One Blog for the Kids!: An Inconvenient Truth

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Saturday, June 27, 2009

US House passes historic climate change bill

Posted: 27 June 2009 0751 hrs

Activists hold signs as they participate in a rally on climate change in Washington DC. (file pic)

WASHINGTON: The US House of Representatives on Friday narrowly passed historic legislation to limit pollution blamed for global warming, handing President Barack Obama a major, hard-fought victory.

By a 219-212 margin, lawmakers voted for the first time in US history to limit heat-trapping carbon emissions and shift the US economy to cleaner energy in a move backers said will create jobs and restore Washington's shaky leadership on climate change ahead of global talks set for December.

Obama immediately hailed the vote, telling reporters at the White House that it amounted to "a victory of the future over the past" as well as "a bold and necessary step".

"The American people are demanding that we abandon the failed policies and politics of the past; we no longer accept inaction; that we face up to the challenges of our time. And today, the House has done exactly that," he said.

The "American Clean Energy and Security Act" aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 17 per cent from 2005 levels by 2020, and 83 per cent by 2050, create "green" jobs, and wean the US economy from oil imports.

The bitter, day-long debate pitted supporters who argued the bill would put a shine back on the battered US economy and foes who described the measure's more than 1,200 pages as a grim recipe for long unemployment lines.

"Just remember these four words for what this legislation means – jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs. Let's vote for jobs," Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi exhorted her colleagues minutes before the vote.

Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner warned the measure would send energy costs skyrocketing and denounced it as "the biggest job-killing bill that has ever been on the floor of the House".

The pitched political battle over a central plank of Obama's platform now shifts to the US Senate, where the prospects for action this year are uncertain and where outspoken foes of the House approach wield considerable clout.

"Now it's up to the Senate to take the next step. And I'm confident that in the coming weeks and months the Senate will demonstrate the same commitment to addressing what is a tremendous challenge," said Obama.

Senate Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid hailed the House's "courageous step" but warned "the bill is not perfect" while vowing to "pass bipartisan and comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation this fall".

The bill, the fruit of months of tough negotiations, would create a "cap-and-trade" system limiting overall pollution from large industrial sources and then allocating and selling pollution permits.

The Democratic-crafted bill would require utilities, by 2020, to get 15 per cent of their electricity from renewable resources – solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass – and show annual energy savings of five per cent from efficiency measures.

The European Union plan calls for getting 20 per cent of all electricity from renewable resources by 2020.

Obama, who spent part of the day courting wavering lawmakers, said as he met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel hours before the vote that he hoped the United States was reasserting its role after letting Europe lead for years.

"The United States, over the last several years, has not been where we need to be. We're not going to get there all in one fell swoop, but I'm very proud of the progress that's being made," he told Merkel at the White House.

Obama also vowed to work with rising economies that are also major polluters, like China and India, amid worries that the bill may hamstring the US economy and send jobs fleeing to countries that lack similar restrictions.

"India and China will not shatter their own economies with this sort of scheme, and it's nonsensical for America to impose a job killer like this on ourselves," said the number two House Republican, Representative Eric Cantor.

The US Environmental Protection Agency estimates that implementing the legislation would cost 80-111 dollars per US household per year, while the Congressional Budget Office says it would run about 175 dollars.

- AFP/so

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

US House passes historic climate change bill

Posted: 27 June 2009 0751 hrs

Activists hold signs as they participate in a rally on climate change in Washington DC. (file pic)

Obama immediately hailed the vote, telling reporters at the White House that it amounted to "a victory of the future over the past" as well as "a bold and necessary step".

Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner warned the measure would send energy costs skyrocketing and denounced it as "the biggest job-killing bill that has ever been on the floor of the House".

The bill, the fruit of months of tough negotiations, would create a "cap-and-trade" system limiting overall pollution from large industrial sources and then allocating and selling pollution permits.

The European Union plan calls for getting 20 per cent of all electricity from renewable resources by 2020.

- AFP/so

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Think twice about 'green' transport, say scientists

Posted: 08 June 2009 0926 hrs

Public transport commuters. Doing the environment a favour? Think again.

PARIS: You worry a lot about the environment and do everything you can to reduce your carbon footprint - the emissions of greenhouse gases that drive dangerous climate change.

So you always prefer to take the train or the bus rather than a plane, and avoid using a car whenever you can, faithful to the belief that this inflicts less harm to the planet.

Well, there could be a nasty surprise in store for you, for taking public transport may not be as green as you automatically think, says a new US study.

Its authors point out an array of factors that are often unknown to the public.

These are hidden or displaced emissions that ramp up the simple "tailpipe" tally, which is based on how much carbon is spewed out by the fossil fuels used to make a trip.

Environmental engineers Mikhail Chester and Arpad Horvath at the University of California at Davis say that when these costs are included, a more complex and challenging picture emerges.

In some circumstances, for instance, it could be more eco-friendly to drive into a city - even in an SUV, the bete noire of green groups - rather than take a suburban train. It depends on seat occupancy and the underlying carbon cost of the mode of transport.

"We are encouraging people to look at not the average ranking of modes, because there is a different basket of configurations that determine the outcome," Chester told AFP in a phone interview.

"There's no overall solution that's the same all the time."

The pair gives an example of how the use of oil, gas or coal to generate electricity to power trains can skew the picture.

Boston has a metro system with high energy efficiency. The trouble is, 82 per cent of the energy to drive it comes from dirty fossil fuels.

By comparison, San Francisco's local railway is less energy-efficient than Boston's. But it turns out to be rather greener, as only 49 per cent of the electricity is derived from fossils.

The paper points out that the "tailpipe" quotient does not include emissions that come from building transport infrastructure - railways, airport terminals, roads and so on - nor the emissions that come from maintaining this infrastructure over its operational lifetime.

These often-unacknowledged factors add substantially to the global-warming burden.

In fact, they add 63 per cent to the "tailpipe" emissions of a car, 31 percent to those of a plane, and 55 per cent to those of a train.

And another big variable that may be overlooked in green thinking is seat occupancy.

A saloon (sedan) car or even a 4x4 that is fully occupied may be responsible for less greenhouse gas per kilometer travelled per person than a suburban train that is a quarter full, the researchers calculate.

"Government policy has historically relied on energy and emission analysis of automobiles, buses, trains and aircraft at their tailpipe, ignoring vehicle production and maintenance, infrastructure provision and fuel production requirements to support these modes," they say.

So getting a complete view of the ultimate environmental cost of the type of transport, over its entire lifespan, should help decision-makers to make smarter investments.

For travelling distances up to, say, 1,000 kilometres (600 miles), "we can ask questions as to whether it's better to invest in a long-distance railway, improving the air corridor or boosting car occupancy," said Chester.

The paper appears in Environmental Research Letters, a publication of Britain's Institute of Physics.

The calculations are based on US technology and lifestyles.

It used 2005 models of the Toyota Camry saloon, Chevrolet Trailblazer SUV and Ford F-150 to calibrate automobile performance; the light transit systems in the San Francisco Bay Area and Boston as the models for the metro and commuter lines; and the Embraer 145, Boeing 737 and Boeing 747 as the benchmarks for short-, medium- and long-haul aircraft.

- AFP/il

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.