A federal judge’s ruling last week directing the Obama administration to issue a long-delayed smog standard is reanimating a battle between businesses and environmental groups that has been dormant for three years. The Continue Reading
The Environmental Protection Agency can reinstate limits on power-plant pollution that blows across state lines, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday, handing a defeat to electric utilities that opposed the effort as costly regulatory overreach. The court’s 6-2 ruling breathes new life into a 2011 EPA measure known as the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, which requires 28 states to reduce emissions that hurt air quality in states located downwind. The regulation stands to affect about 1,000 power plants in the eastern half of the U.S. that may have to adopt new pollution controls or reduce operations. The decision could further threaten the viability of some aging coal plants, which already face other market and regulatory pressures. "There is no doubt this will add some cost pressures," said University of Notre Dame law professor Bruce Huber. "This is an exceedingly important opinion," he said, adding that the EPA "has been trying […]
When it comes to difficult government jobs, few are as tricky as the one held by Xie Zhenhua, China’s chief negotiator on climate change. On the day he agrees to meet the Financial Times, in a room the size of a basketball court near his office in the country’s economic planning ministry, the air outside is “unhealthy”. At least, that is what it says on the smartphone air quality apps people in Beijing check as obsessively as Londoners watch weather forecasts. Much of the smog comes from cars but it also drifts in from the coal-powered plants that have helped propel China’s economy into second place after the US – and turned it into a carbon dioxide polluter like no other. China’s hunger for coal meant it pumped out almost 10 gigatons of CO2 in 2012, more than the US and the EU combined and nearly a third of […]
A farmer works her land near a lead smelter in Hunan Province. Soil in China’s leading rice-producing region shows high levels of heavy metal contamination, in a study that suggests that the proximity of mining and industry to agricultural areas is posing serious threats to the country’s food chain. In “ Cadmium Rice: Heavy metal pollution of China’s rice crops, ” researchers for Greenpeace East Asia sampled farmland and uncultivated soil, water and rice grown near a smelter of non-ferrous metals in Hunan Province, China’s top rice producer. In some locations of the study, the researchers found soil containing cadmium levels more than 200 times the national health standard, adding to a growing body of evidence that parts of the country’s soil are heavily degraded after decades of fast industrialization and high economic growth. All but one of the rice samples exceeded the maximum level of cadmium in rice […]
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China passed the biggest changes to its environmental protection laws in 25 years, outlining plans to punish polluters more severely as leaders work to limit contaminated water, air and soil linked to economic growth. The amended law “sets environmental protection as the country’s basic policy,” according to a copy posted on the government’s website. The rules hadn’t been changed since first enacted in 1989 as China began consuming more energy and the world’s most-populous country transformed into a global manufacturing hub. Now the world’s biggest carbon emitter, China has moved to address the environmental damage that has been a byproduct of its breakneck economic growth and become a leading cause of social unrest. Government reports and recent comments from top officials about pollution have revealed the extent of the damage and raised new concern about its health effects. The amendments give the public and government “powerful new tools” to […]
About 16.1 percent of soil in the Chinese mainland suffer pollution, said a report from the Ministry of Environmental Protection Thursday. About 19.4 percent of farming land are polluted, the report said. Xinhua Weibo Facebook Twitter Reddit Diigo Delicious Digg Linkedin MySpace Sina Weibo Kaixin Renren Q-zone Tencent Weibo Sohu Weibo NetEase Weibo Related News 1 Canadian photographer wins Picture of the Year 2 Bunny hop competition held in Prague 3 Fans gather in Rome for premiere of "Spider-Man" sequel 4 Windows XP shutdown opens up prolific information security market 5 Croatian painters swap canvasses for giant Easter eggs Back to Top 1 16.1% of Chinese soil polluted 2 Internet rumormonger gets 3-year jail term 3 China calls for […]
The European Commission said Wednesday it referred Poland to a regional court of justice for violating rules on greenhouse gases. "The European Commission has decided to refer Poland to the EU Court of Justice for failing to notify to the Commission what penalties have been put in place in case the EU rules for companies and personnel undertaking certain activities with fluorinated gases are not observed," the commission said in a statement . European law requires companies to take steps to reduce the amount of fluorinated gases, a harmful pollutant, leaked into the atmosphere. The European Commission said it sent a request to Poland to address the issue in November. The ruling follows a series of scathing reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warning that global climate change is out of control. The European Commission said action to curb the release of […]
As smoke from Indonesia ’s burning forests drifted across the Strait of Malacca into Singapore last June, the pollution index shot up and Ong Eng Tong’s golf course shut down. “Once the PSI reaches 150 or 200, they have to close,” said Ong, a 71-year-old independent energy consultant. His Singapore Island Country Club was overwhelmed as the Pollutant Standards Index surged on June 21 to a record 401, a “hazardous” reading in a city averaging less than 50 on most days. “I stayed indoors and turned on the air-con.” This year may be worse, stoked by drought and El Nino. Backed by activists including Harrison Ford, Singapore is pushing fines for culprits overseas. Even Indonesia is faulting last month’s local response to blazes that sickened 50,000 in Sumatra, where fires are set to turn forests into crop fields. Burning in the region’s peatlands emitted as much […]
Air pollution in parts of Greater London and southeast England deteriorated on Thursday, hitting the maximum level on the government scale despite forecasts that it would start to abate. Defra, the environment department, forecasts that air pollution will be at or near 10 on its scale of one to 10 in East Anglia, through the Midlands, into easternmost Wales, on Merseyside and as far south as through London into northern Kent. A reading of 10 is classified as “very high”. Frank Kelly, professor of environmental health at King’s College London, said: “Today is going to be the worst day of the last couple of weeks.” He recommended that children be kept indoors in areas where pollution is high or very high. “The general understanding of the effects of air pollution on children is that it leads to a decrease in their lung growth,” he said. “This is precautionary […]
Only three of the 74 Chinese cities monitored by the central government managed to meet official minimum standards for air quality last year, the Ministry of Environmental Protection announced this week, underscoring the country’s severe pollution problems. The dirtiest cities were in northern China, where coal-powered industries are concentrated, including electricity generation and steel manufacturing. The ministry said in its announcement, posted on its website on Tuesday, that in the broad northern region that includes the large cities of Beijing and Tianjin as well as the province of Hebei, which surrounds Beijing, the air quality standards were met on only 37 percent of days last year. Beijing, with 20 million people, did so on only 48 percent of days, […]
