them playing Russian Roulette with our climate anymore. They are the few yet the consequences of their actions affects every being on the planet. We are going to protest using Nonviolent Direct Action because we cannot allow some delegates to endanger the face of the planet anymore. It is time to take the power back." Around 500-600 people participated, mainly young people, in the march through the central parts of Copenhagen under the slogan "hands of our climate." The demonstrators also took more direct action by planting trees at a crossing and smashing a window using a miniature version of a wind power station on the headquarter for the Danish Industry. The Danish Industry is a lobbyist organisation which represents some of the dirtiest and most CO2 polluting companies in Denmark. Later on they released three banners from a construction site with the words "planet" "before" "profit". When the demonstration was about to end a coffin full of water balloons was opened and thrown on the police. More photos from the demonstration can be found here. Photo Credit: Mimo: Mimophoto.dk, Mimophoto.deviantart.com, Myspace.com/mimophoto