Because of the recession (yes we're allowed to say that now) firms are apparently using less water according to the BBC news business story Recession hits Severn Trent sales.

President Obama is not hanging about is he? Yesterday he announced America's intent to provide global leadership on climate change (Gordon Brown, are you listening?) and to allow states to set their own vehicle emissions targets for vehicles.

London, 26th January 2009: A 16 foot high sculpture of an iceberg featuring a stranded female polar bear and her baby cub was launched on the River Thames today providing Londoners with a timely reminder of the dangers of global warming.

The sculpture, which was specially commissioned to mark the launch of Eden, a new digital TV channel devoted to natural history, graphically brought to life one of the most iconic images of climate change – the melting ice caps.

Ministers will apparently give the go-ahead for the controversial third runway at London's Heathrow Airport later today according to the BBC.

Despite open opposition from around 50 of the Government's own MPs, opposition MPs, environmental groups, concerned citizens and residents of the houses in the path of the runway, the announcement will be made today under the provision that the expansion is within strict environmental parameters.

On Monday afternoon we heard that the decision on whether to expand Heathrow Airport by building a third runway was imminent and that a Government decision would be made this week.

As innocuous as it may seem, "Googling" apparently has a definite environmental impact.

A story in The Sunday Times says that two Google searches are the equivalent to boiling enough water for one cup of tea.

Alex Wissner-Gross, a physicist at Harvard University who came up with the figures, estimates that a search on Google generates 7g of CO2. Boiling a kettle for just one cup of tea generates 15g of CO2.

In the weekly address from the President-Elect, Barack Obama, on Saturday 10th January, you could be forgiven for hoping he was talking just about environmental issues when he stated:

These numbers are a stark reminder that we simply cannot continue on our current path.

Rising temperatures or sea levels? Disappearing rainforests? Breakup of glaciers or endangered species? He continued:

It’s not too late to change course – but only if we take immediate and dramatic action.

It's quite incredible that the recycling industry seems to have collapsed.

A story on the UK TV news brought the matter to my attention with a company in the North East of the country having to rent vast warehouse space to store the unused and unwanted paper & cardboard they collected for recycling.

I then stumbled across another story in The Guardian saying pretty much the same thing but half a world away.

On Monday 8th December protesters from the anti-aviation activists, Plane Stupid, broke through the perimeter barriers of Stansted Airport in Essex, England, to make a point against the proposed building of a second runway at London's third biggest airport. (Heathrow & Gatwick are London's two top airports)

It's that time of year again folks, it's Buy Nothing Day.

Unless of course you're in North America where it was Buy Nothing Day yesterday, to coincide with Black Friday, that day of retail mayhem where shoppers become so rabid with the hunger for cheap deals that this year a man was trampled to death by the consuming hordes!