Oh What A Difference A President Makes
We're not even 85 days into the Obama Administration and yet the signs of environmental change are all around us. The EPA announced today its formal determination under the Clean Air Act that greenhouse gases are pollutants that endanger public health and welfare. This is only the latest in a string of announcements that show just how quickly Obama is moving to undue much of the environmental damage done by the Bush Administration (if I miss anything please po...
CONTINUE READINGNewsflash: EPA Proposes Clean Air Act Climate Regulation
From the Washington Post: The Environmental Protection Agency today plans to propose regulating greenhouse gas emissions on the grounds that these pollutants pose a danger to the public's health and welfare, according to several sources who asked not to be identified. We'll post more details and analysis as they become available. -------- The proposal is now official. Consistent with a previous discussion on this blog about the effect of switching the default point,...
CONTINUE READINGLess fattening, and less toxic, paints
Industrial chemistry really is going green. Remember olestra, the fat substitute that was briefly used to make fat-free potato chips, until its unappealing side effects dampened consumer enthusiasm? Now some olestra relatives may be back, for uses that don't threaten to produce gastrointestinal distress. According to Scientific American's 60-Second Science blog, a new line of sucrose esters called Sefose, made from sugar and soybean oil, can replace petroleum-based resin...
CONTINUE READINGIs an ocean acidification TMDL on the (distant) horizon?
In January, Dan posted on the problem of ocean acidification and Sean noted that a lawsuit by the Center for Biological Diversity had convinced EPA to look into the possible application of the Clean Water Act. Now EPA has issued a call for interested parties to submit information as it considers whether to tighten its water quality criteria for ocean acidity, that is the pH it considers acceptable for ocean waters. EPA is also asking for help on how best to measure...
CONTINUE READINGLow-hanging carbon
I'm looking forward to hearing Scripps climate scientist Veerabhadran Ramanathan speak at an event next week in Los Angeles, and I hope he'll talk about black carbon, which many are calling the low-hanging fruit of the climate change problem. Black carbon is the fine black soot that's generated by carbon combustion, these days mostly from traditional cookstoves and other sources in the developing world. (Its serious health effects have led many developed nations t...
CONTINUE READINGT.R.–Our First Environmental President
I confess that Theodore Roosevelt has always been my favorite President. In part, it was his joie de vivre; in part his eclectic, passionate intellectual curiosity; and, in part, his sunny optimism in the face of often-formidable challenges.I recalled these traits when I read a fascinating excerpt in this month's Vanity Fair from a forthcoming book on Roosevelt's environmental legacy, The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America (Harper Collins ...
CONTINUE READINGEPA report on US greenhouse gas emissions and sinks may not tell the whole story
Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), the international agreement that resulted in the Kyoto Protocol and that will convene a new round of talks in Copenhagen later this year, the U.S. is required to report comprehensively each year on U.S.-based emissions of greenhouse gases and on GHG sinks in the U.S. The U.S. EPA released the report with data and analysis through 2007 today. The report is voluminous and contains a wealth...
CONTINUE READINGNews Flash: White House Approves Endangerment Finding
ClimateWire (subscription required) reports; U.S. EPA's proposed endangerment finding cleared the White House review process yesterday, paving the way for an official announcement detailing the threats posed by global warming to both public health and welfare. President Obama's EPA inherited the global warming review following an April 2007 Supreme Court decision that ordered the Bush administration to reconsider whether greenhouse gas emissions are pollutants subject...
CONTINUE READINGThe (Environmental) Wealth of Nations
Costa Rica is taking seriously the idea that national wealth does not solely consist of physical or financial assets but also of environmental goods and natural resources. As Thomas Friedman explained in yesterday's column: "More than any nation I've ever visited, Costa Rica is insisting that economic growth and environmentalism work together. It has created a holistic strategy to think about growth, one that demands that everything gets counted. So if a chemical fac...
CONTINUE READINGIs April the New May?
This beautiful spring day seems an appropriate occasion to think about the changing of the seasons. That's coming earlier and earlier these days. From RealClimate: Did you know that in 1965 the U.S. Department of Agriculture planted a particular variety of lilac in more than seventy locations around the U.S. Northeast, to detect the onset of spring — in turn to be used to determine the appropriate timing of corn planting and the like? The records the USDA have kept ...
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