US PASSES GROUNDBREAKING CLIMATE CHANGE BILL
On Friday, the US House of Representatives passed a groundbreaking bill that limits the amount of greenhouse gasses and takes a step forward in giving the US credibility in the global effort to reverse climate change. In the months before December's global climate change summit in Copenhagen, the US has finally taken actions towards addressing this issue.
At the heart of the legislation is a cap-and-trade system that sets a limit on overall emissions of heat-trapping gases while allowing utilities, manufacturers and other emitters to trade pollution permits, or allowances, among themselves. The final bill has a goal of reducing greenhouse ...
Politics Watering Down Climate Change Bill
If it's this hard for Democrats to agree on tough global warming curbs, polar icecaps beware.
With the greenest lawmakers in charge and the President cheering them on, the prospects of sweeping controls on greenhouse gases seemed rosy. After a month of fighting among themselves, however, House Democrats announced an agreement Thursday that reflects more about the legislative process than the need to stop the planet from heating up.
The announcement indicates that sponsors have enough Democratic votes to push a bill past its first legislative hurdle, the House Energy and Commerce Committee, as early as next week. But the patchwork of ...
Investors target Exxon, Massey For Lags On Climate
By Timothy Gardner
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A coalition of U.S. investors put companies including Exxon Mobil Corp and coal miner Massey Energy Co on a "Climate Watch" list on Wednesday, claiming the long-term competitiveness of the firms could be hurt by their lack of action on climate change.
"For a company in a major emitting sector ... to not be thinking about how they are going to address a regulated environment creates red flags for investors," Mindy Lubber, the president of Ceres, a Boston-based coalition of investors and environmentalists, said in an interview.
Lubber said the companies have lagged in taking action ...
SIERRA SNOWPACK LEADS TO CALIFORNIA DROUGHT
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THE SKINNY ON PLASTIC WATER BOTTLES
(Source: NRDC, February, 2009) Is "BPA-free" the Same as Safe?
Not that long ago, reusable bottles made of clear, hard, polycarbonate plastic were the hippest water carriers to have, beloved by hikers and college students alike.Then came a draft report from the National Toxicology Program in April 2008 about possible health risks from a chemical in the polycarbonate known as bisphenol A (BPA). Though it soft-pedaled the reasons for concern (there is actually an alarming amount of scientific evidence that BPA may be highly toxic), the news was widely carried in the media and the bottles' appeal evaporated overnight.In response, ...
WORLD GLACIERS SHRINKING FOR THE 18TH STRAIGHT YEAR
Glaciers from the Andes to Alaska and across the Alps shrank as much as 10 feet, the 18th year of retreat and twice as fast as a decade ago, as global warming threatens an important supply of the world’s water.Alpine glaciers lost on average 0.7 meters of thickness in 2007, the most recent figures available, data published today by the University of Zurich’s World Glacier Monitoring Service showed. The melting extends an 11-meter retreat since 1980.“One year doesn’t tell us much, it’s really these long-term trends that help us to understand what’s going on,” Michael Zemp, a researcher at the ...
U.S. Transition Hampers Talks on Climate Change
POZNAN, Poland — As ministers from 189 countries gather here in the coal mining regions of Poland to hammer out a new climate treaty, progress is being sorely hampered by the transition under way in American politics, delegates and experts here said. President-elect Barack Obama to attend these meetings — he has said there is but one president at a time, and the United States is still represented here by the Bush administration. But the anticipation of his presidency has left this critical meeting in a bit of limbo. “It has affected the meeting in a fairly significant way,” said ...
