Climate Change

The Obama administration on Friday announced a strategy to start slashing emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas released by landfills, cattle, and leaks from oil and natural gas production.

In a phone interview with The Huffington Post, Dennis Takahashi-Kelso, the Ocean Conservancy's executive vice president, said both Exxon and BP were reminders that plans for dealing with spills are meaningless if companies can't actually execute cleanup. Takahashi-Kelso was the Alaska Commissioner of Environmental Conservation during the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and says that the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 was a "very substantial improvement." But companies still struggle with execution of the response plans when a spill does happen.

A combination of rising costs, shrinking supplies, and concerns about global climate change are spurring the development of alternatives to the burning of fossil fuels to meet our transportation energy needs. Scientific studies have shown the most promising of possible alternatives to be liquid fuels derived from cellulosic biomass. These advanced new biofuels have the potential to be clean-burning, carbon-neutral and renewable.

In 1995, a severe heat wave struck Chicago, killing more than 700 people. The disaster hit some neighborhoods much harder than others. For the most part, its devastation closely traced the city's economic and ethnic segregation. More people died in places like Englewood, a South Side neighborhood with a history of poverty and crime, and a largely African-American population; yet some neighborhoods with this same demographic fared remarkably well.

Palm oil is used in a huge range of consumer products, from food and fuel to beauty products and cleaning agents, meaning that demand for palm oil has risen fast. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), growing demand is driving increases in deforestation, which accounts for 10 percent of the emissions that cause global warming. Clearing forest for plantations also destroys trees that are home to endangered species and a resource for forest communities, the U.S.-based UCS said.

"A policy narrative that continues to frame this target as the sole metric of success or failure to constrain climate change risk is now itself becoming dangerous," wrote Todd Sanford and Peter Frumhoff of UCS in the commentary published Wednesday in Nature Climate Change. "[It] ill-prepares society to confront and manage the risks of a world that is increasingly likely to experience warming well in excess of 2°C this century," said the piece, co-authored by Amy Luers of the San Francisco-based Skoll Global Threats Fund, and Jay Gulledge, of the U.S.

The amount of methane leaking from natural gas emissions is far higher than previously estimated, a new study shows, more evidence, as one expert says, that urgent action must be taken to reduce these greenhouse gas emissions. ... "The study by Brandt et al. adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting that EPA's estimates of methane emissions from the oil and gas sector are too low," Sarah Uhl, Senior Project Director at the Clean Air Task Force, a Boston-based public health and environment advocacy group, said in a statement sent to Common Dreams.

Land managers from Montana, Alberta and British Columbia are gathering in Missoula this week to talk about managing the Crown of the Continent ecosystem for climate change. Participants include government agencies, non-profit organizations, academics and tribal representatives. The executive director of the Seattle-based nonprofit organization known as "EcoAdapt", Lara Hansen, is one of the forum's featured speakers. Hansen is an ecologist who formed EcoAdapt six years ago, to offer training and assistance for people learning how to adapt to climate change.

by Luther Turmelle, New Haven Register If Robert Klee is daunted by the challenge that lies ahead as the state’s next Department of Energy and Environmental Protection commissioner, he doesn’t show it.