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Senate Democrats to Unveil Aggressive Climate Change Bill

Photo The Rosebud coal mine in Colstrip, Mont. A measure that Senate Democratic leaders plan to unveil on Tuesday would establish a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions of 2 percent each year through 2025. Credit Kristina Barker for The New York Times WASHINGTON — Senate Democratic leaders on Tuesday plan to unveil a measure intended to signal their full-throated support of President Obama ’s aggressive climate change agenda to 2016 voters and to the rest of the world. The Democrats hope that the bill, sponsored by Senator Maria Cantwell, of Washington, the top Democrat on the Senate Energy Committee, will demonstrate a new unity for the party on energy and climate change, and define Democrats’ approach to global warming policy in the coming years. The measure would establish as United States policy a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2 percent each year through 2025 — a cut even […]

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Pacific Islanders Plead for Urgent Climate Action as Seas Rise

The village where Anote Tong attended school some 40 years ago is no longer there. As the Pacific Ocean encroached on the settlement, the villagers left for higher ground. “There is a church building and a meeting house, but nobody can go there because during high tide they’re sitting out in the middle of the water,” said Tong, now president of the atoll nation of Kiribati. Flooded homes in the village of Taborio on the island of Tarawa. Nowhere are the risks of climate change more evident than in the tiny island nations of the Pacific, where countless communities face inundation. Tuvalu has lost four islands since 2000. Islets have slipped beneath the waves in the Marshall Islands and Papua New Guinea. And in Palau, some houses — still occupied — flood daily. The islanders’ plight gives them a powerful moral voice at a December meeting in Paris sponsored […]

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Volkswagen Chief Apologizes for Breach of Trust After Recall

Photo Martin Winterkorn, the chief executive of Volkswagen, speaking before the start of the International Motor Show in Frankfurt. Credit Odd Andersen/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images FRANKFURT — The chief executive of Volkswagen apologized on Sunday for what he said was a breach of trust that resulted in the company’s being accused by the United States authorities of illegally installing software in its diesel-power cars to evade standards for reducing smog. “I personally am deeply sorry that we have broken the trust of our customers and the public,” Martin Winterkorn, the chief executive of the German automaker, said in a statement . The Environmental Protection Agency has ordered Volkswagen to recall nearly half a million vehicles, and the company could face billions of dollars in fines. Mr. Winterkorn said the company would “cooperate fully” with the authorities and order its own independent investigation into the accusations. In his statement, […]

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The 800 Ways Taxpayer Money Supports Fossil Fuel Industries

Emissions rise from stacks at a power plant in Indiana. Photographer: Luke Sharett/Bloomberg Measures for oil, gas and coal worth $167 billion last year As world leaders converge on New York for a United Nations gathering that’s expected to have a strong emphasis on climate change, the OECD is pointing out 800 ways rich industrial nations support fossil fuels with taxpayer money, along with a handful of countries that are catching up quickly. The measures were worth $167 billion last year for the oil, natural gas and coal industries, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a Paris-based institution that advises 34 industrial nations. While that number has fallen from almost $200 billion in 2012, it easily exceeds the value of subsidies for renewables such as wind and solar. The findings released Monday are designed to stimulate debate on what constitutes fair support for energy technologies. World […]

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EPRI-NRDC report finds widespread vehicle electrification and a cleaner grid could lead to substantial cuts in GHG by 2050

Widespread adoption of electric transportation, including electrification in the off-road sector, could lead to substantial reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and could modestly improve air quality, according to a new analysis released by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The report, “ Environmental Assessment of a Full Electric Transportation Portfolio ”, is based on a projection that by 2050 electricity replaces traditional fuels for approximately half of light- and medium-duty transportation and a significant portion of non-road equipment. This study builds on the 2007 Environmental Assessment of Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles by EPRI and NRDC ( earlier post ), which showed that plug-in hybrid electric vehicles could contribute to reductions in national greenhouse gas emissions, while also leading to improved air quality. As with the earlier assessment, this study consists of two separate, but related, analyses: greenhouse gas emissions from 2015-2050, […]

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U.S. accuses Volkswagen of clean air violations

A volkswagen automobile sits for sale on a car lot in Carlsbad, California August 28, 2015. U.S. and California environmental regulators on Friday accused Volkswagen AG ( VOWG_p.DE ) of deliberately circumventing clean air rules on nearly 500,000 diesel cars and the company could face penalties of up to $18 billion. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency alleged that Volkswagen used software in four-cylinder Volkswagen and Audi diesel cars from model years 2009 to 2015 to circumvent emissions testing of certain air pollutants. "Put simply, these cars contained software that turns off emissions controls when driving normally and turns them on when the car is undergoing an emissions test," Cynthia Giles, an enforcement officer at the EPA, told reporters in a teleconference. The feature, known as a "defeat device," results in the cars emitting as much as 40 times emissions allowed under clean air rules meant to ensure public health […]

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EPA Accuses Volkswagen of Dodging Emissions Rules

WASHINGTON—The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency accused Volkswagen AG VLKAY -4.52 % of deliberately dodging air-pollution rules on nearly half a million cars sold, furthering an Obama administration crackdown on auto makers for flouting regulations intended to reduce tailpipe emissions. The EPA, which unveiled the allegations with the California Air Resources Board, issued a notice on Friday alleging the German auto maker used software in the cars to get around government emissions tests. EPA officials said the software, dubbed a “defeat device,” worked to make 482,000 Volkswagen cars appear cleaner than they were. The Clean Air Act requires vehicle manufacturers to certify to EPA that their products meet federal air-pollution standards. EPA officials said Volkswagen violated two parts of the federal Clean Air Act and could face sizable financial penalties of up to $37,500 per car, or more than $18 billion. But it remained unclear whether the government would seek […]

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Citi Says China Going Green Will Hurt Industrial Commodities

China’s demand for industrial commodities will probably be hurt as the biggest energy and metals user intensifies efforts to rein in pollution, according to Citigroup Inc. The country will focus on the environment as never before in its forthcoming 13th Five-Year Plan and may start a carbon trading program next year or the year after, Citigroup said in a report on Friday. Costs for energy-intensive industries will increase, with steel and electricity likely to be the first to implement the scheme, the bank said. Now the world’s biggest carbon emitter, China is moving to address the environmental damage that’s been a byproduct of its breakneck economic expansion. Xi Jinping’s first five-year plan since becoming president in March 2013 will chart the path for the nation’s further development. It’s expected to be delivered at the time of the Communist Party Plenum in October. “Environmental initiatives are likely to be among […]

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U.S., China Build on Plan to Cut Emissions

Next week, President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping will add to earlier pledges to cut greenhouse-gas emissions with specific guidance on what the two countries will do at home to keep climate change at bay, officials said. The United States and China announced Tuesday that cities, states and provinces in both countries would commit to taking parallel steps to address climate change. The participating Chinese cities and provinces, which represent about 25% of total urban emissions in that country, will offer plans to have their emissions peak sooner than the national target of 2030. Beijing and Guangzhou, two of China’s largest cities, will aim for their peak emissions to come as early as 2020. Climate officials and leaders from both countries are meeting in Los Angeles this week to lay out the steps the regions will take and to set the groundwork for next week’s summit between […]

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Scientists say it’s been 500 years since California has been this dry

A snowboarder threads his way through patches of dirt in Olympic Valley, California. Many Tahoe-area ski resorts have closed due to low snowfall as California’s historic drought continues. (Max Whittaker/Getty Images) Researchers knew California’s drought was already a record breaker when they set out to find its exact place in history, but they were surprised by what they discovered: It has been 500 years since what is now the Golden State has been this dry. California is in the fourth year of a severe drought with temperatures so high and precipitation so low that rain and snow evaporate almost as soon as it hits the ground. A research paper released Monday said an analysis of blue oak tree rings in the state’s Central Valley showed that the amount of mountain snow California relies on for moisture hasn’t been so low since the 1500s. That was around the time when […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple