-The Guardian  Governments spend years negotiating environmental agreements, but then willfully ignore them – it's a dismal record It's global agreement time again. In two weeks, 120 world leaders and 190-odd countries will go to the Rio+20 Earth summit and – unless the talks collapse – sign up to new international goals, pledges, targets, protocols and treaties, and promise to commit to sustainable development, protect the earth and use resources more wisely....

-The Telegraph The economic survey has challenged an international assessment that has ranked India 125, or near-bottom, among 132 countries on environmental performance, but has acknowledged that air pollution has increased to alarming levels. The survey, released by the Union government today, has questioned the methodology of the Environmental Performance Index 2012 that has assigned air quality in India a rank of 132, the worst in the world, and similarly low ranks...

Consider this. Every time petrol prices rise, oil companies end up losing more money. How? The price differential between petrol and diesel increases further; people start buying diesel-powered vehicles so oil firms bleed more. Even worse, we all bleed because dieselisation adds to toxic pollution in our cities. This, in turn, adds to the health burden and costs. This is all very well accepted. Yet, nobody has done anything to fix...

30 per cent of cars sold last year were with diesel engines The growing gap between the prices of petrol and diesel has given a boost to the sale of diesel cars even as environmentalists cry foul over the public health impact due to the increasing use of diesel, which is also referred to as “dirty fuel” in Indian cities. While petrol consumers are paying market-linked prices of Rs. 66.84 per litre...

-The United Nations   Signs of Ozone depletion are again appearing over the Antarctic, the United Nations reported today, adding that prevailing temperatures and polar stratospheric clouds indicate that the degree of Ozone loss this year will most likely be about average in comparison to the past decade. However, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) noted that it is still too early to make a definitive statement on the level of depletion of Ozone...