air pollution

The Golden State gets tough on diesel-truck pollution

California’s air regulators cracked down on diesel pollution from heavy-duty trucks on Friday, adopting tough new rules that will require older trucks to be retrofitted or replaced starting in 2011. Diesel trucks are currently responsible for a third of the state’s smog.

Focus on renewables and efficiency regardless if ‘clean coal’ is clap or crap

A raging debate has emerged as to whether clean coal is claptrap or crap trap. On the one side are people who think that clean coal means coal plants with carbon capture and storage for the vast majority of the carbon dioxide they emit (or that coal isn’t clean under any plausible definition of the […]

Summers receieves flack for his tactless pollution-control memo as VP of World Bank in 1991

As Christopher Robin pulls us down the stairs towards climate chaos — bump! bump! bump! — we might think that there’s something else we could do, if only we could stop bumping for a moment and think about it. That relentless slam to the back of the head is called economics, and it’s used to […]

New research demonstrates that higher infant mortality rates surround CAFOs

Thanks to Proposition 2, Californians will soon phase out some of the most egregious confining animal conditions. However the rest of the country continues to utilize concentrated animal feeding operations for the production of meat, poultry and dairy products. CAFOs are industrial facilities that are designed to produce the most amount of meat in the […]

More on the battle with Henry Waxman over the House Energy and Commerce committee

With a secret-ballot vote by Democrats in the House of Representatives likely next week, Washington, D.C. continues to buzz over the effort by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) to unseat Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) as chairman of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee. Dingell’s corporate-lobbyist friends on K Street are coyly staying off the record […]

Kill it

The Guardian‘s excellent Fred Pearce: “Time to bury the ‘clean coal’ myth.” It is, of course, oxymoronic. Coal is about acid rain and peasouper smogs, asthma and mercury contamination, radioactive waste emissions and ripping apart mountains, killing trees, lung cancer and, of course, global warming. Yup.

White House begins review of controversial EPA rule

With a new president-elect only days away, the Bush administration is racing to push through 11th-hour, polluter-friendly rules. The Washington Post flagged some of the most egregious examples in a front-page story, Friday. The latest to pop up is what the Bush EPA opaquely describes as the “increment modeling” rule. It is now under review […]

Bush administration likely to move forward on changes to new-source review

The Bush administrations is advancing plans to weaken air-pollution rules for power plants, despite House Oversight Committee Chair Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) warning the EPA not to last week, according to The Wall Street Journal. Under “new-source review” rules as they currently stand, power plants making upgrades that would keep their facilities operating more hours each […]

Despite industry lobbying, EPA toughens lead pollution limits

Federal regulators announced Thursday a sharp reduction in legal levels of lead emissions, rejecting pleas by industrial battery recyclers who told White House officials earlier this month that they could be put out of business by tough new limits. “Our nation’s air is cleaner today than just a generation ago, and last night I built […]