Greenhouse gas emissions

Should Obama Go To Copenhagen?

President Obama has, of course, already been to Copenhagen once this year — in his quest to bring the Olympics to Chicago —  and brought nothing home to show for it.  The stakes for the December United Nations Climate Change Conference are obviously much higher:  the negotiation of an international agreement to govern greenhouse gas emissions …

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EPA releases Bush-era endangerment finding

UPDATE: Cara has more here, including a link to the draft that does not require a subscription. In Dec. 2007, EPA was ready to issue a proposed finding under the Clean Air Act that greenhouse gas pollution endangers public welfare. E&E News has now obtained a copy of the draft proposal (subscription required) through a …

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The Royal Society’s geoengineering report

We had a flurry of posts on geoengineering a while back (see here, here, here, and here). If you want to learn more about geoengineering, a great resource is this report, just issued by the Royal Society. It clearly explains the background, the approaches being proposed (which divide broadly into technologies for removing greenhouse gases …

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Pavley-Waxman Hearing at UCLA

As Cara posted yesterday, California State Senator Fran Pavley and Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) hosted a joint Climate Change forum today at UCLA.  As predicted, protesters gathered outside the event but the anti-cap and trade crowd was quite small.  Here are photos showing a few protesters: In contrast to the small number of Waxman opponents, a larger crowd turned …

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Meat and climate change redux

Back in January, I blogged about the link between meat production and GHGs.  Grist.org has taken up this issue recently, with an interesting article by Tom Philpott making the case that U.S. livestock production is a significant contributor to GHG emissions, and a rebuttal from farmer Eliot Coleman. As Philpott’s article notes, a U.N. FAO …

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China, Congress and Climate Change

This week brings two related and interesting stories on the prospects for domestic climate change legislation and progress in Copenhagen when the international community gathers in December to try to hammer out a post-Kyoto treaty on climate change.  The first is that China’s top climate negotiator is “optimistic” that the international community will reach agreement on …

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Offsets and Waxman Markey

Will the massive number of offsets allowed under the proposed Waxman-Markey climate change bill destroy its effectiveness?   Waxman-Markey allows for a huge number of offsets from both domestic and international sources – up to 2 billion tons.   Some analysts estimate that if all of these offsets are used domestic emissions will not begin to decline until …

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Setbacks for Coal

Two setbacks for coal this week:  First, the Georgia Court of Appeals issued an order that will result in further delay of the Longleaf coal-fired power plant proposed for Early County, Georgia.  Second, U.S. EPA notified the state of Kansas and Sunflower Electric Power Corp. that a new air quality permit will be required before …

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Climate Bill Passes House!

The Waxman-Markey bill narrowly passed the House yesterday.  This is a historic achievement. As Cara reported yesterday, there are some real qualms about whether the bill is strong enough — and particularly about its heavy reliance on offsets.  Environmentalists have never liked offsets, partly because they lessen the technology-forcing effect of emissions controls and partly …

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Is EVERYTHING Related to Climate Change?

I don’t want to seem obsessed with a single issue, so I keep trying to come up with topics that have absolutely no relationship with climate change.   But I can’t seem to find any. The fact is that energy is such an integral part of our economy that almost all activities connect one way or …

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