Category: Climate

climate director at the Natural Resources Defense Council said President Obama’s effort to address climate change needs support but others weren’t convinced. Obama’s "historic climate action plan will set us on the right track to cut dangerous pollution that threatens our health and well-being," Daniel Lashof said at a U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works hearing Thursday. The panel heard testimony on Obama’s plans to cut pollution and tackle climate change and got a mixed reaction. Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana, the ranking Republican on the panel, said the president’s climate plan would lead to the closure of power plants and lead to higher energy costs for consumers. He said the plan undermines U.S. economic recovery, would keep certain energy reserves off limits to energy companies and add another layer of "red tape" to federal regulations. More than a dozen environmental […]

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climate director at the Natural Resources Defense Council said President Obama’s effort to address climate change needs support but others weren’t convinced. Obama’s "historic climate action plan will set us on the right track to cut dangerous pollution that threatens our health and well-being," Daniel Lashof said at a U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works hearing Thursday. The panel heard testimony on Obama’s plans to cut pollution and tackle climate change and got a mixed reaction. Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana, the ranking Republican on the panel, said the president’s climate plan would lead to the closure of power plants and lead to higher energy costs for consumers. He said the plan undermines U.S. economic recovery, would keep certain energy reserves off limits to energy companies and add another layer of "red tape" to federal regulations. More than a dozen environmental […]

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Volatile weather around the world is taking farmers on a wild ride. Too much rain in northern China damaged crops in May, three years after too little rain turned the world’s second-biggest corn producer into a net importer of the grain. Dry weather in the U.S. will cut beef output from the world’s biggest producer to the lowest level since 1994, following 2013’s bumper corn crop, which pushed America’s inventory up 30 percent. U.K. farmers couldn’t plant in muddy fields after the second-wettest year on record in 2012 dented the nation’s wheat production. Graphic: Living With Extreme Weather “ Extreme weather events are a massive risk to agriculture,” said Peter Kendall, president of the U.K. National Farmers Union , who raises 1,600 hectares (3,953 acres) of grain crops in Bedfordshire, England . “Farmers can adapt to gradual temperature increases, but extreme weather events have the potential […]

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Some officials are disappointed by the lack of binding goals for renewables. Gordon Welters for The New York Times The European Union, which for years has sought to lead the world in addressing climate change, is tempering its ambitions and considering turning mandatory targets for renewable energy into just goals. The union’s policy-making body is also unlikely to restrict exploration for shale gas using the disputed technique known as hydraulic fracturing. A deep and lasting economic slowdown, persistently high prices for renewable energy sources and years of inconclusive international negotiations are giving European officials second thoughts about how aggressively to remake the Continent’s energy-production industries. The details are still being negotiated in Brussels, but officials said the European Commission’s energy and climate proposal will probably include a binding target of reducing emissions by 35 percent to 40 percent by 2030. Some officials wanted […]

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Gains in renewable energy are being swamped by rising emissions from fossil fuels in fast-growing countries like China, according to a new report on climate change. Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Nations have so dragged their feet in battling climate change that the situation has grown critical and the risk of severe economic disruption is rising, according to a draft United Nations report. Another 15 years of failure to limit carbon emissions could make the problem virtually impossible to solve with current technologies, experts found. A delay would most likely force future generations to develop the ability to suck greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere and store them underground to preserve the livability of the planet, the report found. But it is not clear whether such technologies will ever exist at the necessary scale, and even if they […]

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– A call to conserve energy expired for U.S. consumers digging out after a severe winter blast strained the region’s energy grid, a utility company said. The Weather Channel forecast a steady warming trend beginning Thursday. That follows an arctic blast brought on by a weather phenomenon known as a polar vortex, which pushed temperatures well below the freezing point in U.S. states east of the Mississippi River. PJM Interconnection, a company operating the electric grid for more than a dozen Midwest and mid-Atlantic states, lifted a call for conservation Wednesday as the cold spell began to moderate. The company, which services more than 61 million people, said its grid was strained by the intense cold weather. Several natural gas-fired plants reported issues, though PJM said that represented a "relatively small percentage" of energy problems blamed on the extreme cold. The company said […]

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The coldest air in almost 20 years is sweeping over the central U.S. toward the East Coast, threatening to topple temperature records, ignite energy demand and damage Great Plains winter wheat. Chicago’s high today won’t reach zero Fahrenheit (minus 18 Celsius) and may just hit that tomorrow, according to the National Weather Service . New York City ’s low will fall to 8, Washington will see 5 and Dallas ’s low will be 19. Orlando , Florida , may drop to freezing at 32 degrees. For the East, tomorrow will be even worse. Winter storms and frigid air add volatility to commodities trading and spot power markets. Natural gas futures in New York have surged 23 percent since Nov. 1 as the coldest start to the U.S. heating season in 13 years boosted fuel demand. Last week, as snow and cold gripped the nation, spot power […]

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LAKE MEAD, Nev. — The sinuous Colorado River and its slew of man-made reservoirs from the Rockies to southern Arizona are being sapped by 14 years of drought nearly unrivaled in 1,250 years. The once broad and blue river has in many places dwindled to a murky brown trickle. Reservoirs have shrunk to less than half their capacities, the canyon walls around them ringed with white mineral deposits where water once lapped. Seeking to stretch their allotments of the river, regional water agencies are recycling sewage effluent, offering rebates to tear up grass lawns and subsidizing less thirsty appliances from dishwashers to shower heads. But many experts believe the current drought is only the harbinger of a new, drier era in which the Colorado’s flow will be substantially and permanently diminished. Faced with the shortage, federal authorities this year will for the first time decrease the amount of water […]

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