Palo Alto teen launches climate change nonprofit.
| NYC among 21 cities to disclose carbon output More than 20 U.S. cities, including New York, Las Vegas and Denver, have agreed to measure their carbon footprints, with a system some 1,300 companies have been persuaded to use, in an attempt to find ways to curb emissions blamed for warming the planet. |
| Green Jobs Act, Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant The website 1sky.org reports thatCongress is now deciding which federal programs will be funded in 2009. Among those programs are the Green Jobs Act, which would invest $125 million in green-collar job training programs, and the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant, which would authorize grants to local communities to help improve their energy efficiency [.] |
| Big U.S. retailers look to solar energy Retailers are typically obsessed with what to put under their roofs, not on them. Yet the biggest store chains in the United States are coming to see their immense, flat roofs as an untapped resource. |
| African firms start to take action on climate change With global warming expected to hit Africa hard, some companies in the “forgotten continent” are taking action themselves to fight climate change. “The environment is not being taken very seriously in most of the emerging markets, because we haven’t started feeling the pressure yet,” Adan Mohamed, chief executive of Barclays Bank Kenya, told Reuters. |
| Aeroturbine - Next Generation Wind Energy Right now wind energy is only being harnessed in the windy regions of the earth. Installation of wind energy on individual basis is unpopular because of production and cost inefficiency. Noise pollution and birds getting killed are also not quite attractive side-effects of the windmills. We cant even imagine of installing windmills on high [.] |
| Give Beijing Some Breathing Space Images of the Beijing sky-line, seemingly bathed in a soup of smog and haze have been never far from the world’s TV screens over recent days and weeks.International reporters with hand-held air pollution detectors have been popping up on street corners checking the levels of soot and dust. |
| Ivory Coast toxic sites still a threat: U.N. expert Tens of thousands of people in Ivory Coast are still suffering serious health problems two years after toxic waste was dumped there, a United Nations human rights expert said on Friday.Okechukwu Ibeanu, an independent U.N. investigator, said in a statement the seven sites around the commercial capital Abidjan had still not been decontaminated, with dire consequences for those living around them. |
| China raises tax on big cars, impact seen small China said on Wednesday it would raise taxes on large passenger vehicles and cut the tax on small cars from next month to cut pollution and fuel use.But the policy may only have a limited impact on boosting fuel efficiency in the world’s second-largest oil user, as majority of the cars will be spared the tax hike as Beijing seeks to prevent more damage to an already slowing auto market. |
| Bush Administration Approves Expanded Wyoming Drilling PINEDALE, WYO. — As reported by the L.A. Times, Federal land managers are recommending companies be allowed to drill almost 4,400 new natural gas wells in western Wyoming, where energy development already is blamed for a spike in air and water pollution. Shell, Ultra Resources and Questar want to relax drilling restrictions meant to protect [.] |
| Palo Alto teen launches climate change nonprofit. The ‘Inconvenient Youth’ group trains high schoolers to be global warming activists as part of a campaign founded by 17-year-old Mary Doerr. |
| Press Release: USDA Praised for Not Releasing Millions of Acres From Conservation FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Sean Crowley, 202-572-3331, scrowley@edf.org Sara Hopper, 202-572-3379, shopper@edf.org(Washington, DC - July 29, 2008) U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer’s decision today against allowing the penalty-free early release of millions of acres of the land enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) will preserve the nation’s most successful conservation program, according to Environmental Defense Fund. Some members of Congress and producer groups had lobbied the administration to release up to 24 million acres from CRP so the land could be put back into crop production. Currently, there are almost 35 million acres of land enrolled in CRP, but contracts for more than nine million acres of CRP land are due to expire over the next three years."Secretary Schafer should be commended for resisting calls to gut the nation’s oldest and most successful farm conservation program," said Sara Hopper, director of agricultural policy for Environmental Defense Fund and a former staff member of the Senate Agriculture Committee. "Putting millions of CRP acres back into crop production would have resulted in the loss of billions of dollars in taxpayer investments in conservation and caused untold environmental damage, while providing little, if any, relief from high commodity prices."CRP is a federal program designed to reward farmers who take fragile land out of production for 10 to 15 years and instead plant grasses or trees or restore wetlands. Up until now, CRP enrollees who terminated their contracts prior to the end of their 10- to 15-year terms had to reimburse ? with interest ? the federal government for the rental and cost-share payments they had received, plus pay a 25 percent penalty. Some members of Congress and producer groups had proposed that the USDA waive all these costs for program participants.Lands are enrolled in CRP precisely because they are environmentally sensitive, highly erodible, and marginally productive cropland. While these lands are generally less reliable for producing row crops, they deliver significant public benefits by retaining soil and preventing erosion, cleansing polluted runoff, providing important wildlife habitat and serving as natural flood barriers. Wetland restorations on CRP lands function as an important safety valve, reducing peak flows during storm events by holding water, filtering it, and slowly releasing it into streams and groundwater. |
| Farms in Brazil and India must adapt or roast in heat. Farmers in Brazil and India may suffer less from climate change than previously assumed EUR if they can continue to adapt to hotter weather. |