Since the beginning of climate change legislation this session in Congress, it has been clear that big agriculture would not be a part of a cap and trade program. Yet, while the Waxman Markey bill has been making its way through Congress, the EPA has also been pushing forward its own agenda of climate related regulations, including the mandatory reporting of GHG emissions from factory farms. Yet, yesterday the House Appropriations Committee undermined this progressive proposed regulation by passing the 2010 Interior and Environment spending bill. An amendment in the bill will prevent the EPA from requiring factory farms to report their GHG emissions - a move that represents a blatant handout to large factory farms.

    While climate legislation stalls through Congress, the EPA proposed rule aims to establish at least the basis for regulating GHG emissions- knowing how many we produce and where they come from. Two weeks ago the comment period ended for the Proposed Mandatory GHG Reporting Rule, which would require American industries to report their GHG emissions, over a threshold of 25,000 tons. Among the highlights of the proposed rule was the requirement that manure management be considered a reporting category. As such, large scale concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) more commonly known as factory farms, would be required to report their emissions if they reached the 25,000 ton threshold. According to the EPA the number of CAFOs in the U.S. that reached this amount was only around 50 of the largest, most intensive facilities in the country.

    There have been a lot of questions floating around as to why Americans should care about livestock poop, particularly in the context of climate change and GHG emissions. While it is little discussed, it is actually quite a significant contributor to GHG emissions. First and foremost- animal manure and livestock produce methane and nitrous oxide, which are about 23 and 300 times respectively stronger than carbon dioxide. According to the EPA GHG Inventory, manure is the 5th largest source of methane and the 4th largest source of nitrous oxide in the U.S. It results in more GHG emissions per year than all cement production and more than twice as many emissions as waste incineration and natural gas systems in the U.S. It should also be mentioned that enteric fermentation-gases produced from livestock-is the number one source of methane emissions in the U.S. Combined, manure and enteric fermentation produce about as many GHG emissions as the entire commercial sector's burning of fossil fuel in the United States. The EPA did not require that enteric fermentation be considered a reporting category in their proposed rule.

    Washington - At the Joseph Farms dairy in Atwater (Merced County), farmers aren't just transforming milk into cheese. They've also figured out how to turn manure into fuel - and a paycheck.

    By storing waste from the dairy's 5,000 cows in a covered 7-acre lagoon and removing methane from it using sophisticated equipment, the farm is generating power that keeps refrigerators, lights and pumps running at its cheese plant.

    The project keeps the heat-trapping greenhouse gas methane out of the atmosphere, thereby netting the farm another payback in the form of carbon credits traded on the 6-year-old Chicago Climate Exchange and the voluntary California Climate Action Registry, a nonprofit organization formed by the state.

    Across the nation, dairy operations such as Joseph Farms, as well as landowners growing trees on previously empty land and vegetable farmers who plant seeds over old crops without tilling their fields, could win big under climate-change legislation advancing on Capitol Hill.

    The measure, which might be considered by the House this week, would force businesses to meet steadily tightening limits on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming. To meet the new caps, companies could cut their emissions or buy allowances from the federal government or other businesses to spew more of the pollutants.

    But the legislation also would allow companies to "offset" as much as 2 billion tons of their emissions each year by investing in pollution-reducing projects.

    After working for the United Steelworkers International Union for 30 years, Lauren Horne left in January to take on a new role within the labor movement - rallying union members to help fight climate change.

    Horne, a Pittsburgh native, is now coordinating an education campaign in Pennsylvania for the Labor Climate Project, a program run by the Blue Green Alliance. She spends her days traveling to union meetings throughout the state, where she teaches members about the problem of global warming and the ways that solutions could lead to new, green jobs for blue-collar workers.

    "One question I ask is, 'Do we have any environmentalists in the room?' And very, very few hands, if any, go up," she said. "If they're not familiar with [climate change], or if they don't believe in it, I educate them."

    Ultimately, Horne ties her presentations back to the economy and jobs. "We talk about the economic situation today, which everyone knows about," said Horne. "And then we also talk about the climate crisis situation, and about how by resolving one you can resolve the other and create good, family-sustaining jobs to help rebuild the middle class in this country again, particularly in manufacturing and construction, because those industries have been particularly hard-hit during this recession."

    Horne is now one of five veteran labor organizers working on the ground for the Labor Climate Project in Rust Belt states. Some 350 volunteers from the environmental and labor communities are doing similar education work for the campaign. Their goal is to create a network of union members who will be active in getting a climate and energy bill passed through Congress.

    Climate change seen worsening disasters. Small islands, other developing nations most at risk.

    Bonn, Germany - Climate change will aggravate natural disasters and people in developing nations such as Dominica, Vanuatu, Myanmar and Guatemala are most at risk, a U.N.-backed study showed on Thursday.

    It urged governments to invest hundreds of billions of dollars to curb mounting impacts of hazards such as cyclones, floods, droughts, landslides, earthquakes and tsunamis.

    "Risk is ... felt most acutely by people living in poor rural areas and slums," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon wrote in the report, issued on the sidelines of June 1-12 U.N. climate talks in Bonn working on a new treaty to combat global warming.

    "Climate change will magnify the uneven distribution of risk, skewing disaster impacts even further towards poor communities in developing countries," the Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction said.

    Andrew Maskrey, lead author of the report, said that developing countries with big populations - led by China, India, Bangladesh and Indonesia - suffered the most fatalities from natural disasters.

    "But you also have to look at it in relative terms - the proportion of the population at risk," he told a news conference. By that yardstick, those at risk were "mainly small countries - many small islands ... and small countries."

    Sea levels could rise faster along the U.S. East Coast than in any other densely populated part of the world, new research shows, as changes in ice caps and ocean currents push water toward a shoreline inlaid with cities, resort boardwalks and gem-rare habitats.

    Three studies this year, including one out last week, have made newly worrisome forecasts about life along the Atlantic over the next century. While the rest of the world might see seven to 23 inches of sea-level rise by 2100, the studies show this region might get that and more -- 17 to 25 inches more -- for a total increase that would submerge a beach chair.

    Might.

    Scientists say the information comes from computer models, which could be wrong. And the mid-Atlantic region's ample high ground means it will probably never be as vulnerable as Louisiana and Florida.

    But some are already sketching a new vision for the East Coast, as a region under siege by the ocean. In the coming decades, they say, it will probably be necessary to spend heavily to defend some waterside places -- and to make hard choices about where to let the sea win.

    "There will probably be some very difficult decisions that have to be made," said Rob Thieler, a scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey. "Are there places where we should simply retreat because the cost of holding the line is unacceptably high?"