Archive for the 'climate change' Category
Late yesterday, EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson issued a memo declaring that “[o]fficials weighing federal applications by utilities to build new coal-fired power plants cannot consider their greenhouse gas output.” “The current concerns over global climate change should not drive E.P.A. into adopting an unworkable policy of requiring emission controls” in these cases, Johnson said.
As you may know, last year The Supreme Court ruled that the EPA could regulate carbon dioxide, the most prevalent greenhouse gas, under existing law. Then last month, EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board, ruled that the EPA should consider CO2 in limiting permits for new coal-fired power plants, forcing new and proposed plants to address their carbon dioxide emissions. Well, that ruling has now been overruled. John Walke, lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council said, “It’s a marvel to behold an E.P.A. action that so utterly disdains global warming responsibility and disdains the law at the same time.”
Coal plant opponents list several in late stages of the approval process that could be affected by the decision. Vickie Patton, deputy general counsel of the Environmental Defense Fund, estimated that as much as 8,000 megawatts of new coal-fired power plants that could win swifter approval as a result of the ruling.
Lisa Jackson, whom Obama has nominated as Mr. Johnson’s successor, has the opportunity to go through a rule-making and see how to deal with the issue, but the ruling could also tie the hands of President-elect Barack Obama, who has indicated that he wants heat-trapping gases to be regulated.
Prez Elect Obama’s Green Team nominations came just after the United Nations’ annual climate change conference sputtered to an indecisive close at Poznań, Poland last week, failing to set ambitious new goals to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Al Gore rallied future hope saying, “To those who are fearful that it is too difficult to conclude this process with a new treaty by the deadline that has been established for one year from now in Copenhagen, I say it can be done, it must be done. Let’s finish this process at Copenhagen. Don’t take the pressure off. Let’s make sure that we succeed.”
Bill McKibben, a leading environmentalist, was one of the first to describe global warming as an emerging environmental crisis in his 1989 book The End of Nature. His latest book is called Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. He is also co-founder of the environmental mobilization campaign called 350.org. The number 350 refers to calls for a new global target to reduce carbon dioxide levels to no more than 350 parts per million. Just returning from Poland where he attended the UN climate change conference in Poznan, he comments on the changing paradigm as the seriousness of the situation is setting in:
The politics of this, as opposed to the policy, is finally starting to change as more and more people begin to realize that we’re way deeper into the climate problem than we thought.
First thing that happened was that the small island nations and less-developed countries of the world, the first and most vulnerable victims to climate change, sharpened their rhetoric considerably. They started talking about survivability and asking other nations, many of which complied, to sign a pledge saying that whatever they did, they would try to build a climate policy that allowed all nations of the world to survive, not to sink beneath the rising seas or the expanding deserts. I mean, we’re seriously talking, in the not-too-distant future, about hauling flags down outside the UN, because those countries no longer exist. That began to sharpen, the rhetoric.The other thing that happened—was a part of Gore’s speech, that got him by far the longest and lustiest round of applause—was when he said—and this was an [enormous] breakthrough—that we have to start aiming for 350 parts per million CO2. That sounds like a small technical change from 415 parts per million, the current goal, but in fact it changes every aspect of this debate. Since we’re already past 350—we’re at about 387 parts per million now; that’s why the Arctic is melting—it means that we have to treat this as the full-on emergency that it is, not one more problem on a long list, but the absolute central keystone problem that we have to go to work on in the most impassioned way right now.
Now, look, the momentum of the talks is such that they’ll kind of drag on in their current form for a while towards Copenhagen next December. But I think that the reality of the world’s—the reality of the physics and chemistry in the atmosphere is beginning to overtake the political reality that’s been the main feature of these talks. We’re going to see a much sharpened, much heightened debate with a lot more people getting a lot angrier and demanding actual change.
read more from Democracy Now.org
Al Gore endorses 350 for the planet – read the story…
pingback on 350 is now the most important number on the planet
This Is Reality
the This Is Reality – Come Clean on Clean Coal Campaign: There is no such thing as “clean”coal
This Is Reality|these are The Facts
Continue reading ‘This Is Reality’
THE SHIFT movement
THE SHIFT is a transcending movement and a movie-in-progress that stems from an uncompromising longing for cultural reform all across the globe…it can be felt as a fundamental desire throughout humanity for peace, social justice and sustainability…and it is manifesting through a swell of activity at the most grass-roots levels of our society!
U.S. WEAKENS ENDANGERED-SPECIES RULES
DECEMBER 11, 2008, 4:44 P.M. ET
by Siobhan Hughes
PUBLISHED BY ‘THE WALL STREET JOURNAL’ (USA)
WASHINGTON – The Bush administration on Thursday eliminated one step in the effort to protect endangered species, allowing federal agencies to bypass consultation with government scientists about whether new projects will harm threatened wildlife.
The U.S. Interior Department issued a rule that allows agencies to avoid consulting with the Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service if they conclude that any actions they fund wouldn’t harm an endangered species.
Environmentalists have been up in arms over the rule since it was proposed in August, but the Bush administration says the changes are narrowly targeted and came out of concern that the Endangered Species Act would be used as a back-door approach to curb greenhouse-gas emissions.
“It should come as no surprise that today the Department of the Interior and the Department of Commerce are announcing final regulations clarifying a segment of the consultation process under section 7 of the Endangered Species Act, particularly as it relates to global processes like climate change,” Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said.
Write to Siobhan Hughes at siobhan.hughes@dowjones.com
CLICK HERE FOR THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE
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… RELATED NEWS UPDATE
from The Center for Biological Diversity
Just hours ago, Bush announced his long-threatened 11th-hour regulations gutting the Endangered Species Act. In what might be the fastest lawsuit filing in history, the Center for Biological Diversity filed suit within minutes in San Francisco federal court to strike down the regulations. The Center and its partners — Defenders of Wildlife and Greenpeace — are asking the court to protect endangered plants and animals by completely nullifying Bush’s policies as quickly as possible.
Continue reading ‘Bush 11th-hour shenanigans launched’
Aether induced electricity?
Magnetism has been used to generate electricity for over 100 years. But previous approaches do not allow the ceaseless orbital motion hidden within ferromagnetic atoms to perform useful work. The necessary work of rotation to generate electricity has traditionally been sourced by other means, which today have become nuclear, natural-gas, hydroelectric and coal-driven turbines. An assumption has grown, that such brute sources of motion are necessary to cause magnetism to generate electricity. To date, there has been very little scientific focus on the use of the subatomic rotation within magnetic elements themselves, which causes their magnetism in the first place. It isn’t necessary to consume limited natural resources to produce the spinning motion. Ceaseless rotation is a natural resource in its own right, on a sub-atomic scale but existing everywhere, in accordance with quantum physical laws. The motion is permanent. Mankind cannot hope to ever exhaust it.
Continue reading ‘Aether induced electricity?’
Sustainable Consumerism sounds like an oxymoron… but buying certified products makes good social, economic and ecological sense. It cuts out intermediary buyers and guarantees small producers prices that exceed their production costs. It also helps protect the environment. Purchase items that benefit the environment and producers in developing countries – how and where you spend your money matters!
Continue reading ‘Sustainable Consumerism? there’s strength in numbers’
Perhaps you heard the report on NPR yesterday, that the Pacific Ocean around Tatoosh Island, WA are becoming acidic 10 times faster than expected.
Cquestrate has an idea to reduce carbonic acid in the ocean, thereby reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere… but they need our help.
What do you think about this idea? Are there drawbacks? Is it feasible?
- First, you heat limestone to a very high temperature, until it breaks down into lime and carbon dioxide.
- Then you put the lime into the sea, where it reacts with carbon dioxide dissolved in the seawater.
The important point is that when you put lime into seawater it absorbs almost twice as much carbon dioxide as is produced by the breaking down of the limestone in the first place.
This has the effect of reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It also helps to prevent ocean acidification, another problem caused by the increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
If done on a large enough scale it would be possible to reduce carbon dioxide levels back to what they were before the Industrial Revolution.
Visit the Cquestrate site to provide your thoughts along with many others.
Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO of Google, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the New America Foundation, and a member of President-Elect Barack Obama’s Transition Economic Advisory Board, addressed a packed auditorium at the Ronald Reagan Building on Tuesday, November 18th.
