End of Year Waste Prevention Tips

National Waste Prevention Coalition
December 31, 2008
Forum archive:  http://www.nwpcarchive.org
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Excerpted from an 11/22/08 "Get Organized" column by Laura Leist in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
Here are some recourses for swaps and sharing:
- Dust off those books, DVDs, CDs and video games you're not going to read, watch, listen to or play again. Instead of spending money to buy new, visit swap websites where you can exchange your items for others you've been wanting. You'll only pay for postage. Those sites include http://www.bookmooch.com, http://www.paperbackswap.com, http://www.swapadvd.com, http://www.swapacd.com and http://www.swaptree.com  
- Visit http://zwaggle.com   This is a national network of parents who come together to share. The website explains: "It's simple: You receive Zwaggle points (or Zoints) by giving your gently used things to other families, then use those Zoints to obtain 'new' things for your family."
The full article is at:  http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/athome/388880_organize22.html
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Portland Yard Sharing Project (forwarded by Albert Kaufman):
http://www.yardsharing.org   This project in Portland, Oregon, connects those who have space to garden and are willing to share with those
who would like to grow a garden but lack an appropriate space.  The goal is to grow more fresh, local food.
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Excerpted from an 8/25/08 article by Maya Curry in Time magazine:
THE WAR ON COLLEGE CAFETERIA TRAYS
From the University of California at Santa Cruz to Virginia Tech, cafeteria trays are disappearing, enabling universities and food-service companies to reduce food waste, lower energy costs and make college campuses more environmentally sustainable.
The reasoning goes like this: When students are allowed to use trays, they tend to roam around the cafeteria grabbing food with abandon until space on the tray runs out. If you remove their trays, you make it impossible for them to carry a surplus of dishes, and they will make their selections more carefully and be satisfied with less food overall. That saves on food. Further, getting rid of trays means dishwashers have less to wash. That saves on water and energy.
"Dining facilities on campuses take up to five times more water, five times more energy, five times more waste per square foot than the dorm," says Monica Zimmer, a spokeswoman for Sodexo, a food-service company that serves approximately 600 U.S. campuses.
Exactly how much greener can a tray-banned campus get? According to a July report released by Aramark Higher Education Food Services, a dining company serving about 500 schools nationwide, students waste 25 to 30 percent less food when they aren't carrying a tray, and dining halls save a third- to a half-gallon of wash water per tray, on average. The University of Maine at Farmington went trayless in February 2007, reporting an overall reduction in food waste of 65,000 pounds and 288,288 gallons of water conserved. Meanwhile, Georgia Tech - which implemented a no-tray program in response to the drought of 2007 - estimated that the university saved 3,000 gallons of water per day by giving up the trays.
The full article is at:  http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1834403,00.html
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From Tom Watson, King County Solid Waste Division, Seattle, WA, and the National Waste Prevention Coalition:
The response to the meltdown in recycling markets has surprised me. The attitude of many in the solid waste and recycling field seems to be, oh, well, it's all cyclical, the markets will come back, let's just keep trying to do public education and other business as usual. Even some of the recycling industry magazines don't seem very excited about the fact that many collected recyclables are getting warehoused, and recycling collection is being reduced. I guess they feel that they need to just keep promoting the recycling industry.
But I think the current recycling markets are an economic and a public relations disaster. And it's the best argument I've ever seen for waste prevention. Are the companies pushing single-use water bottles and single-use grocery bags really going to keep insisting that recycling is the answer? That stuff has no markets!
As Rahm Emanuel, Obama's chief of staff, says, "Never waste a crisis." This is the perfect opportunity for us to show the true advantages of reduction and reuse. Let's not waste it.
E-mail:  tom.watson@kingcounty.gov 
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11/3/08 article by Rachael King in Business Week about the problem of sensitive data remaining on donated cell phones:
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2008/tc2008113_981236.htm
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Job openings for an Environmental Outreach Manager and three Environmental Outreach Coordinators with GreenWaste Recovery in Palo Alto, CA:
http://www.greenwaste.com/about-us/careers   These positions, related to the company's collection & processing agreement with the City of Palo Alto, include significant waste prevention elements.  The manager position pays $70,000-$80,000 annually, and the deadline for applications is Jan. 16, 2009.  The three coordinator positions pay $50,000-$55,000 annually, and the application deadline is Jan. 30, 2009.

E.P.A. Ruling Could Speed Up Approval of Coal Plants

New York Times
December 18, 2008

By MATTHEW L. WALD and FELICITY BARRINGER

Published: December 18, 2008

WASHINGTON — Officials weighing federal applications by utilities to build new coal-fired power plants cannot consider their greenhouse gas output, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency ruled late Thursday. Some environmentalists fear the decision will clear the way for the approval of several such plants in the last days of the Bush administration.

The ruling, by Stephen L. Johnson, the administrator, responds to a decision made last month by the Environmental Appeals Board, a panel within the E.P.A., that had blocked the construction of a small new plant on the site of an existing power plant, Bonanza, on Ute tribal land in eastern Utah.

The Supreme Court ruled last year that the agency could regulate carbon dioxide, the most prevalent global warming gas, under existing law. The agency already requires some power plants to track how much carbon dioxide they emit.

But a memorandum issued by Mr. Johnson late Thursday puts the agency on record saying that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant to be regulated when approving power plants. He cited "sound policy considerations."

His said in the memorandum that each year, about 275 new sources of pollution, from power plants to apartment buildings, must obtain permits saying that they will not significantly decrease air quality. Mr. Johnson wrote that the decision he overruled had confused the federal and state agencies that issue these permits.

"Given the confusion," the memorandum said, "the best path forward is to establish a clear interpretation" of what can be considered a pollutant to be regulated.

"The current concerns over global climate change should not drive E.P.A. into adopting an unworkable policy of requiring emission controls" in these cases, he said.

Mr. Johnson rejected a new line of attack by environmental groups. In the wake of the Bush administration's failure to decide if carbon dioxide could be regulated under existing laws, environmental groups pursued a new strategy in fighting proposed coal plants like the one in Utah.

They asserted that because carbon dioxide must already be monitored under federal laws, that monitoring is tantamount to regulation. Therefore, they argued, its impact must be considered before new plants are approved. Last month the appeals board said the argument could be used, but was not required. On Thursday the administrator overruled the board. He said that simple monitoring cannot be considered regulation.

John Walke, a lawyer at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement, "It's a marvel to behold an E.P.A. action that so utterly disdains global warming responsibility and disdains the law at the same time."

Jeff Holmstead, a former E.P.A. official who now works with the Electrical Liability Coordinating Council, said the Johnson memo ensured that the incoming Obama administration had increased freedom to make its decisions on the status of carbon dioxide.

"I think if you're Lisa Jackson," whom Obama has chosen as Mr. Johnson's successor, "you have to be pretty grateful," he said. "She has the opportunity to go through a rule-making and see how to deal" with the issue.

Vickie Patton, deputy general counsel of the Environmental Defense Fund, estimated that as much as 8,000 megawatts of new coal-fired power plants could win swifter approval as a result of the ruling.

Opponents of coal plants list several in the late stages of the approval process that could be affected by the decision Thursday.

"There are a bunch that they are going to argue now don't have to consider carbon dioxide, and which will be beyond the reach of the incoming Obama administration," said Bruce Nilles, director of the anticoal campaign at the Sierra Club, an environmental group.

He listed a proposed $1.25 billion plant, called Pee Dee, that Santee Cooper, a South Carolina utility, is seeking to build and that won state approval on Tuesday; a project in Rogers City, Mich., that the Wolverine Power Cooperative Electric is seeking to build; and another project in Utah, a small plant sought by Consolidated Energy in Davis County. That one would run on petroleum coke, which is also carbon-rich.

Critics say EPA pick failed to clean up N.J.'s toxic sites

Grist
December 30, 2008

This article by reporter Joaquin Sapien is republished courtesy of ProPublica.org. The story was also co-published with Politico.

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Lisa Jackson, who President-elect Barack Obama is expected to name Monday evening to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, is already being hailed as a historic choice. The former head of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and transition team member would be the first African-American EPA chief, and supporters have praised her work ethic, approachability, and efforts to regulate greenhouse gases in New Jersey.

But Jackson's critics, including a senior scientist who quit her department in frustration, say she has been too close to industry, withheld information from the public and fallen well short of the pledge she made when taking office in February 2006 to fix the state's beleaguered toxic waste program.

"The most important thing we are doing is developing a new ranking system to prioritize sites so that we focus our resources on the worst cases, those that present the greatest risk to public health and the environment," said Jackson in state senate testimony [PDF] in October 2006.

But two years into Jackson's tenure, the new system for cleaning up New Jersey's 16,000 abandoned toxic waste sites, known as Superfund sites, still hasn't been deployed.

"She identified this as her highest priority, but she never followed through," says Jeff Ruch, executive director of the Washington D.C.-based Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER. "This failure to perform risk-based ranking for determining cleanup priorities has contributed to the belated discovery of contaminated schools and day care centers."

A NJDEP spokesperson said the system is now being tested and should be in place by Autumn of 2009. Jackson herself did not respond to ProPublica's repeated requests for an interview.

In a report released this summer, the EPA's inspector general slammed New Jersey's failure to clean up several toxic waste sites in a timely manner, and accused the state's environmental agency of going easy on polluters and failing to seek necessary support from the EPA. The report said the department bore at least partial responsibility for "not implement[ing] agreements on cleanup milestones, Agency responsibilities, and enforcement actions."

The report even recommended that the EPA take over as the lead cleanup agency at seven sites -- a surprising recommendation, since the inspector general has consistently bashed the Bush administration's handling of Superfund sites.

"If the EPA is saying that New Jersey's enforcement is bad, you know there is a serious problem," says Robert Spiegel, executive director of the Edison Wetlands Association, a New Jersey based non-profit that closely monitors several Superfund sites throughout the state. Spiegel says he had urged Jackson to take more immediate action on some sites, and that Jackson's field staff had done the same, but their pleas had been ignored.

New Jersey, long a center for the chemical manufacturing industry, has gained notoriety in the environmental community for its widespread pollution.

A 2007 report by the Center for Public Integrity, a non-profit investigative journalism organization in Washington, D.C., found that New Jersey has 115 Superfund sites -- more than any other state. Since the Superfund program was established in 1980, only 22 of New Jersey's sites have been cleaned up to the point where they can be removed from the EPA's National Priorities List, the EPA's list of the most hazardous waste sites in the country.

Jackson has long talked about repairing the state's cleanup effort. In a formal response to the inspector general report, the state's director of hazardous waste said that "New Jersey's new proposed reforms may be a model for other states when looking to improve their cleanup programs."

Jackson has also supported a controversial Corzine-backed proposal to outsource the department's cleanup efforts to consultants, which would potentially mean cleanups conducted by groups that also work for the companies responsible for the contaminated sites.

Many, including some of Jackson's supporters in the environmental community, have lambasted that policy for the conflict of interest it would create.

As part of its 2007 investigation, the Center for Public Integrity found that this practice, which already occurs with federal contracts doled out by the EPA, allows polluters to profit from their own pollution by obtaining contracts to clean up Superfund sites they may have helped create years before. Opponents of Corzine's proposal charge that it would allow the same to happen with New Jersey contracts. This reporter contributed to that project while working until early this year at CPI.

Critics of Jackson's approach have also focused on what they see as her weak response to two contaminated New Jersey sites: One is a multi-million-dollar condominium community built on top of land where high levels of chromium, a carcinogenic chemical, have been found. The other involves Kiddie Kollege, a day care center developed inside an abandoned thermometer factory, where more than 30 children were exposed to mercury, a neurotoxin that slows brain development in children.

In September, a division of the Centers for Disease Control released a study [PDF] concluding that people who live near the chromium contaminated sites in Hudson County have higher rates of lung cancer.

A New Jersey department scientist, Zoe Kelman, quit out of frustration over the chromium issue. She told ProPublica that she has concerns about Jackson taking the helm of the EPA because of what she sees as Jackson's lax response to pleas to strengthen chromium standards at planned condo communities in Hudson County, N.J.

"I had high hopes when Jackson took over," said Kelman, who had been a chemical engineer for the state. Kelman says that Jackson "ignored" a 50-page letter she wrote about how a protective cap made out of synthetic materials and soil would not sufficiently control chromium-laden waste in Jersey City. "I was perplexed that someone with her background would not be able to understand the issue, and recognize that we should be erring on the side of caution," Kelman said.

The department did respond [PDF] to Kelman's letter, saying that she was criticizing processes that many scientific agencies use to determine risk, and therefore there was little the department could do to address her concerns. (The response, Kelman argues, was essentially lip-service and didn't result in any changes.)

A 2004 investigation by the Newark Star-Ledger found that Honeywell Inc., PPG Industries and Maxus Energy Corporation, the companies responsible for the chromium pollution, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on lobbying and millions of dollars on their own scientific studies to convince the state of New Jersey that its chromium standard was too stringent.

According to the investigation, when the lobbying effort began, New Jersey considered chromium levels in soil at 10 parts per million to be safe; by the end of the companies' lobbying campaign the chromium standard was raised to 6,100 parts per million: one of the loosest standards in the country, allowing the companies to save millions on cleanup costs.

Not long after the Star-Ledger`s investigation, Jackson's predecessor, former department commissioner, Bradley Campbell issued a moratorium on development of the chromium-contaminated land and assigned a panel of department scientists to investigate New Jersey's chromium standard. Kelman was one of the members on that panel.

About a year into Jackson's tenure the panel's assessment of New Jersey's standards came out and Jackson thought it provided reason to lift the moratorium [PDF] on development, while also tightening the chromium standard to 20 parts per million. Kelman believes that move failed to sufficiently protect public health and was premature because a more comprehensive study on chromium was due to be completed by the National Toxicology Program later that year.

In August 2006, Jackson asserted in a press release about the Kiddie Kollege day care center that "inspectors moved in, took samples and shut it down" as soon as they discovered mercury.

But the New York Times reported shortly after that an internal memo showed the department had known of contamination at the site since 1994. New Jersey environment department inspectors found out that the building was being used as a day care center in April 2006, but didn't shut it down until that July.

Jeff Tittel, who heads the New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club, says Jackson isn't to blame for the Kiddie Kollege incident, and instead points a finger at New Jersey's former environmental commissioner for removing the site from the state's list of contaminated sites.

"Under Jackson, an inspector went out there on his own time, and found out that there was a day care center there," says Tittel. "Did it take longer than it should have? Maybe, but the government doesn't always move as quickly as we would like it to."

Many prominent New Jersey environmental advocates say that Jackson inherited most of the department's problems from previous commissioners, and from staff cuts made by former New Jersey Gov. Christie Todd Whitman, who went on to become EPA administrator herself under President Bush.

"The department in charge of hazardous waste used to have 270 people, now they are down to 150," says Tittel.

Jackson's staffing decisions have also been criticized by PEER. The watchdog group points to her 2006 appointment [PDF] of Nancy Wittenberg, a former New Jersey Builders Association lobbyist, as the Assistant Commissioner for Environmental Regulation as an example of Jackson's ties to industry.

"Her extreme positions and statements as a lobbyist raise legitimate questions about her judgment and capacity to fairly and objectively administer environmental laws," said then-PEER employee Bill Wolfe in a media announcement made at the time of Wittenberg's appointment.

In an effort to determine just how much leverage industry lobbyists have in Jackson's department, PEER filed a petition to get the department to give the public information on its meetings with lobbyists, but the department immediately rejected the petition.

Jackson's supporters ardently defend her record and place much of New Jersey's environmental problems on Gov. Corzine. They say that while Corzine has offered lofty rhetoric about environmental goals, he has not helped Jackson accomplish them. Jackson left the department to take a job as Corzine's chief of staff at the beginning of this month.

"Lisa Jackson has been forced to work without the resources or the leadership at the top to let her do what she wanted to do," says Amy Goldsmith, the state policy director for the New Jersey Environmental Federation. "Corzine just has different priorities, and if the leader isn't willing to lead, it is hard for somebody that's been appointed to take the reins."

Both Goldsmith and Tittel point to Jackson's work on climate change as an example of why she would make a great EPA chief.

Last year, Corzine signed the Global Warming Response Act, which aims to cut greenhouse gases in New Jersey 20 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050.

"Lisa worked closely with the governor to champion this bill, and helped lobby the legislature to approve it," says Dena Mottola, executive director of Environment New Jersey.

But Ruch argues that the New Jersey environment department under Jackson's tenure failed to meet crucial deadlines for drafting procedures to actually implement the law.

"As a result, despite much ballyhoo, New Jersey does not have a coherent game-plan for achieving its climate change goals," Ruch wrote in a letter to President-elect Obama [PDF], opposing Jackson's nomination.

Again, New Jersey environmentalists come to Jackson's defense.

"No one worked more on this issue than my group, and if we thought missing that deadline was a huge concern we would have criticized it, and we didn't," says Mottola.

Eric Stiles, vice president for conservation at the New Jersey Audubon Society, said that while Jackson's record isn't perfect, she has always been receptive to his group's arguments and straightforward about her positions and the competing interests she was considering.

"She really took on some big issues and big battles and moved it forward in New Jersey," says Stiles. "Did she do everything I would have hoped for? No. But probably everything I would've hoped for was unreasonable."

California Dreaming: Even In San Francisco, People Don’t Want to Pay to Drive Downtown

Wall Street Journal
December 30, 2008

Posted by Keith Johnson

Are environmental initiatives too important to be left to voters? That's the issue raised by the squabble over congestion pricing in San Francisco.

That would be off-peak (AP)

Making drivers pay extra to drive downtown at peak hours may have failed in New York, but surely in environmentally-friendly San Francisco congestion pricing enjoys broad support? Not quite, notes the L.A. Times:

Such a plan might sound like a slam-dunk here, in the first American metropolis to ban plastic shopping bags — where officials considered tapping pet feces for fuel instead of sending it to the landfill, the mayor banned the use of city funds to buy bottled water (too much garbage), and the bicycle lobby is a force to be reckoned with. But reaction to the plan's recent rollout has ranged from lukewarm to downright hostile.

Plenty of local residents are aghast at the prospect of paying $6 a day to drive into—or simply pass through—the city. Local businesses are worried the proposed plan, if enacted, would drive off shoppers and force an exodus to cheaper pastures.

Public opposition to congestion pricing in San Francisco echoes a theme that pops up whenever environmental concerns collide with greenbacks: Environmental ideas sound great, until people see the pricetag. California's statewide emissions-reduction scheme is dogged by the same sort of public skepticism, some opinion polls suggest.

San Francisco spent years studying London's pioneering congestion-pricing plan. Early opposition there turned to majority support within a few years, and both traffic and auto emissions have been reduced since the plan started.

But that's not to say Londoners want to expand the plan to include even more neighorboods; the new mayor scrapped the proposed extension after public outcry this year. Other big British cities like Manchester are also having second thoughts about introducing pricing schemes after asking people what they thought.

So perhaps the key to introducing environmental plans that make life more expensive is simply not to ask in the first place, Tree Hugger notes:

Some people are questioning whether this kind of public initiative should be the subject of a vote at all. The London congestion charge was implemented by the former Mayor without a vote and has been a great success, despite the fears of business.

Something to think about as the next administration grapples with rejuvenating the economy and keeping its ambitious promises to start curbing greenhouse-gas emissions.

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Oregon to pursue mileage tax

Democrat Herald
December 27, 2008

By Hasso Hering
Albany Democrat-Herald

A year ago, the Oregon Department of Transportation announced it had demonstrated that a new way to pay for roads — via a mileage tax and satellite technology — could work.

Now Gov. Ted Kulongoski says he'd like the legislature to take the next step.

As part of a transportation-related bill he has filed for the 2009 legislative session, the governor says he plans to recommend "a path to transition away from the gas tax as the central funding source for transportation."

What that means is explained on the governor's website:

"As Oregonians drive less and demand more fuel-efficient vehicles, it is increasingly important that the state find a new way, other than the gas tax, to finance our transportation system."

According to the policies he has outlined online, Kulongoski proposes to continue the work of the special task force that came up with and tested the idea of a mileage tax to replace the gas tax.

The governor wants the task force "to partner with auto manufacturers to refine technology that would enable Oregonians to pay for the transportation system based on how many miles they drive."

The online outline adds: "The governor is committed to ensuring that rural Oregon is not adversely affected and that privacy concerns are addressed."

When the task force's study and test were in the news in 2006 and 2007, critics worried that the technology could be used to track where vehicles go, not just how far they travel, and that this information would somehow be stored by the government.

In more than one interview with the Democrat-Herald and others, James Whitty, the ODOT official in charge of the project, tried to assure the public that tracking people's travels was not in the plans.

The task force's final report came out in November 2007. It was based largely on a field test in which about 300 motorists in the Portland area and two service stations took part over

10 months, ending in March 2007.

A GPS-based system kept track of the in-state mileage driven by the volunteers. When they bought fuel, a device in their vehicles was read, and they paid 1.2 cents a mile and got a refund of the state gas tax of 24 cents a gallon.

The final report detailed the technical aspects of the program. It also stressed the issue of privacy.

"The concept requires no transmission of vehicle travel locations, either in real time or of travel history," the report said. "Accordingly, no travel location points are stored within the vehicle or transmitted elsewhere. Thus there can be no 'tracking' of vehicle movements."

Also, the report said, under the Oregon concept of the program, "ODOT would have no involvement in developing the on-vehicle devices, installing them in vehicles, maintaining them or having any other access to them except, perhaps, in situations involving tampering or similar fee evasion activities."

Equipment for the Oregon test was developed at Oregon State University.

Whitty said last year it might take about $20 million to establish that the mileage tax is commercially viable. Eventually, GPS devices would have to start being built into cars, and fueling stations would have to be similarly equipped.

The gas tax would stay in force — Kulongoski has proposed that it be raised 2 cents — for vehicles not equipped to pay the mileage tax.

More than 100 million Americans breathe sooty air

SF Gate
December 22, 2008

More than 100 million people living in 46 metro areas are breathing air that has gotten too full of soot on some days, and now those cities have to clean up their air, the Environmental Protection Agency said Monday.The EPA added 15 cities to the sooty air list, mostly in states not usually thought of as pollution-prone, such as Alaska, Utah, Idaho and Wisconsin. That's probably because of the prevalence of wood stoves in western and northern regions, a top EPA official said.

But environmentalists said the EPA was only doing half its job on soot-laden areas, letting some southern cities with long-term soot problems — such as Houston — off the hook.

The EPA notified elected officials in 211 counties in 25 states that their air violated newly tightened daily standards for fine particles of pollution from diesel-burning trucks, power plants, wood-burning stoves and other sources. Those particles, often called soot, can cause breathing and heart problems.

These lists of what EPA calls "nonattainment areas" are important because regions that have air that is too sooty must come up with plans by 2012 on how to clean it and then do it by 2014. When old power plants and factories in these areas expand or do major refurbishing, they have to show EPA that it would not further pollute the air. It could mean also controls on vehicle emissions and regions having to take pollution into effect when they build new roads.

Fifty-four counties that didn't violate soot standards in 2004 — the last time EPA put out such a list — now do. They include areas around Fairbanks and Juneau, Alaska; Nogales, Ariz.; Pinehurst, Idaho; Davenport and Muscatine, Iowa; Klamath and Oakridge, Ore.; Provo and Salt Lake City, Utah; Seattle, Wash.; Green Bay, Madison, and Milwaukee, Wis., and the Logan, Utah, area that also includes part of Franklin County, Idaho.

The air is getting cleaner, but the daily soot standards were made nearly 50 percent tougher in 2006, said Robert Meyers, the principal deputy assistant administrator for air and radiation at EPA.

Since 2006, EPA has had two sets of soot standards and this list only looks at one of them. There are daily air quality standards and long-term yearly standards. The Bush Administration tightened the daily standard, but not the long-term one, despite EPA's science advisers' recommendation to do so.

The EPA came out with a new list based on the tightened daily standards, but doesn't plan to take another look at cities violating the longer-term standards, Meyers said. That list was last completed in 2004 and 95 million people lived in cities considered too full of soot.

Because of that, at least five regions, including Houston, that did violate the yearly soot standards, don't have to do anything about it and residents are not told there's a problem, said Frank O'Donnell, president of the environmental group Clean Air Watch

"EPA has failed to protect many millions of people from deadly particle soot by pretending that areas are clean where the air is actually dirty," O'Donnell said. "The poster child for this is Houston."

"It is a very bad holiday gift to breathers in cities like Houston," O'Donnell said. "The Bush administration has given them the gift of dirty air."

The other areas left off the EPA's list, but still violating annual standards, include Augusta and Columbus, Ga.; Greenville, S.C., and Fairmont, W.Va., O'Donnell said.

Meyers said that's not the case.

"The overall trend is encouraging," Meyers said in a telephone interview "We're having success in controlling things like diesel particles from trucks."

In Reversal, Court Allows a Bush Plan on Pollution

New York Times
December 23, 2008

In July, the court struck down the rule, saying the Environmental Protection Agency had exceeded its authority in devising a new emissions-trading system to reduce that pollution, and must rewrite the rule to fix its "fundamental flaws." Environmentalists criticized the decision as a major setback for clean air.

In Tuesday's decision, the court said that having a flawed rule temporarily in place was better than having no rule at all. The agency must still revise the rule but has no deadline for doing so.

The regulation, known as the Clean Air Interstate Rule, had been the centerpiece of the Bush administration's re-engineering of the Clean Air Act. It set significant targets to reduce pollution around the power plants and in the downwind states whose air quality was affected by the emissions.

Tuesday's decision, by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, means that levels of smog-forming nitrogen oxides must be reduced in 28 eastern states and the District of Columbia beginning Jan. 1. Levels of sulfur dioxide, closely associated with the formation of deadly fine soot particles, must be reduced beginning a year later.

Environmentalists applauded the decision, saying it could form the basis for stronger controls to be drafted by the new administration. Industry groups were relieved to know what rules would cover their operations for the moment, but were pleased that the court's original objections to the rule were unchanged.

The court's second thoughts about striking down the rule came in response to complaints from state regulators, environmental groups, some utilities and the E.P.A. itself.

Judge Judith W. Rogers, concurring with the court's decision, said eliminating the rule "would have serious adverse implications for public health and the environment," because "the rule has become so intertwined" with the overall architecture of current Clean Air Act protections.

Both the new Congress and President-elect Barack Obama are expected to tackle the problem of nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide. That will include determining how the new controls on those emissions should dovetail with controls for mercury, a toxic pollutant, and with the carbon dioxide emissions that are associated with climate change.

Bob Meyers, who heads the Air and Radiation office at the E.P.A., said that he was disappointed that the court did not reconsider its underlying objections to the rule. The regulation, he said, "was one of the main programs the administration was able to put forward to improve public health and the environment."

He added, "To the extent that today's hearing restores it — by removing immediate threat of vacating a rule — it is a good day."

Dan Riedinger, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, a utility trade group, said in an e-mail message that his group applauded the court for "providing greater near-term certainty for pollution reduction programs and emission markets, and maintaining important health and environmental benefits."

But, he added, "It's impossible to predict what comes next."

Vicki Patton, the deputy general counsel with the Environmental Defense Fund, said that, while the E.P.A. must redesign the rule to meet the court's objections, "the baton has been handed off to President-elect Obama and his team."

The rule, Ms. Patton said, "provides a foundation for building a more comprehensive program that protects human health from the full sweep of pollutants that are emitted from coal-fired power plants."

On Monday, the E.P.A. issued a report on fine-particle pollution that showed that the number of geographic areas failing to meet federal standards had nearly doubled, to 58, including part or all of 211 counties in 25 states.

California officials launch 'Green Chemistry' initiative

Los Angeles Times
December 17, 2008

The plan would inform consumers how items sold in the state are manufactured and transported and how environmentally safe their ingredients are.

By Margot Roosevelt

Is that laundry soap truly "environmentally friendly"? Was that mattress treated with toxic chemicals? Is that sweatsuit fashioned from organic cotton? Is that lipstick "natural"?

California officials launched a sweeping green initiative on Tuesday to inform consumers exactly how hundreds of thousands of products sold in the state are manufactured and transported and how safe their ingredients are.

 

The plan, which would require every product to reveal its "environmental footprint," envisions the most comprehensive regulations ever adopted for consumer goods.

"These recommendations usher in a new era of how we look at household products -- from our children's toys to the plastic we use to make shampoo bottles, to the varnish on our wood furniture," said Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Until now, most of the state's regulation of toxic chemicals, which can cause cancer, birth defects and neurological damage, has been focused on how to control exposure to factory workers and how to clean up hazardous waste.

But after an 18-month effort to revamp that approach, "instead of paying attention to the toxic substances in our everyday products only when it comes time to throw them away in the landfill," Schwarzenegger said, "we will now pay attention . . . when the product is designed, manufactured, used and recycled."

Maureen F. Gorsen, director of the California Department of Toxic Substances Control, said the administration would propose a law setting up a public database that could eventually allow consumers to scan a bar code on every product to determine how green it is -- or isn't.

With scanners at stores, or eventually on cellphones, purchasers could compare brands to figure out which one was manufactured, for instance, with coal-fired electricity in China and which one with solar power in California.

They could also determine how much greenhouse gas was emitted through its transportation by boat, plane or truck and whether its ingredients were the safest available and could be easily recycled.

A more limited regulation by the California Air Resources Board requires stickers on new automobiles rating them on how much smog-forming pollution and how much carbon dioxide, a gas that contributes to global warming, they emit.

The proposed "Green Chemistry" initiative comes at a time of growing concern that the federal Toxic Substances Control Act, passed three decades ago, has failed to control an explosion of hazardous materials.

Europe recently enacted tougher toxics rules than the United States, forcing many American companies to revamp products sold for export, but the California program would go further in its disclosure requirements.

"We don't know what is really in 'artificial flavors' or 'fragrances,' " said Dan Jacobson, legislative director of Environment California, a nonprofit that issued a recent report on the lack of testing on chemicals.

Environmentalists want to curb the current practice of "risk assessment," which requires a complex calculation of exposure and harm before a chemical is restricted. Chemicals should be proven safe before marketed, in their view.

"Industry fights for risk assessment because it is easier to hide the dangers of their chemicals," Jacobson said. "This issue is not fully addressed in the report."

Gorsen responded that the plan would mean "a big move away from traditional risk assessment. . . . We create a system that accelerates our move to safer choices -- rather than argue and equivocate about how bad is bad."

Meanwhile, companies, latching on to consumer fears, are trying to outdo one another in advertising their products' eco-virtues -- a phenomenon sometimes disparaged as "greenwashing."

"Most of the green stuff that is marketed is not really green," Gorsen said. "With this plan, we are moving from 'claims of green' to 'metrics of green.' Maybe a company did one thing to make their product green, but their overall footprint is not good. We'll look at how green is green. And how to compare this bottle of shampoo to that bottle of shampoo."

Approximately 100,000 known chemicals are used in production today, but safety data is available on only a few thousand. In California, 644 million pounds of chemical products are sold each day.

"The federal government has not required ingredients disclosure for all products," Gorsen said. "Now for the first time, we will know what is in products -- and not just those made in California but anything sold in California."

Two California laws passed last fall have jump-started the program. AB 1879, sponsored by Assemblyman Mike Feuer (D-Los Angeles), requires the state to identify "chemicals of concern" and to evaluate safer alternatives. SB 509, sponsored by Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto), creates a scientific clearinghouse for information on chemicals' effects.

Automakers and electronics manufacturers lobbied against the bills, saying that, given the new European standards, they could be subjected to a patchwork of warning labels. Car manufacturers use flame retardants that have been linked to neurodevelopmental effects. Computers and other electronics contain contaminants that endanger health if they escape into factory workplaces, landfills and water supplies.

Representatives of the electronics and auto industries in Sacramento declined to comment on the new plan, but John Ulrich, executive director of the Chemistry Industry Council of California, called the initiative "balanced. Our industry has been promoting sustainable development since the 1980s," he said.

The initiative takes a scientific approach to regulation, he added, instead of the "earlier chemical-by-chemical approach conducted in the Legislature by people who didn't have a background in the field."

He noted, however, that consumer products associations, such as detergent manufacturers, have not endorsed the disclosure of their ingredients because of concerns over trade secrets.

Gorsen said industry leaders such as Patagonia, Levi Strauss and Wal-Mart that are already using environmental score cards to rate products are enthusiastic about a footprint database.

"It will give a competitive advantage to companies that are ahead of the curve," she said.

It could also favor California-made products, she suggested. "With globalization, a lot of them are at a price disadvantage. But if a California manufacturing facility is cleaner than a facility in China, then California will not be at such a competitive disadvantage."

Gorsen said her agency "held workshops up and down the state. We talked to the manufacturers, to Dow, DuPont and Procter & Gamble, to the grocery chains and the retailers. We sifted through 57,000 comments."

The 57-page plan will require both regulations and new legislation. And, given the hundreds of thousands of products sold in the state, it could take as long as 10 years to gather all the information on their manufacture, toxicity and environmental footprints, Gorsen acknowledged.

margot.roosevelt

@latimes.com

EU parliament approves climate change package

Agence France Presse
December 17, 2008

/climate/article/38894

The European Parliament on Wednesday approved the EU's climate change package, aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020, lifting the last hurdle to the ambitious plan.

Six texts on the package, already agreed by the 27 European Union member states, were passed by a large majority of the MEPs present.

"We have sealed the climate package," said European Parliament President Hans-Gert Poettering, after the vote.

The so-called "20-20-20" climate package, which Europe hopes will serve as a model to other nations, will oblige EU nations to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels, make 20 percent energy savings and bring the use of renewable energy sources up to 20 percent of the total.

The parliamentary approval came five days after EU heads of state and government worked out a compromise deal on the package at a summit in Brussels.

Within the overall EU targets, each EU nation and industry sector has its own obligations under the package, and last-minute dispensations were given, particularly to Warsaw and Berlin which were concerned at the effects on industry.

German conservatives also complained that the package was too tough on industry and evoked the spectre of "carbon leakage" whereby jobs would move out of a highly regulated region with no benefit to the European economy or the global environment.

However, environmental groups complain that the package was so watered-down in the attempts to reach a deal that the measures adopted will no longer deliver on the promised climate change targets.

"The parliament has marginalised itself by lacking the courage to make even small changes to the compromises negotiated by the EU summit last Friday," said Greenpeace EU climate and energy policy director Joris den Blanken.

"Europe promised leadership on climate, but so far it has led us up the garden path. The climate package doesn't even take us half way to where we should be in the fight against climate change," he added.

"This is not quite the third industrial revolution trumpeted when proposals were presented at the beginning of the year," complained Delia Villagrasa, Senior Advisor to WWF.

"The 20 percent target sounds nice in words, but is void because EU countries are allowed to accomplish approximately three quarters of the effort outside EU borders, which translates into European emission reduced by only

4-5 percent between now and 2020," she added.

However, Swedish Liberal Democrat MEP Lena Ek hailed the agreement as "a win-win situation."

"Finally we have this package. In a period where we have to go through an economic crisis this package is a win-win situation," she said.

"The green investments will create jobs and give our industry a lead. By adopting this set of measures we have confirmed Europe's leadership in tackling global warming," she added.

"Mission accomplished," French Environment Minister Jean-Louis Borloo told AFP. "We'll see the full benefit if we reach a global deal in Copenhagen."

The European Union hopes that its climate and energy package will serve as a model for the United States, China, India and other major polluters at international climate change talks to be held in Copenhagen next December.

The EU nations have said they are prepared to increase their greenhouse gas cuts to 30 percent if there is an international climate change deal.

The six texts adopted by the parliament constituted the main planks of the overall package -- renewable energy, emissions trading, carbon dioxide capture and storage, efforts by member states, overall reduction of CO2 emissions and reducing car emissions.

All six went through with a large majority, with between 559 and 670 European deputies voting in favour out of the total of 785.

The plan must be formally published before its measures come into effect.

This article is reproduced with kind permission of Agence France-Presse (AFP) For more news and articles visit the AFP website.

Survey: EU consumers reluctant to 'buy green'

World Council for Sustainable Development
December 16, 2008

/business/article/38878

While consumers in many emerging South American and Asian markets prefer to buy from companies that promote their environmental credentials, Europeans appear to adopt more sceptical views of green marketing

, a new survey by TNS Global found.

The 17-country study, published earlier this month, revealed that 24% of respondents from across the world acknowledged that companies' green marketing had a "significant or large influence" on their purchasing decisions.

The table was topped by countries such as Brazil, Mexico and Thailand, where around half of consumers said they were influenced by green marketing. Numbers were much lower in Europe, with Italians most impressed by green marketing strategies

(25%) and Germans least (10%).

The results suggested that such variation could be partially explained by differing perceptions of the reasoning behind green corporate promotion. In Germany and France, almost 90% of consumers believe companies sponsor green initiatives to improve their public profile, or for marketing and sales purposes. Japan, on the other hand, leads a group of countries that give firms "the benefit of the doubt," with nearly four out of 10 consumers believing that companies do so out of genuine concern for the environment.

The market research firm asked respondents to rate the top 25 companies on the Fortune 500 list in terms of their environmentally-friendly credentials. Car manufacturer Toyota scored the highest, followed by General Electric, Volkswagen and Wal-Mart stores.

In general, the survey indicated that citizens worldwide are concerned about the state of the environment. A clear majority rated the overall condition of the natural environment as either 'fair' or 'poor' in their own country, an opinion which becomes even more negative if the world in general is considered: a massive 78% of respondents believe the condition of the global environment to be 'fair' at best.

People worry about air pollution, deforestation, water pollution and over-development in particular, and they are also prepared to adapt their personal lives to improve the situation, TNS said. 40% of respondents claimed to have changed their behaviour in the recent past to benefit the environment, focusing on actions in such areas as the home, cars and shopping habits. The majority did not care for donating to green organisations or organic gardening. Purchases of automobiles and food were most influenced by environmental considerations.

Moreover, people now seem more prepared to pay for green products and services. Emerging markets such as Thailand and Brazil topped the TNS chart as countries whose citizens were willing to pay more for environmentally-friendly products and recycling services, while those in the UK, France and Germany were significantly less willing to do so. A premium of 5% was acceptable for the majority, with Japanese, Spanish and French consumers prepared to pay considerably more.

Too Late? Why Scientists Say We Should Expect the Worst

The Guardian
December 9, 2008

by David Adam

http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=264&Itemid=1

As ministers and officials gather in Poznan one year ahead of the
Copenhagen summit on global warming, the second part of a major series
looks at the crucial issue of targets.

At a high-level academic conference on global warming at Exeter University
this summer, climate scientist Kevin Anderson stood before his expert
audience and contemplated a strange feeling. He wanted to be wrong. Many
of those in the room who knew what he was about to say felt the same. His
conclusions had already caused a stir in scientific and political circles.
Even committed green campaigners said the implications left them
terrified.

Head of the world's top climate scientists Rajendra Pachauri, seen here on
October 23, 2008, says he is stunned at the trillion-dollar cheques that
have been signed to ease the banking crisis when funding for poverty and
global warming is scrutinised or denied.

Anderson, an expert at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at
Manchester University, was about to send the gloomiest dispatch yet from
the frontline of the war against climate change.

Despite the political rhetoric, the scientific warnings, the media
headlines and the corporate pro mises, he would say, carbon emissions were
soaring way out of control - far above even the bleak scenarios considered
by last year's report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) and the Stern review. The battle against dangerous climate change
had been lost, and the world needed to prepare for things to get very,
very bad.

"As an academic I wanted to be told that it was a very good piece of work
and that the conclusions were sound," Anderson said. "But as a human being
I desperately wanted someone to point out a mistake, and to tell me we had
got it completely wrong."

Nobody did. The cream of the UK climate science community sat in stunned
silence as Anderson pointed out that carbon emissions since 2000 have
risen much faster than anyone thought possible, driven mainly by the
coal-fuelled economic boom in the developing world. So much extra
pollution is being pumped out, he said, that most of the climate targets
debated by politicians and campaigners are fanciful at best, and
"dangerously misguided" at worst.

In the jargon used to count the steady accumulation of carbon dioxide in
the Earth's thin layer of atmosphere, he said it was "improbable" that
levels could now be restricted to 650 parts per million (ppm).

The CO2 level is currently over 380ppm, up from 280ppm at the time of the
industrial revolution, and it rises by more than 2ppm each year. The
government's official position is that the world should aim to cap this
rise at 450ppm.

The science is fuzzy, but experts say that could offer an even-money
chance of limiting the eventual temperature rise above pre-industrial
times to 2C, which the EU defines as dangerous. (We have had 0.7C of that
already and an estimated extra 0.5C is guaranteed because of emissions to
date.)

The graphs on the large screens behind Anderson's head at Exeter told a
different story. Line after line, representing the fumes that belch from
chimneys, exhausts and jet engines, that should have bent in a rapid curve
towards the ground, were heading for the ceiling instead.

At 650ppm, the same fuzzy science says the world would face a catastrophic
4C average rise. And even that bleak future, Anderson said, could only be
achieved if rich countries adopted "draconian emission reductions within a
decade". Only an unprecedented "planned economic recession" might be
enough. The current financial woes would not come close.

Lost cause

Anderson is not the only expert to voice concerns that current targets are
hopelessly optimistic. Many scientists, politicians and campaigners
privately admit that 2C is a lost cause. Ask for projections around the
dinner table after a few bottles of wine and more vote for 650ppm than
450ppm as the more likely outcome.

Bob Watson, chief scientist at the Environment Department and a former
head of the IPCC, warned this year that the world needed to prepare20for a
4C rise, which would wipe out hundreds of species, bring extreme food and
water shortages in vulnerable countries and cause floods that would
displace hundreds of millions of people. Warming would be much more severe
towards the poles, which could accelerate melting of the Greenland and
West Antarctic ice sheets.

Watson said: "We must alert everybody that at the moment we're at the very
top end of the worst case [emissions] scenario. I think we should be
striving for 450 [ppm] but I think we should be prepared that 550 [ppm] is
a more likely outcome." Hitting the 450ppm target, he said, would be
"unbelievably difficult".

A report for the Australian government this autumn suggested that the
450ppm goal is so ambitious that it could wreck attempts to agree a new
global deal on global warming at Copenhagen next year. The report, from
economist Ross Garnaut and dubbed the Australian Stern review, says
nations must accept that a greater amount of warming is inevitable, or
risk a failure to agree that "would haunt humanity until the end of time".

It says developed nations including Britain, the US and Australia, would
have to slash carbon dioxide emissions by 5% each year over the next
decade to hit the 450ppm target. Britain's Climate Change Act 2008, the
most ambitious legislation of its kind in the world, calls for reductions
of about 3% each year to 2050.

Garnaut, a professorial fellow in economics at Melbourne Un iversity, said:
"Achieving the objective of 450ppm would require tighter constraints on
emissions than now seem likely in the period to 2020 ... The only
alternative would be to impose even tighter constraints on developing
countries from 2013, and that does not appear to be realistic at this
time."

The report adds: "The awful arithmetic means that exclusively focusing on
a 450ppm outcome, at this moment, could end up providing another reason
for not reaching an international agreement to reduce emissions. In the
meantime, the cost of excessive focus on an unlikely goal could consign to
history any opportunity to lock in an agreement for stabilising at 550ppm
- a more modest, but still difficult, international outcome. An effective
agreement around 550ppm would be vastly superior to continuation of
business as usual."

Henry Derwent, former head of the UK's international climate negotiating
team and now president of the International Emissions Trading Association,
said a new climate treaty was unlikely to include a stabilisation goal -
either 450ppm or 550ppm.

"You've got to avoid talking and thinking in those terms because otherwise
the politics reaches a dead end," he said. Many small island states are
predicted to be swamped by rising seas with global warming triggered by
carbon levels as low as 400ppm. "It's really difficult for countries to
sign up to something that loses them half their territory. It's not going
to work."

A ne w agreement in Copenhagen should concentrate instead on shorter term
targets, such as firm emission reductions by 2020, he said.

Worst time

The escalating scale of human emissions could not have come at a worst
time, as scientists have discovered that the Earth's forests and oceans
could be losing their ability to soak up carbon pollution. Most climate
projections assume that about half of all carbon emissions are reabsorbed
in these natural sinks.

Computer models predict that this effect will weaken as the world warms,
and a string of recent studies suggests this is happening already.

The Southern Ocean's ability to absorb carbon dioxide has weakened by
about 15% a decade since 1981, while in the North Atlantic, scientists at
the University of East Anglia also found a dramatic decline in the CO2
sink between the mid-1990s and mid-2000s.

A separate study published this year showed the ability of forests to soak
up anthropogenic carbon dioxide - that caused by human activity - was
weakening, because the changing length of the seasons alters the time when
trees switch from being a sink of carbon to a source.

Soils could also be giving up their carbon stores: evidence emerged in
2005 that a vast expanse of western Siberia was undergoing an
unprecedented thaw.

The region, the largest frozen peat bog in the world, had begun to melt
for the first time since it formed 11,000 years ago. Scientists believe
the bog could begin to release billions of tonnes of methane locked up in
the soils, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide. The
World Meteorological Organisation recently reported the largest annual
rise of methane levels in the atmosphere for a decade.

Some experts argue that the grave nature of recent studies, combined with
the unexpected boom in carbon emissions, demands an urgent reassessment of
the situation. In an article published this month in the journal Climatic
Change, Peter Sheehan, an economist at Victoria University, Australia,
says the scale of recent emissions means the carbon cuts suggested by the
IPCC to stabilise levels in the atmosphere "cannot be taken as a reliable
guide for immediate policy determination". The cuts, he says, will need to
be bigger and in more places.

Earlier this year, Jim Hansen, senior climate scientist with Nasa,
published a paper that said the world's carbon targets needed to be
urgently revised because of the risk of feedbacks in the climate system.
He used reconstructions of the Earth's past climate to show that a target
of 350ppm, significantly below where we are today, is needed to "preserve
a planet similar to that on which civilisation developed and to which life
on Earth is adapted". Hansen has suggested a joint review by Britain's
Royal Society and the US National Academy of Sciences of all research
findings since the IPCC report.

Rajendra Pachauri, who chairs the IPCC, argues that suggestions the IPCC
report is out of date is "not a valid position at all".

He said: "What the IPCC produces is not based on two years of literature,
but 30 or 40 years of literature. We're not dealing with short-term
weather changes, we're talking about major changes in our climate system.
I refuse to accept that a few papers are in any way going to influence the
long-term projections the IPCC has come up with."

At Defra, Watson said: "Even without the new information there was enough
to make most policy makers think that urgent action was absolutely
essential. The new information only strengthens that and pushes it even
harder. It was already very urgent to start with. It's now become very,
very urgent."

-- David Adam has been environment correspondent for the Guardian since
2005, before which he was science correspondent for two years. He
previously worked at the science journal Nature. He decided on a career in
journalism after a PhD in chemical engineering convinced him it was more
enjoyable to write about other people's research than to carry out his
own.

© Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
Published on Tuesday, December 9, 2008 by The Guardian/UK

Recycling to Play Critical Role in State's Landmark Global Warming Plan

Californians Against Waste
December 11, 2008

The California Air Resources Board voted to implement a mandatory
commercial recycling program as part of its adoption today of the AB 32
Scoping Plan, the blueprint for implementing California's landmark
global warming legislation. The ARB also highlighted the importance of
providing financial incentives and working with local governments to
implement recycling programs.

CAW spearheaded a two-year effort to ensure recycling was appropriately
represented in the Scoping Plan, and we were pleased to learn that the
state has identified recycling as one of the key strategies that will
help California achieve its goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to
1990 levels by 2020 (a reduction of 174 million tons of CO2). CAW is
particularly proud of the leadership role that the ARB and CIWMB have
taken with regards to commercial recycling, specifically with the
following improvement that was made from earlier drafts of this plan:

More broadly, the state has prioritized the following greenhouse gas
reduction measures in the plan:

* The state will require commercial businesses, a sector of the
economy that has historically lacked adequate recycling services, to
recycle.

* The state will adopt landfill regulations that will reduce the
climate impact of these facilities and protect public health, safety,
and the environment.

* The state will provide direct incentives for the use of
compost and mulch in landscaping and agriculture, resulting in reduced
irrigation demand, less emissions at landfills, and decrease in
fertilizer and pesticide usage.

* The state will build on the innovative success of local
governments by encouraging food scrap composting and anaerobic digestion
statewide.

* The state will evaluate opportunities for climate benefits
from Extended Producer Responsibility.

* State agencies will also take a leadership role and reduce
their own climate impact through Environmentally Preferred Purchasing
and public education.

The ARB estimates that these measures will result in a reduction of at
least 10 million tons of carbon dioxide. CAW believes that the measures
adopted today clearly position California to continue to serve as a
national model for recycling policy.

Mexico pledges greenhouse gas cuts

Thomson Reuters

December 11, 2008

By VANESSA GERA

POZNAN, Poland (AP) — Mexico announced a plan Thursday to halve greenhouse gas emissions from 2002 levels by 2050, making it one of the few developing countries to set a specific reductions target.

Mexico's Environment Secretary Juan Rafael Elvira said the target would be met with clean and efficient technologies, such as wind and solar power. He said he hoped the move would challenge other countries to take strong action and help Mexico with investments needed to meet the goal.

Mexico's aim to cut 2002 levels by 50 percent by mid century, he said, is to spur "collective" global action on fighting climate change.

He and his deputy, Fernando Tudela, announced the goals at U.N. climate talks in Poznan, Poland, where some 190 countries are working on a new climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. The aim is to get a deal next December at U.N. talks in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Edward Helme, president of the Center for Clean Air Policy, an environmental group that has worked with the Mexican government in drawing up the plan, praised the step as ambitious.

"The Mexican government should be applauded for exerting leadership and announcing such a strong, national goal," Helme said.

The officials also announced a plan to set up a "cap and trade" system that would set emissions limits on certain sectors — such as cement and oil refining.

Companies that reduce their emissions below those limits could sell their unused allowances on the international carbon market. The Mexican officials said they hope to have the program operating by 2012.

"This is a very aggressive goal for our country, but we are confident we can achieve it with international assistance," Tudela said. He voiced hope for "similar action by other developing countries."

Environmentalists at the talks have strongly criticized some of the world's richest countries, saying they have done too little to battle global warming.

But many developing countries, including Brazil, China, South Africa, and now Mexico, have been winning praise for offering specific plans to fight climate change.

Obama left with little time to curb global warming

Associated Press
December 14, 2008

Dec 14, 2:07 PM (ET)

By SETH BORENSTEIN

Google sponsored links Global Warming Hoax - Find out how scientists, government are fooling the public. www.douglassreport.com   Gore's Global Warming - Find Out Why This Environmentalist Is Part Of The Problem! OffsetAlGore.com

WASHINGTON (AP) - When Bill Clinton took office in 1993, global warming was a slow-moving environmental problem that was easy to ignore. Now it is a ticking time bomb that President-elect Barack Obama can't avoid.

Since Clinton's inauguration, summer Arctic sea ice has lost the equivalent of Alaska, California and Texas. The 10 hottest years on record have occurred since Clinton's second inauguration. Global warming is accelerating. Time is close to running out, and Obama knows it.

"The time for delay is over; the time for denial is over," he said on Tuesday after meeting with former Vice President Al Gore, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on global warming. "We all believe what the scientists have been telling us for years now that this is a matter of urgency and national security and it has to be dealt with in a serious way."

But there are powerful political and economic realities that must be quickly overcome for Obama to succeed. Despite the urgency he expresses, it's not at all clear that he and Congress will agree on an approach during a worldwide financial crisis in time to meet some of the more crucial deadlines.

Obama is pushing changes in the way Americans use energy, and produce greenhouse gases, as part of what will be a massive economic stimulus. He called it an opportunity "to re-power America."

After years of inaction on global warming, 2009 might be different. Obama replaces a president who opposed mandatory cuts of greenhouse gas pollution and it appears he will have a willing Congress. Also, next year, diplomats will try to agree on a major new international treaty to curb the gases that promote global warming.

"We need to start in January making significant changes," Gore said in a recent telephone interview with The Associated Press. "This year coming up is the most important opportunity the world has ever had to make progress in really solving the climate crisis."

Scientists are increasingly anxious, talking more often and more urgently about exceeding "tipping points."

"We're out of time," Stanford University biologist Terry Root said. "Things are going extinct."

U.S. emissions have increased by 20 percent since 1992. China has more than doubled its carbon dioxide pollution in that time. World carbon dioxide emissions have grown faster than scientists' worst-case scenarios. Methane, the next most potent greenhouse gas, suddenly is on the rise again and scientists fear that vast amounts of the trapped gas will escape from thawing Arctic permafrost.

The amount of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere has already pushed past what some scientists say is the safe level.

In the early 1990s, many scientists figured that the world was about a century away from a truly dangerous amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, said Mike MacCracken, who was a top climate scientist in the Clinton administration. But as they studied the greenhouse effect further, scientists realized that harmful changes kick in at far lower levels of carbon dioxide than they thought. Now some scientists, but not all, say the safe carbon dioxide level for Earth is about 10 percent below what it is now.

Gore called the situation "the equivalent of a five-alarm fire that has to be addressed immediately."

Scientists fear that what's happening with Arctic ice melt will be amplified so that ominous sea level rise will occur sooner than they expected. They predict Arctic waters could be ice-free in summers, perhaps by 2013, decades earlier than they thought only a few years ago.

In December 2009, diplomats are charged with forging a new treaty replacing the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which set limits on greenhouse gases, and which the United States didn'tratify. This time European officials have high expectations for the U.S. to take the lead. But many experts don't see Congress passing a climate bill in time because of pressing economic and war issues.

"The reality is, it may take more than the first year to get it all done," Senate Energy Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said recently.

Complicating everything is the worldwide financial meltdown. Frank Maisano, a Washington energy specialist and spokesman who represents coal-fired utilities and refineries, sees the poor economy as "a huge factor" that could stop everything. That's because global warming efforts are aimed at restricting coal power, which is cheap. That would likely mean higher utility bills and more damage to ailing economies that depend on coal production, he said.

Obama is stacking his Cabinet and inner circle with advocates who have pushed for deep mandatory cuts in greenhouse gas pollution and even with government officials who have achieved results at the local level.

The President-elect has said that one of the first things he will do when he gets to Washington is grant California and other states permission to control car tailpipe emissions, something the Bush administration denied.

And though congressional action may take time, the incoming Congress will be more inclined to act on global warming. In the House, liberal California Democrat Henry Waxman's unseating of Michigan Rep. John Dingell - a staunch defender of Detroit automakers - as head of the House Energy and Commerce Committee was a sign that global warming will be on the fast track.

Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., vowed to push two global warming bills starting in January: one to promote energy efficiency as an economic stimulus and the other to create a cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from utilities. "The time is now," she wrote in a Dec. 8 letter to Obama.

Mother Nature, of course, is oblivious to the federal government's machinations. Ironically, 2008 is on pace to be a slightly cooler year in a steadily rising temperature trend line. Experts say it's thanks to a La Nina weather variation. While skeptics are already using it as evidence of some kind of cooling trend, it actually illustrates how fast the world is warming.

The average global temperature in 2008 is likely to wind up slightly under 57.9 degrees Fahrenheit, about a tenth of a degree cooler than last year. When Clinton was inaugurated, 57.9 easily would have been the warmest year on record. Now, that temperature would qualify as the ninth warmest year.

---

Associated Press writer Dina Cappiello contributed to this report.

After dangerous lull, war on climate change faces crunch year

World Business Council for Sustainable Development
December 15, 2008

/climate/article/38861

After a year in which it nearly lost its compass, the campaign against climate

change heads into 2009 needing top-level political commitment, creative thinking and a deep well of money.

Next year holds a big dream: by its end, the world will have forged a treaty in Copenhagen to shrink global warming from mankind-threatening juggernaut to manageable problem.

Unprecedented in scale and complexity, this accord, due to take effect from 2012, will rein in the greenhouse gases that stoke global warming

and throw a lifeline to poor countries exposed to mutated weather patterns.

But realising this vision will now require extraordinary effort.

Climate change became the buzzword of 2007, when UN scientists published a bible-sized report spelling out perils from rising seas, drought, flood and storms, an achievement that earned them, with green guru Al Gore, the Nobel Peace Prize.

In 2008, the issue began to fade and almost vanished completely when the world financial crisis struck.

Compared with demands to muster trillions of dollars and save millions of jobs, climate change suddenly looked to many politicians like a threat beyond the horizon.

Global warming only made its return to the world agenda towards year's end.

Barack Obama, newly elected, promised to bulldoze President George W. Bush's controversial climate policies. He vowed to set binding caps to drive down US emissions of greenhouse gases and stage a return to the global arena after eight years of isolation.

The European Union overcame internal feuding on the cost of going green by agreeing to slash emissions by 20 percent before 2020 over 1990, and spur energy efficiency and renewable sources.

That accord, at a fraught summit in Brussels last week, breathed life into talks in Poznan.

Just before dawn on Saturday, the 192-member UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) approved a work programme for negotiations leading up to the Copenhagen Treaty.

The stage is now set for a 12-month haggle focussing on this question: who should restrain their carbon emissions, by how much and by when?

Should the burden be shouldered just by rich countries, historically to blame for global warming?

Or should emerging giants such as China and India -- already massive polluters and set to be the big problem for decades to come -- break new ground by joining advanced economies in committing to binding emissions goals of some kind?

In exchange for these or other concessions, developing countries will set down hefty demands for help. Inventive solutions will be essential.

Underpinning it all is money: the cost of easing addiction to cheap, dirty fossil fuels and shoring up defences against climate change.

"I can pretend that it's not the case, but we all know that it is," UNFCCC chief Yvo de Boer admitted, as he reflected on the financial heart of the quid pro quo.

With storm clouds over the world economy, the outlook for Copenhagen is not good, judging by the time-worn principle that an economic crisis always trumps an environmental problem.

"Remember, this is a political exercise," said Tim Wirth, a former Democratic US senator who led climate negotiations under Bill Clinton.

"The people making these decisions have got to get elected. It is not scientists and environmentalists that are making these decisions."

Greens have argued for decades that the link between economic growth and polluting fossil fuels must be smashed and this has found powerful backers in Obama and UN chief Ban Ki-moon.

Ban called for a "Green New Deal" in which a chunk of the billions earmarked for reviving the world economy would leverage the switch to a job-creating, low-carbon future.

And he said he may hold a special summit during the UN General Assembly in September to give an extra push to the climate talks.

So many hopes are riding on Obama. But the next US president has just months to prove his credentials on climate change before the Copenhagen showdown, while at the same tackle the US economic crisis and juggle with powerful lobbies.

British economist Nicholas Stern, author of the 2006 Stern Review on the costs of climate change, said 2009 demanded boldness.

The world had the chance to make a historic shift, he argued in Poznan.

"We can actually lay the foundations over the next two years for the low-carbon growth which will be the sustaining growth of the future," Stern said.

But, he added: "I don't take any of this for granted. The human race has an incredibly well developed capacity to screw up, and we may miss this chance."