WThe Agreement on the Conservation of Gorillas and Their Habitats, also known as the Gorilla Agreement, is a multilateral environmental agreement that binds the parties to conserve gorillas in their territories. It was concluded 2007 under the auspices of the Convention on Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), also known as the "Bonn Convention", with scientific support from the Royal Belgian Institute for Natural Sciences and GRASP. The Gorilla Agreement covers 10 range states and entered into force in June 2008.
WAn Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming is a 2008 book by Nigel Lawson. In it, Lawson argues that global warming is happening, but that the science is far from settled. He opposes the scientific consensus as summarized by the IPCC. He also argues that warming will bring both benefits and negative consequences, and that the impact of these changes will be relatively moderate rather than apocalyptic. The book has been rejected by climatologists, including IPCC authors Jean Palutikof and Robert Watson as unscientific.
WThe Burning Season is a documentary about the burning of rainforests in Indonesia which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2008. The main characters featured in the film are: Dorjee Sun from Australia; Achmadi, a small-scale palm oil farmer from Jambi province in Indonesia; and Lone Drøscher Nielsen, a Danish conservationist based in Kalimantan, Indonesia.
WClearSign Technologies Corporation (ClearSign) is a United States-based company that develops emission-control technology.
WThe Climate Change Act 2008 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The Act makes it the duty of the Secretary of State to ensure that the net UK carbon account for all six Kyoto greenhouse gases for the year 2050 is at least 100% lower than the 1990 baseline, toward avoiding dangerous climate change. The Act aims to enable the United Kingdom to become a low-carbon economy and gives ministers powers to introduce the measures necessary to achieve a range of greenhouse gas reduction targets. An independent Committee on Climate Change has been created under the Act to provide advice to UK Government on these targets and related policies. In the act Secretary of State refers to the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change.
WClimate Code Red: The Case for Emergency Action is a 2008 book which presents scientific evidence that the global warming crisis is worse than official reports and national governments have so far indicated. The book argues that we are facing a "sustainability emergency" that requires a clear break from business-as-usual politics. The authors explain that emergency action to address climate change is not so much a radical idea as an indispensable course we must embark upon. Climate Code Red draws heavily on the work of a large number of climate scientists, including James E. Hansen.
WThe Deniers is a 2008 book by Lawrence Solomon, a Canadian environmentalist and writer. Subtitled "The world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution, and fraud," the book draws attention to a number of scientists and others who, according to Solomon, have advanced arguments against what he calls the "alarmist" view of global warming, as presented by Al Gore, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the mainstream media, and others. The book is based on a series of columns Solomon wrote for Canada's National Post. It has been criticized for misquoting the scientists it featured.
WThe Dirty Energy Dilemma: What’s Blocking Clean Power in the United States is a 2008 book by academic Benjamin K. Sovacool, published by Praeger. In the book, Sovacool explores problems with the current U.S. electricity system and ways to overcome them.
WThe Discovery of Global Warming is a book by the physicist and historian Spencer R. Weart published in 2003; revised and updated edition, 2008. It traces the history of scientific discoveries that led to the current scientific opinion on climate change. It has been translated into Spanish, Japanese, Italian, Arabic, Chinese and Korean.
WThe Earth After Us is a 2008 non-fiction book by Jan Zalasiewicz about the geological legacy that humans might one day leave behind them.
WThe Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 was a $288 billion, five-year agricultural policy bill that was passed into law by the United States Congress on June 18, 2008. The bill was a continuation of the 2002 Farm Bill. It continues the United States' long history of agricultural subsidies as well as pursuing areas such as energy, conservation, nutrition, and rural development. Some specific initiatives in the bill include increases in Food Stamp benefits, increased support for the production of cellulosic ethanol, and money for the research of pests, diseases and other agricultural problems.
WThe Governors’ Climate and Forests Task Force is a sub-national collaboration between 38 states and provinces from Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Mexico, Nigeria, Peru, Spain, and the United States. The Task Force is designed to support jurisdictional approaches to low emissions rural development and reduced emissions from deforestation and land use (REDD+), specifically through performance-based payment schemes and national or state-based greenhouse gas (GHG) compliance regimes.
WThe Green Bible is an English version of the New Revised Standard Version Bible with a focus on environmental issues and teachings. It was originally published by Harper Bibles on October 7, 2008. It is a study Bible featuring a foreword by Desmond Tutu and essays by Matthew Sleeth, Calvin B. DeWitt, Pope John Paul II, Brian McLaren, Ellen Bernstein, Ellen F. Davis, James Jones (bishop), N.T. Wright, Barbara Brown Taylor, and Gordon Aeschliman.
WThe Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems is a 2008 book by Van Jones. It outlines a plan for simultaneously solving socioeconomic inequality and environmental problems. The book has received favorable reviews from Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, Laurie David, Paul Hawken, Winona LaDuke and Ben Jealous. The Green Collar Economy is the first environmental book written by an African-American to make the New York Times bestseller list.
WGusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of Energy Independence is a book by Robert Bryce which was released in 2008 and is published by PublicAffairs.
WThe Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the Conservation of High Andean Flamingos and their Habitats is a multilateral environmental memorandum of understanding that was concluded under the auspices of the Convention on Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), also known as the Bonn Convention. The MoU came into effect on 4 December 2008 and provides protection for the populations of high Andean flamingos, which have been subject to drastic reduction and fragmentation of their habitats and have a delicate state of conservation. The MoU covers four range states. As of August 2012, three range states have signed the MoU.
WHot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution—And How It Can Renew America is a book by New York Times Foreign Affairs columnist Thomas Friedman, proposing that the solutions to global warming and the best method to regain the United States' economic and political stature in the world are to embrace the clean energy and green technology industries. The title derives from the convergence of Hot, Flat and Crowded.
WDirective 2008/1/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 January 2008 concerning integrated pollution prevention and control is a directive of the European Union. It replaces the Council Directive 96/61/EC of 24 September 1996 on the same subject matter; both are commonly referred to as IPPC Directive.
WThe Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill was an environmental and industrial disaster that occurred on Monday December 22, 2008, when a dike ruptured at a coal ash pond at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston Fossil Plant in Roane County, Tennessee, releasing 1.1 billion US gallons of coal fly ash slurry. The coal-fired power plant, located across the Clinch River from the city of Kingston, used a series of ponds to store and dewater the fly ash, a byproduct of coal combustion. The spill released a slurry of fly ash and water, which traveled across the Emory River and its Swan Pond embayment, onto the opposite shore, covering up to 300 acres (1.2 km2) of the surrounding land. The spill damaged multiple homes and flowed into nearby waterways including the Emory River and Clinch River, both tributaries of the Tennessee River. It was the largest industrial spill in United States history.
WLast Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder is a 2005 book by author Richard Louv that documents decreased exposure of children to nature in American society and how this "nature-deficit disorder" harms children and society. The book examines research and concludes that direct exposure to nature is essential for healthy childhood development and for the physical and emotional health of children and adults. The author also suggests solutions to the problems he describes. A revised and expanded edition was published in 2008.
WThe Planning Act 2008 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom intended to speed up the process for approving major new infrastructure projects such as airports, roads, harbours, energy facilities such as nuclear power and waste facilities. Along with the Climate Change Bill and the Energy Bill this bill was considered by the Brown administration to be one of the "three legislative pillars of the Government's strategy to secure long-term prosperity and quality of life for all". The Infrastructure Planning Commission has since been abolished and replaced with the Planning Inspectorate as of 31 March 2012.
WPopulation Control: Real Costs, Illusory Benefits is a nonfiction book by Steven W. Mosher, first published in 2008. Population Control is a detailed exposition on the global effort to combat overpopulation, arguing that not only population control is immoral in many cases, but that overpopulation is a myth.
WRenewal is a 2008 feature-length documentary film about religious-environmental activists. Directed and produced by American filmmakers Marty Ostrow and Terry Kay Rockefeller, the film includes eight stories that represent the growing religious-environmental movement. Each story is set in a different religious-tradition, addressing a different environmental concern. Renewal began airing on public television stations in the United States in April 2009.
WThe Svalbard Global Seed Vault is a secure backup facility for the world's crop diversity on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen in the remote Arctic Svalbard archipelago. The Seed Vault provides long-term storage of duplicates of seeds conserved in genebanks around the world. This provides security of the world’s food supply against the loss of seeds in genebanks due to mismanagement, accident, equipment failures, funding cuts, and natural disasters. The Seed Vault is managed under terms spelled out in a tripartite agreement among the Norwegian Government, the Crop Trust, and the Nordic Genetic Resource Center (NordGen).
WTasmania's Wilderness Battles: A History is a 2008 book by environmentalist Greg Buckman, who has "spent [his life] fighting Tasmanian environmental battles." The book looks at the wilderness areas of Tasmania which have been the focus of extensive conflict over environmental issues. Buckman presents a record of some of the significant events in that conflict, primarily from the viewpoint of an environmentalist.
WTen Technologies to Fix Energy and Climate or Ten Technologies to Save the Planet is a popular science book by Chris Goodall first published in 2008 and re-issued in 2009 by Profile Books. Its ten chapters each detail a technology that has the potential to reduce greenhouse gases while being economically and technologically viable in the present or near future. The book received a positive critical response for the way in which it was written and dealt with the issues surrounding Global Warming.
WThe 2008 United Nations Climate Change Conference took place at PIF Congress Centre, Poznań International Fair (PIF), in Poznań, Poland, between December 1 and December 12, 2008. Representatives from over 180 countries attended along with observers from intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations.
WUnited States v. Approximately 64,695 Pounds of Shark Fins is a 2008 decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit concerning civil forfeiture in admiralty law. Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote for a three-judge panel that ordered that the shark fins be returned to their owners, reversing a decision by the Southern District of California. The government did not appeal the case further.
WThe Waste Minimisation Act is an Act of Parliament passed in New Zealand in 2008.
WThe Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) Concerning the Conservation of the Manatee and Small Cetaceans of Western Africa and Macaronesia is a Multilateral Environmental Memorandum of Understanding and entered into effect on 3 October 2008 under the auspices of the Bonn Convention. The MoU covers 29 range States. As of August 2012, 17 range States have signed the MoU, as well as a number of cooperating organizations.