By Carolyn Jones
    The San Francisco Chronicle

    Thursday 24 May 2007

Berkeley sets tough course for its residents to follow to help reduce emissions of greenhouse gases in city.

    In Berkeley's green future, there will be no incandescent lightbulbs, Wedgewood stoves or gas-powered water heaters. The only sounds will be the whir of bicycles and the purr of hybrid cars - and possibly curses from residents being forced to upgrade all their kitchen appliances.

    Six months after Berkeley voters overwhelmingly passed Measure G, a mandate to reduce the city's greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050, the city is laying out a long-term road map for residents, business and industry. It includes everything from solar panels at the Pacific Steel foundry to composted table scraps.

    While San Francisco, Oakland and other local governments in the Bay Area have approved policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, Berkeley is the first to begin spelling out how people would be expected to reduce their carbon footprints.

    Some measures will be popular and easy, like a car-share vehicle on every block and free bus passes. But others will be bitter pills, such as strict and costly requirements that homes have new high-efficiency appliances, solar-powered water heaters, insulation in the walls and other energy savers.

    "It will challenge people, and it will be difficult," said Cisco DeVries, chief of staff to Mayor Tom Bates and one of those coordinating the city's greenhouse gas reduction efforts. "But if Berkeley's niche isn't leadership on this issue, then what is it? This is what we should be doing."

  
    Reuters

    Friday 25 May 2007

"Fundamental opposition" to German goal of mandatory cuts, trading.

    London - The United States has rejected Germany's bid to get the Group of Eight industrialized nations to agree to tough cuts in climate warming carbon emissions, according to a draft of the statement to be presented to next month's meeting.

    The blunt language of the rejection sets the scene for a showdown at the summit to be held at the German resort of Heiligendamm from June 6-8.

    "The U.S. still has serious, fundamental concerns about this draft statement," it said in red ink comments at the start of a copy of the draft communique seen by Reuters on Friday.

    G8 president Germany wants the meeting to agree targets and timetables for steep cuts in emissions and increases in energy efficiency in transport and power generation.

    "The treatment of climate change runs counter to our overall position and crosses multiple 'red lines' in terms of what we simply cannot agree to," the U.S. comments continued.

    "We have tried to 'tread lightly' but there is only so far we can go given our fundamental opposition to the German position."

   
    The Associated Press

    Friday 25 May 2007

    Tokyo - Japan should cut greenhouse gas emissions from households and transportation to meet carbon dioxide reduction targets required under the Kyoto global warming pact, the head of an environmental panel said Friday.

    Japan is falling far behind in its struggle to meet its obligation under the Kyoto Protocol to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 6 percent below its 1990 levels by 2012. It currently emits 14 percent more gases than in 1990.

    Industrial emissions have remained flat, but emission of gases - primarily carbon dioxide - have soared up to 40 percent since 1990 in the services and household sectors, said Akio Morishima, the head of the government panel.

    "We need to think about what to do in areas that were not previously regulated ... like households and transportation," said Morishima, chair of the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies.

    Morishima heads a special 16-member panel working on ways to cut emissions. The panel's work will be used by a task force headed by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe working on specific steps Japan will take to meet the Kyoto requirements.

   
    By Peter N. Spotts
    The Christian Science Monitor

    Tuesday 22 May 2007

    Global emissions of carbon dioxide are growing at a faster clip than the highest rates used in recent key UN reports.

    CO2 emissions from cars, factories, and power plants grew at an annual rate of 1.1 percent during the 1990s, according to the Global Carbon Project, which is a data clearinghouse set up in 2001 as a cooperative effort among UN-related groups and other scientific organizations. But from 2000 to 2004, CO2 emissions rates almost tripled to 3 percent a year - higher than any rate used in emissions scenarios for the reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

    If the higher rate represents more than a blip, stabilizing emissions by 2100 will be more difficult than the latest UN reports indicate, some analysts say. And to avoid the most serious effects of global warming, significant cuts in CO2 emissions must begin sooner than the IPCC reports suggest. At the moment, no region of the world is "decarbonizing its energy supply," the analysis says.

    The Global Carbon Project's calculations should be viewed with caution, says Michael Oppenheimer, a climate-policy specialist at Princeton University in New Jersey. Economies have been recovering from a recession at the turn of the millennium. And a spike in natural-gas prices - of uncertain duration - has given coal a second wind in developed countries. These short-term factors have probably contributed to the growth in emissions rates, he says.

   
    By Sholnn Freeman
    The Washington Post

    Wednesday 23 May 2007

States ask EPA for right to impose stricter standards.

    Pressure mounted on the Bush administration yesterday to allow states to impose their own regulations on vehicle emissions.

    At a hearing yesterday, officials from California and other states urged the Environmental Protection Agency to grant California a waiver from federal controls so it could apply its stringent emissions standards.

    In New York, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (R) took his own action to curb emissions from his city's 13,000 taxis. Bloomberg proposed a plan yesterday to replace the entire taxicab fleet with hybrid vehicles by 2012. He said the changeover would be phased in, with 1,000 hybrid taxicabs by October 2008 and 4,000 by October 2009.

    At an EPA hearing in Washington, California Attorney General Jerry Brown called on EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson to approve a waiver so California could enact rules to require a 30 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2016.

    Brown said the state is prepared to sue the EPA if the waiver is blocked. "This is a worldwide crisis," Brown said. "There's no excuse any longer." Brown also appeared at a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on the same subject.

    If California is granted a waiver, other states would be allowed under the federal Clean Air Act to adopt California's rules. So far, 11 states have enacted laws to follow California. Officials from Maryland, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Pennsylvania and New York also spoke in favor of the waiver yesterday.

    
    The Associated Press

    Wednesday 23 May 2007

While it's a low carbon emitter, it could see some of the biggest impacts.

    Johannesburg, South Africa - Global warming isn't just a matter of melting icebergs and polar bears chasing after them. It's also Lake Chad drying up, the glaciers of Mt. Kilimanjaro disappearing, increasing extreme weather, conflict and hungry people throughout Africa.

    According to a landmark effort to assess the risks of global warming, Africa, by far the lowest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, is projected to be among the regions hardest hit by environmental change.

    "We never used to have malaria in the highlands where I'm from, now we do," said Kenyan lawmaker Mwancha Okioma, at a recent briefing on climate change at the Pan African Parliament.

    The new environmental committee, headed by Okioma, raised concerns about the severity of climate change on Africa and called for those responsible to help reduce its effects.

    "Planes used to take people through Kilimanjaro to see the snows, now it's only at the very top. We are asking the ones in North America and Europe who are producing the pollution to help us," Okioma said.

    By reviewing four years of research on projected climate change in Africa, scientists with the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change got a nuanced view of possible scenarios and assessed how these scenarios could play themselves out in a continent already stressed - water and food insecurity, infectious diseases, conflict, poverty.