The seven Republican members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will boycott next Tuesday’s planned markup of the Kerry-Boxer climate legislation. Ah yes, the “screw you guys, I’m going home” tactic. How productive.
Last week I wrote in this space that when faced with a problem that so clearly requires huge top-down action from governments the world over, what two contrarians write in a book doesn’t exactly bother me that much. But now members of Congress are pissed off too.
Today is 350.org’s International Day of Climate Action, during which people around the world are trying to call attention to our need to bring the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere back down to 350 parts-per-million (ppm). A noble cause, to be sure — but can we actually do it?
When Joe Romm over at the Indispensable Climate Progress gets going, he really gets going. Frankly, as interested as I am in this sort of thing, I’m getting bored.
In the midst of a week when climate change finally stole back some of the spotlight that had been hogged by health care reform for months, the Senate fought off a potentially devastating attempt to emasculate the EPA and its recently won power to regulate greenhouse gases.
The Environmental Protection Agency has granted California’s waiver request that will allow the state to enforce strict greenhouse gas emissions standards on cars beginning with the present model year. California first applied for the waiver in 2005, but was denied several years later. Now, the EPA grants the waiver based on the need for California to improve its air pollution conditions.
NASA’s Dr. James Hansen joined in an act of civil disobedience against mountaintop removal mining by attempting to trespass on the property of Massey Energy near Coal River Mountain in West Virginia, and was arrested along with other protesters including Darryl Hannah and former US Representative Ken Hechler (D-WV).
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee approved by a vote of 15 to 8 a piece of legislation that would open up huge areas of the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere for drilling of oil and natural gas. It also contains requirements for increases in renewable energy generation, and a number of other energy-related measures, but it seems a sad and regressive alternative to Waxman-Markey, which may reach a floor vote in the House by next week.
Japan will attempt to reduce emissions to 15 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, which is about equivalent to eight percent below 1990 levels. Critics will say that the new targets aren’t remotely bold enough for the world’s second largest economy and fifth largest emitter of greenhouse gases, just as some say the cuts proposed for the US in the Waxman-Markey Bill are off the mark.
In a paper published recently in the journal Conservation Biology, two scientists attempt to summarize all the available arguments both for and against scientists-as-advocates. Their conclusion, arrived at because of the determination that scientists are citizens first and scientists second, is that the scientific community should indeed be more involved in advocacy than it is. Climate change, to me, seems to be the ideal spot for this to take place.
May 9 is National Train Day, one of my favorite holidays. (Well, since it was created last year, at least.) I find trains to be a particularly great way to travel, for both short and long trips.
In what feels like an extension of Earth Day (Month), the Environmental Protection Agency has declared May to be Sustainability Month. EPA scientists and administrators will engage the public through in-person events and online communication, all aimed at teaching people how to meet “the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
A recent study by Canadian researchers published in the Journal of Animal Science indicate that by fine-tuning the balance of starch, sugar, cellulose, ash, fat and other elements of cattle feed, methane production by the cows can be reduced by as much as 25 percent.
The Environmental Protection Agency has launched an interesting campaign aimed at increasing citizens’ active efforts to help the environment: Pick 5 for the Environment. The idea is for people to choose five broad actions out of 10 listed on the EPA’s site to commit to, thus improving one’s overall environmental footprint. Don’t choose six, though; that’s one too many.
With billions in stimulus dollars heading toward improving the electricity grid and building sustainable energy infrastructure, emission-free power may be coming to your neighborhood sooner than you think. Here are five of the biggest, most ambitious projects that are in the pipeline, both in the US and elsewhere.