Echo

Climate change law will boost state economy

By |

(MI) Detroit Free Press – Climate change legislation working its way through Congress provides real opportunities for Michigan’s economy. Opponents are quick to overstate the costs, using scare tactics and bogus science, while refusing to discuss the cost of doing nothing. Yet strong climate legislation is needed to help Michigan make the transition to a new economy for the 21st Century, and to protect our state against the threats posed by climate change. Michigan’s largest industrial employers — including Dow Chemical, Ford, General Motors and Chrysler, along with the UAW — support strong climate legislation.* They want the regulatory certainty that will allow them to invest confidently in new, cleaner technologies. More

Echo

Sea’s Rise May Prove the Greater in Northeast

By |

(NY) The New York Times – If the melting of Greenland’s ice sheets continues to accelerate, sea levels will rise even more in the northeastern United States and Maritime Canada than in other areas around the world. The researchers, Aixue Hu and Gerald A. Meehl, based their predictions on runoff data from Greenland and an analysis of ocean circulation patterns. More

Echo

Lighten up on carbon reduction

By |

(IN) The Indianapolis Star – Gov. Mitch Daniels and U.S. Reps. Mike Pence and Steve Buyer have some significant non-allies in their vehement opposition to the carbon reduction legislation now moving through Congress. Among them are most of the Midwest’s governors, who already have signed a regional cap-and-trade agreement; and Indiana’s largest electric utility, whose boss accepts the need for congressional action and insists it will benefit rather than punish this coal-dependent region — if the region’s leadership pulls up to the table. More

Echo

Climate Bill Clears Hurdle, but Others Remain

By |

(NY) The New York Times – The House Energy and Commerce Committee, splitting largely along party lines, approved on Thursday the most ambitious energy and global warming legislation ever debated in Congress. The bill’s passage, on a 33-to-25 vote, served as a bookend to a week that began with President Obama’s announcing a deal with auto manufacturers to impose tough new mileage and emissions standards for all cars and trucks sold in the United States starting in 2012. More

Air

China benefits from Obama’s fuel mandate

By |

(MI) The Detroit News – On the same day President Barack Obama marched the Big Three auto executives smiling to the guillotine, China announced it will not set mandatory emissions standards and instead will attack greenhouse gases with a strategy that doesn’t threaten its ferocious economic growth. America has chosen a sharply different tack, as was apparent this week at the White House, where Obama announced he would make the harsh California emissions mandates the national standard. The automakers, now wards of the federal government, had no choice but to cheer the mandates, even though a senior Ford executive told the L.A. Times the mandates would likely put the automaker out of business.  More

Echo

As Political Winds Shift, Detroit Charts New Course

By |

(NY) The New York Times – Why, after decades of battling, complaining and maneuvering over fuel economy standards, did carmakers fall in line behind the tough new nationwide mileage standard President Obama announced Tuesday? Because they had no choice. The auto industry is flat on its back, with Chrysler in bankruptcy, General Motors close to it, and both companies taking billions of dollars in federal money. Foreign automakers are getting help from their own governments. Climate change legislation is barreling down the track, and Congress showed last fall that it had no appetite to side with Detroit any more.

Echo

EPA is urged to act on its own authority to fight global warming, not wait for a law from Congress

By |

(OH) The Cleveland Plain Dealer – The Environmental Protection Agency should not wait for Congress before taking steps to control the gases blamed for global warming, supporters of U.S. greenhouse-gas regulation said Monday. The EPA hearing is the first of two public forums on the agency’s April finding that concentrations of carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere pose dangers to human health and welfare — and that emissions from new motor vehicles and engines are contributing to the problem. More

Climate

The Perfect, the Good, the Planet

By |

(NY) The New York Times – If we’re going to get real action on climate change any time soon, it will be via some version of legislation proposed by Representatives Henry Waxman and Edward Markey. Their bill would limit greenhouse gases by requiring polluters to receive or buy emission permits, with the number of available permits – the “cap” in “cap and trade” – gradually falling over time. It goes without saying that the usual suspects on the right have denounced Waxman-Markey: global warming isn’t real, emission limits will destroy the economy, yada yada. But the bill also faces opposition from some environmentalists, who are balking at the compromises the sponsors made to gain political support. More