The lower weight and fewer parts mean that the 787 should use 20 per cent less fuel and require 30 per cent less maintenance than its predecessors. Boeing said that the model would make less noise and its Rolls-Royce and General Electric engines pollute less than those in equivalent-sized jets.

Airbus took 680 firm orders in the first half of 2007, according to figures published on its website today, and has overtaken US rival Boeing which notched up 544 orders for the year to July 3. Airbus also outperformed its US rival in terms of deliveries over the period, reporting a record 231 for the first half of the year.

Sweden's IKEA will charge U.S. customers five cents for disposable plastic shopping bags in what the international furniture giant said on Wednesday was a first step to ending their use altogether. IKEA said the decision to stop giving away free bags to customers aimed to reduce the estimated 100 billion bags thrown away by all U.S. consumers each year.
IKEA is believed to be first major retailer in the United States to undertake such a program, according to National Retail Federation spokesman Scott Krugman. (...)
The average American family of four throws away about 1,500 single-use polyethylene bags, which do not degrade for around 1,000 years, IKEA said. Less than 1 percent are recycled.

Analysis by the Local Government Association revealed that UK households send almost 27 million tonnes of rubbish to landfill every year. This is equivalent to almost half a tonne for every home in the country. The figures also show that Britain sends seven million tonnes more rubbish into landfill than any other country in Europe. Germany, which has a population 25% larger than the UK, disposes of less than half the amount of rubbish into the ground.

It's pickup time at the Vauban kindergarten here at the edge of the Black Forest, but there's not a single minivan waiting for the kids. Instead, a convoy of helmet-donning moms - bicycle trailers in tow - pedal up to the entrance.  Welcome to Germany's best-known environmentally friendly neighborhood and a successful experiment in green urban living. The Vauban development - 2,000 new homes on a former military base 10 minutes by bike from the heart of Freiburg - has put into practice many ideas that were once dismissed as eco-fantasy but which are now moving to the center of public policy. 

The obvious question: Why would anyone go to the trouble and expense of shipping an entire home here from overseas? "Quality, speed and energy efficiency," says Meier, a German-born wood importer who has since started his own company, Platz Haus USA, in hopes of doing the same for other would-be homeowners. In January, his first client, Mary Ellen Vaughan, watched her 2,000-square-foot German chalet go up in a matter of days in Salina, down the road from Meier's house. "Everything you can imagine went wrong weatherwise, and we were still able to build it in a week," says Meier. While U.S. home-builders beg to differ, Meier argues that European homes tend to be better-built for many reasons: Because families own their homes far longer, the homes are "built to last," using slow-growing Nordic timber that has tighter rings and, thus, makes stronger boards. Because fuel costs have always been higher and government regulations tighter, energy efficiency in Germany is top priority. Walls tend to be thicker and better-insulated, passive solarheating is the norm and building materials are greener, he says. And they're beautiful.

The Terror-Free Oil Initiative is dedicated to encouraging Americans to buy gasoline that originated from countries that do not export or finance terrorism. We educate the public by promoting those companies that acquire their crude oil supply from nations outside the Middle East and by exposing those companies that do not. We are also looking into creating a healthy debate concerning alternate methods of fuel production and consumption.

After all, nothing is a bigger threat today to the Western way of life and quality of life than the combination of climate change, pollution, species loss, and Islamist radicalism and petro-authoritarianism --all fueled by our energy addictions. And no solution is possible to these problems without concerted government actions to reduce emissions, to inspire green innovation and to shift from oil to renewable power. Therefore, green is not just the new red, white and blue — the next great American national security project -- it should also be the color, focus and cement of the Atlantic alliance in the 21st century. As a German official remarked to me, "The whole issue has the potential of becoming a big trans-Atlantic project at a time when we have no other good big project that [embodies] a vision." (...) Germany's foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, recently gave a major address on how "energy security will strongly influence the global security agenda in the 21st century."

More than 100 villagers had gathered on June 24 to celebrate the summer solstice in Pretzien, a village south of Magdeburg in the east German state of Saxony-Anhalt, with a dance and a bonfire. (...) According to the 'Tagesspiegel' newspaper, three local far-right extremists present in the crowd, aged 24, 27 and 28, threw both a US flag and 'Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl' onto the pyre with one man saying: "I commit Anne Frank to the fire." The scene was evocative of the infamous bonfires organised by the Nazis in 1933 in Berlin and across Germany to rid the Third Reich of "degenerate books".

The energy sector is heavily dependent on oil and gas. Mineral oils make up 37 percent of needs, but 97 percent is imported, a third coming from Russia. Gas accounts for 23 percent of consumption, of which more than 80 percent is imported, 37 percent from Russia. (...) With growing dependence on Russia for its energy, some politicians say it is time to diversify sources. The coalition's energy experts also agree that Germany needs a policy that is much more aggressive in dealing with global warming, promoting efficiency and becoming economically competitive.

Germany's energy policy has for years been influenced by the big companies that have hampered competition and have done their best to prevent diversification of energy sources because it would undermine their position in the market. These policies damage our economy and our competitiveness. (...) For 20 years Ruhrgas, which has long term contracts to import gas from Russia, has owned a piece of property at one of the big harbors where it has blocked the building of such a terminal because it would undermine their monopoly on the domestic gas market.