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Tag: carbon pollution
2016 Set To Be Hottest Year Yet, CO2 On Rise: WMO

2016 Set To Be Hottest Year Yet, CO2 On Rise: WMO

The world is on track for its hottest year on record and levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have reached new highs, further fuelling global warming, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Thursday.

June marked the 14th straight month of record heat for land and oceans, the United Nations agency said. It called for speedy implementation of a pact reached last December to limit climate change by shifting from fossil fuels to green energy by 2100.

The average temperature in the first six months of 2016 was 1.3°Celsius (2.4°Fahrenheit) warmer than the pre-industrial era in the late 19th Century, according to NASA.

“This underlines more starkly than ever the need to approve and implement the Paris Agreement on climate change, and to speed up the shift to low carbon economies and renewable energy,” said WMO secretary-general Petteri Taalas.

Under December’s Paris Agreement, nearly 200 governments agreed to limit global warming to “well below” 2°C (3.6°F) above pre-industrial times, while “pursuing efforts” for a ceiling of just 1.5°C. Temperatures are already nudging toward that lower limit.

“The heat has been especially pronounced in the Arctic, resulting in a very early onset of the annual melting of the Greenland ice sheet and Arctic sea ice,” WMO said.

David Carlson, director of the WMO’s Climate Research Program, told a news briefing: “What we’ve seen for the first 6 months of 2016 is really quite alarming.”

“We would have thought it would take several years to warm up like this,” he added. “We don’t have as much time as we thought.”

The northern hemisphere, including the state of Alaska in the United States, Canada and Russia, have posted unusually warm temperatures, he said.

The last month with global temperatures below the 20th century average was December 1984.

A strong El Nino weather event in the Pacific Ocean, a phenomenon associated with extreme droughts, storms and floods, “has now disappeared”, the WMO said in a statement.

The El Nino event developed in 2015 and contributed to the record temperatures in the first half of 2016 before disappearing in May, WMO said.

“Climate change, caused by heat-trapping greenhouse gases, will not (disappear). This means we face more heatwaves, more extreme rainfall and potential for higher impact tropical cyclones,” said Taalas.

 

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Tom Miles and Raissa Kasolowsky)

Photo: A man walks through a dried-up Sarkhej lake on a hot summer day in Ahmedabad, India, April 21, 2016. REUTERS/Amit Dave/File Photo

EPA Proposes Huge Carbon Emission Cuts For Heavy Trucks

EPA Proposes Huge Carbon Emission Cuts For Heavy Trucks

By Greg Gardner, Detroit Free Press (TNS)

Federal regulators are proposing that manufacturers of medium and heavy-duty trucks reduce carbon emissions by 1 billion metric tons and cut fuel costs by about $170 billion by next decade.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration came up with the standards that will now face a period during which industry and environment groups will comment. The standards could be revised.

The agencies are asking for a cut in carbon emissions between 2021 and 2027 that would be nearly equal to the greenhouse gas emissions from all U.S. residences in one year. The fuel-efficiency targets would save more oil than what the U.S. currently imports annually from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

“Once upon a time, to be pro-environment you had to be anti-big-vehicles. This rule will change that,” said U.S Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. “In fact, these efficiency standards are good for the environment – and the economy. When trucks use less fuel, shipping costs go down. It’s good news all around, especially for anyone with an online shopping habit.”

The fuel economy and emission standards would cover more than 7 million tractor trailers and other types of heavy-duty trucks that haul most of the nation’s goods. These rules will require manufacturers to use new technology that could add as much as $14,000 to the cost of making a new truck, according to the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association.

Mark Rosekind, NHTSA administrator, said a truck operator who bought a new rig in 2027 would recover the cost of meeting the proposed standards in about two years through fuel savings.

The standard would be defined in terms of increased freight hauled per fuel consumed, Rosekind said. The emission requirement would be set in terms of grams of carbon dioxide released per mile. Neither Rosekind nor EPA official Janet McCabe would provide a specfic target.

But the Obama administration is intent on establishing policies that will accelerate the reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas associated with contributing to climate change.

“We’re delivering big time on President Obama’s call to cut carbon pollution,” said EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy. “With emission reductions weighing in at 1 billion tons, this proposal will save consumers, businesses and truck owners money; and at the same time spur technology innovation and job-growth, while protecting Americans’ health and our environment over the long haul.”

Medium- and heavy-duty vehicles currently account for about 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and oil use in the U.S. transportation sector, but only represent about 5 percent of vehicles on the road. Globally, oil consumption and greenhouse emissions from heavy-duty vehicles are expected to surpass that of passenger vehicles by 2030.

The United States is working with other major economies to encourage progress on fuel economy standards in other countries, which will improve global energy and climate security by reducing reliance on oil.

(c)2015 Detroit Free Press. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Climate 2016: Will Hillary Clinton Become The Next ‘Greenest President’?

Climate 2016: Will Hillary Clinton Become The Next ‘Greenest President’?

If Hillary Clinton wins the nation’s highest office in 2016, she seems certain to pursue the kind of environmental, energy, and climate policies that earned Barack Obama praise as one of our “greenest” presidents. Certainly that is what the nation’s leading environmental activists seemed to expect when they gave her a tumultuous welcome at the annual dinner of the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) last December 1.

In her speech to the LCV dinner – where she sat with Tom Steyer, the Democratic billionaire who has dedicated his fortune to fighting climate change – the former Secretary of State blasted the climate deniers, praised the president’s commitment to a green economy, and promised that America could become “the clean energy superpower of the 21st century.”

With those words, she echoed not only the rhetoric and policies of the Obama administration, but the programs of the Clinton Foundation, where promoting renewable energy, conservation, and a clean environment at home and abroad have been among the highest priorities since her husband left the White House. Ever since the defeat of the Kyoto Treaty on climate change in the U.S. Senate in 1999, both Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton have sought to promote those same goals in other ways – notably through the C-40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, which the Clinton Foundation helped to organize.

As Secretary of State, Clinton strongly supported President Obama’s approach to climate and energy issues with her own set of policies, actions, and appointments. Less than a week after Obama’s inauguration in 2009, she named Todd Stern, a former Kyoto negotiator for President Clinton, as the nation’s first special envoy on climate change – a new diplomatic post with full ambassadorial rank, intended to demonstrate, as she remarked, “that the United States will be energetic, focused, strategic, and serious about addressing global climate change and the corollary issue of clean energy.”

Following Stern’s appointment, Clinton continued to push the issue through a series of new working groups and ongoing, intense negotiations in other countries and regions, all designed to promote cooperation toward reducing carbon pollution and promoting renewable technologies. Those efforts ranged from small-scale appropriate technology, such as solar-powered cook-stoves that reduce deaths from household carbon pollution and save trees, to major international negotiations over climate goals – including a famous late-night confrontation with China’s leaders in Copenhagen that saved the 2009 global climate summit from complete failure.

Hillary Clinton’s personal legacy of environmental action can be traced all the way back to her years in Arkansas. Serving as the first woman on the board of Walmart – a position for which she has often been criticized – Clinton led the giant company toward greener marketing, products, and practices that have since been imitated across the retail industry.

As U.S. senator from New York, she compiled a voting record well within the Democratic environmentalist mainstream, although her 82 percent lifetime LCV score was diminished by missing several votes during her 2008 presidential campaign. But while running for president the first time, Clinton also promoted an ambitious $50 billion “strategic energy fund” to invest in a clean energy “Apollo Project,” to be funded by a special tax on the “excess profits” of oil companies.

Still, Clinton is a politician, not an activist – and not everything she does or says has earned applause from the environmental community. She has refused to openly oppose the Keystone XL pipeline, even after leaving the government. And some environmentalists have criticized her position on shale gas extraction, or “fracking,” a term she seldom utters, because her State Department sought to promote natural gas exploration abroad.

At the LCV dinner, she described natural gas, which burns cleaner than other fossil fuels, as a “transitional” source of energy, bridging civilization toward the renewable future. At the same time, however, she added that “many of us have serious concerns with the risks associated with the rapidly expanding production of natural gas. Methane leaks in the production and transportation of natural gas pose a particularly troubling threat, so it is crucial we put in place smart regulations and enforce them, including deciding not to drill when the risks to local communities, landscapes and ecosystems are just too high.”

“Our economy still runs primarily on fossil fuels and trying to change that will take strong leadership,” she said. With determined guidance, she added, “we do not have to choose between a healthy environment and a healthy economy.”

Whatever may or may not be known about Hillary Clinton’s vision for the presidency, one thing ought to be obvious by now: She is far more likely to provide that kind of environmental leadership than any of the oil-owned, climate-denying Republicans she may face in November 2016.