The UK will stick to its current target of cutting emissions by 34% from 1990 levels by 2020. to meet the targets of its 2008 Climate Change Act, as advised by The Committee on Climate Change.

That’s quite a commitment, considering that the UK currently has nearly half the US carbon footprint. Americans average 29 tonnes each, according to a new Norwegian count this summer. Per capita the UK carbon footprint is sixteen tonnes per person per year. That makes further cuts all the more impressive. Barclay’s Bank is saying that “The Copenhagen failure did little to alter the expected supply-demand balance under the EU ETS and it is not likely to have changed the underlying hedging pattern of power sector participants”.

Australia is also sticking by its plan to introduce the climate legislation needed in 2010 to support the Copenhagen Accord to avert climate catastrophe. The new pro-”Future” government of Kevin Rudd has its legislature impeded by the same “Fossil” Party that impedes action in the US. Yet, Rudd is going ahead, though it likely will cost him his government.

And yesterday Brazil just signed into law the highest of the range of greenhouse gas emissions cuts it had pledged at Copenhagen: of 39% cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.

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Chemical structure of the antibiotic tetracycline–one of the four classes of antibiotics that sampled soil microbes showed increased resistance to in the 2009 Study.

The prevalence of antibiotic resistant genes (ARG) in soil bacteria has been increasing steadily over the past seven decades, despite tighter controls on the use of antibiotics for agricultural purposes (in Europe). This is according to a recent benchmark study/analysis* of soil samples from five sites in the Netherlands. The research team, lead by David Graham of Newcastle University in the UK, found that “Seventy-eight percent of detected resistance genes, associated with four classes of antibiotics, showed increasing levels since 1940.”

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