-The United Nations The amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reached a new record high in 2011, according to a new United Nations report released today, ahead of the start next week of the latest round of global climate changes talks. The UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which produced the 2011 Greenhouse Gas Bulletin, said that between 1990 and 2011, there was a 30 per cent increase in radiative forcing –...

-The Business Standard Clamp down on burning of waste, industrial smoke Come winter, and Delhi is wrapped in a blanket of smog. It isn’t pretty. Also, it poses grave environmental, health and transportation hazards. Winter seems to have come early this year, and so has the smog. The economic costs are considerable: the winter schedule of airlines and trains invariably goes haywire owing to poor visibility. People breathe in more particulate...

-The Economist MID-AFTERNOON in Delhi, and a red blob looms in the haze. The sun barely illuminates the city. A yellow-green smog hangs low. Even indoors, fuzzy halos of dust and smoke surround lamps. Those foolish enough to be out jogging, or compelled to stand at junctions directing traffic, complain of shortness of breath, migraines, clogged lungs. Newspapers are crammed with articles about asthma, wheezing children at clinics, an epidemic of...

-The Hindu The comprehensive clean-up that the public sector oil marketing companies recently initiated in the liquefied petroleum gas distribution system is a commendable if long overdue effort to check what had evidently become a free-for-all game. Groaning under the “subsidy burden” in a market sector where consumption levels of the convenience fuel had skyrocketed over the decades, the companies first moved collectively to computerise data with regard to LPG consumers...

-The Business Standard The sorry implications of the LPG price rollback  Following the government’s decision to increase the price of diesel and introduce a cap on the number of subsidised gas cylinders available for household use in September, there was a reasonable amount of hope that the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) had learned some lessons. First, that it was essential to reduce the fuel subsidy bill, the most obvious component of the...