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Obama Uses Hurricane Season Start to Boost Climate Plan

Anticipating more storms like Hurricane Sandy , President Barack Obama urged emergency workers and residents in coastal areas to brace themselves for the start of the hurricane season. The official beginning of the hurricane season two days from now coincides with an administration focus on climate change, which Obama is making a central issue during his final years in office. “The changes we’re seeing in our climate mean that, unfortunately, storms like Sandy could end up being more common and more devastating,” Obama said today at a hurricane preparation meeting at the Washington headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “And that’s why we’re also going to be doing more to deal with the dangers of carbon pollution that help to cause this climate change and global warming.” The Environmental Protection Agency is set to announce on June 2 limits on carbon emissions from power plants . While the […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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A Price Tag on Carbon as a Climate Rescue Plan

Bryan T. Pagel, a dairy farmer, watched as a glistening slurry of cow manure disappeared down a culvert. If recycling the waste on his family’s farm would help to save the world, he was happy to go along. But back, machinery was breaking down the manure and capturing a byproduct called methane, a potent greenhouse gas. A huge Caterpillar engine roared as it burned the methane to generate electricity, keeping it out of the atmosphere.

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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EPA’s Carbon Rule to Spark Lawsuits

The expected legal battle over the Obama administration’s coming limits on carbon emissions from existing power plants could provide a rarity for environmental litigation: a case for which there is scant court precedent. The Environmental Protection Agency is turning to a little-used provision of the Clean Air Act for its new rules, because carbon dioxide isn’t regulated under major programs that address air pollutants. The EPA says it has only used the section, called 111(d), to regulate five sources of pollutants since it was enacted in 1970—and none on the scale of CO2, a major greenhouse gas. Because the provision has been invoked so rarely, courts have had little opportunity to weigh in on it, creating the unusual circumstance in which potential challengers to the carbon rules would be litigating largely on a blank slate against the EPA. The Clean Air Act provision gives the agency authority to regulate […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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EPA's Carbon Rule to Spark Lawsuits

The expected legal battle over the Obama administration’s coming limits on carbon emissions from existing power plants could provide a rarity for environmental litigation: a case for which there is scant court precedent. The Environmental Protection Agency is turning to a little-used provision of the Clean Air Act for its new rules, because carbon dioxide isn’t regulated under major programs that address air pollutants. The EPA says it has only used the section, called 111(d), to regulate five sources of pollutants since it was enacted in 1970—and none on the scale of CO2, a major greenhouse gas. Because the provision has been invoked so rarely, courts have had little opportunity to weigh in on it, creating the unusual circumstance in which potential challengers to the carbon rules would be litigating largely on a blank slate against the EPA. The Clean Air Act provision gives the agency authority to regulate […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Kenya: Oil Exploitation Contradicts Kenya’s Climate Goals, Legislator Warns

Kenya is in the final stage of enacting a new climate change law, expected to be approved in the coming months. At the same time, the private sector is preparing to tap significant oil reserves in the north. Will the hunt for fossil fuels thwart Kenya’s efforts to go green and curb its carbon emissions? After a 2007 study forecast how climate change would impact Kenya, a National Climate Change Response Strategy was launched at the 2009 U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen. The government then developed a Climate Change Action Plan to implement the strategy, which was completed in March 2013. The action plan spells out how to tackle climate change at local, county and national levels. The next step is to enshrine that in law. "We realised we had collected enough information to start preparing climate change legislation, because it cuts across all sectors – hence the need […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Kenya: Oil Exploitation Contradicts Kenya's Climate Goals, Legislator Warns

Kenya is in the final stage of enacting a new climate change law, expected to be approved in the coming months. At the same time, the private sector is preparing to tap significant oil reserves in the north. Will the hunt for fossil fuels thwart Kenya’s efforts to go green and curb its carbon emissions? After a 2007 study forecast how climate change would impact Kenya, a National Climate Change Response Strategy was launched at the 2009 U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen. The government then developed a Climate Change Action Plan to implement the strategy, which was completed in March 2013. The action plan spells out how to tackle climate change at local, county and national levels. The next step is to enshrine that in law. "We realised we had collected enough information to start preparing climate change legislation, because it cuts across all sectors – hence the need […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Chamber Study Predicts Obama Climate Rule Will Kill Jobs

The nation’s biggest business lobby says President Barack Obama ’s plan to tackle climate change could cost the U.S. economy $50 billion a year. Supporters predict it will create jobs and lower power bills. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Natural Resources Defense Council are both releasing economic impact studies this week, signaling that the political battle over the president’s plan will be fought over dollars and cents. For Obama, the risk is the plan gets labeled a job-killer just as campaigns heat up for an election that could determine control of the U.S. Senate . In an analysis set for release today — days before the Environmental Protection Agency unveils a proposal to cut carbon dioxide emissions from power plants — the Chamber says that an ambitious pollution-control effort could force more than a third of the coal-fired power capacity to close by 2030, resulting in economic losses […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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EPA Set to Unveil Climate Proposal

The Obama administration will next week unveil a cornerstone of its climate-change initiative with a proposed rule aimed at allowing states to use cap-and-trade systems, renewable energy and other measures to meet aggressive goals for reducing carbon emissions by existing power plants. Energy companies and others affected by the proposal will be watching for key details, including the percentage by which companies and states must reduce carbon emissions, which is expected to be proposed in a range instead of a single number. The baseline year against which those reductions are calculated will also be closely monitored. But the proposal is designed to give states, which will administer the regulations, flexibility to meet the benchmarks, as opposed to placing emissions limits on individual plants, according to people familiar with the Environmental Protection Agency’s work on the rule. Central to the strategy of flexibility: the option to include a cap-and-trade component […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Governments Await Obama’s Move on Carbon to Gauge U.S. Climate Efforts

President Obama is expected to announce on Monday an Environmental Protection Agency regulation to cut carbon pollution from the nation’s fleet of 600 coal-fired power plants, in a speech that government analysts in Beijing, Brussels and beyond will scrutinize to determine how serious the president is about fighting global warming . The regulation will be Mr. Obama’s most forceful effort to reverse 20 years of relative inaction on climate change by the United States, which has stood as the greatest obstacle to international efforts to slow the rise of heat-trapping gases from burning coal and oil that scientists say cause warming. The president had tried, without success, to move a climate change bill through Congress in his first term, and such legislation would now stand no chance of getting past the resistance of Republican lawmakers who question the science of climate change. So Mr. Obama is taking […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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37 dead, 6 missing in south China rainstorms

At least 37 people have died and six others remain missing after downpours hit provinces in south China, according to a statement from the China National Commission for Disaster Reduction on Monday. In south China’s Guangdong Province, the death toll from floods had risen to 17 as of 12:00 p.m. Monday, while three others were missing. The rainstorms also hit Hunan, Guizhou, Jiangxi and five other southern provinces, leading to casualties. Hunan witnessed seven deaths and three missing, while four died in Guizhou, said the statement. A total of 5.51 million people were affected and 447,000 displaced with the collapse of 25,000 houses. Continuous downpours have led to floods in mountainous areas and raised the water level of rivers, where a large number of houses collapsed and farms were submerged. About 264,800 hectares of crops have been destroyed by the floods and other related […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple