Climate Climate & Energy
All Stories
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New Sue Review
Oral arguments were heard yesterday in the U.S. EPA’s lawsuit against the Tennessee Valley Authority, the nation’s largest public power provider. Lawyers for the EPA argued that the TVA violated the New Source Review rule of the Clean Air Act by failing to install state-of-the-art pollution-control equipment when upgrading its older coal-burning power plants. Lawyers […]
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Greener Pastures
New Zealand is home to a staggering 45 million sheep and 8 million cattle, which together produce 90 percent of the country’s methane emissions — or about 43 percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. To meet the terms of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, New Zealand has to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions […]
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Nothing Could Be Refiner
Ever since the 1970s, heavy trucks and buses have been allowed to use diesel virtually without regulation, because the fuel enjoyed a special status under clean air policies. But that could finally change after a federal appeals court ruled against oil refiners on Friday, upholding new U.S. EPA regulations to clean up trucks and buses. […]
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Out From the Cold
While average global temperatures are on the way up, Antarctica has cooled overall in the last few decades, a trend that has puzzled scientists. To make matters more baffling, a small peninsula of the continent has simultaneously been warming 10 times faster than the rest of the world. Now scientists are speculating that the region’s […]
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Middle Earth in the Balance
Seems like everyone but the U.S. is working on a way to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases that fuel global warming. Yesterday, the New Zealand government proposed levying a tax of about $10 per ton of CO2 to meet the targets of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. The tax would go […]
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Whoa, We’re Halfway There
While the U.S. still bandies about toothless plans to cut greenhouse gases, the European Union is almost halfway to achieving the emissions reductions mandated by the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. According to the European Environment Agency, the 15-nation bloc has successfully decreased emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to 3.5 percent below […]
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In the Andes Mountains, the pace of climate change is far from glacial
Even 16,500 feet in the air, perched on the steep slope of a volcano in Ecuador, French glaciologist Bernard Francou moves gracefully. Hopping among ice blocks and jagged rock debris, he stops suddenly before a boulder with blue letters painted on its surface. The thinker: Bernard Francou. Photo: Bernard Pouyaud, Ecuador Instituto Nacional de Meteorologia […]
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Good As Goldman
Three Gwich’in Native Americans who battled oil development in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge have been doubly rewarded for their efforts: Last week, the Senate voted to block oil drilling in the refuge, and today, the activists are being honored with this year’s Goldman Prize, the world’s biggest and most prestigious award for environmentalists. Other […]
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Jeanne Genie
In the absence of federal leadership on climate change issues, New Hampshire yesterday passed a precedent-setting bill to curb global warming. The measure, which was approved 21-2 by the state Senate, was supported by a broad bipartisan coalition, the state’s largest environmental groups, and its largest utility, Public Service Company of New Hampshire. It would […]
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7.7 Degrees of Separation
Two new studies on global climate change, both appearing in the latest issue of Nature, predict that the Earth will get even hotter by the end of the century than previously estimated by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. One study, from Switzerland, sees a 7.7 degree Fahrenheit increase by 2100; the other, from […]
