The author of today’s post, John DeCicco, Ph.D., is a Senior Fellow for Automobile Strategies at Environmental Defense.

How much carbon dioxide (CO₂) are cars emitting, and is it getting better or worse? The answer is in our new report on Automakers’ Corporate Carbon Burdens. It’s the third in a series we began in 2002, and covers 1990-2005. Some findings of note:

• Toyota and BMW have shown that it’s possible to cut the CO₂ emissions rate while enjoying strong sales growth – a lesson to the other 10 automakers we examined, whose emissions rates all increased in 2005 compared to 1990. Automakers can significantly reduce carbon emissions through creative design and incremental enhancement of conventional technologies.
• The average CO₂ emissions rate from new vehicles fell 3 percent from 2004 to 2005 – the first drop in nearly two decades. We probably can thank high gas prices for this since it made new car buyers think about fuel efficiency. Gas-guzzling truck-based SUVs became less appealing, and this accelerated the shift to car-based SUVs with better fuel efficiency.

But we still have a long way to go. Despite the one year drop, the emissions rate remains 4 percent higher than it was in 1988.

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The author of today’s post, Kyle Meng, is a Research Fellow at Environmental Defense.

You probably haven’t heard much about it in the news, but the fourth meeting of the U.N. working group on action to address climate change is happening this week in Vienna, Austria. Negotiators are preparing for the next major international climate agreement – what happens when the Kyoto accord’s carbon market runs out at midnight, December 31, 2012. The goal is to strengthen the carbon market framework so it does an even better job of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. The question is how best to achieve this.

The Environmental Defense International Climate Team is busy communicating with delegates from various countries to encourage broad participation. Major emitting nations must be part of the accord if we are to avoid potentially catastrophic climate change.

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The author of today’s post, Sheryl Canter, is an Online Writer and Editorial Manager at Environmental Defense.

Forward-looking New Jersey has done it again with its "Stop the Soot" initiative – an outreach program to educate people about the impact of idling car and truck engines. Idling spews pollutants into the atmosphere and burns a surprising amount of fuel. As noted on our driving tips page, idling for more than 10 seconds uses more gas and creates more global warming pollution than simply restarting your engine.

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Today’s post is by Jon Anda. He is President of the Environmental Markets Network, an organization within Environmental Defense focused on legislation to create an efficient carbon market.

Bjorn Lomborg, who wrote the infamous “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” has a book coming out this fall called “Cool It.” He says we should spend minimal resources to fight global warming.

I wrote a guest post for Grist yesterday about why his approach is wrong. Here’s a key point from it:

Lomborg’s preference is to leave future generations more cash and less technology. Our grandchildren can easily go back to burning coal if climate turns out to be manageable. But how easily can they spend the extra cash if the Greenland ice sheet is irreversibly melting?

And here’s the whole post.

This is Part 1 of a three-part series on Food and Farming.

1. Increased CO₂ and Food Quality
2. Farm Animals and Methane
3. “Food Mile” Complexities

The author of today’s post, Lisa Moore, Ph.D., is a scientist in the Climate and Air program.

When people talk about the harmful effects of fossil fuels, they usually focus on global warming. But as I explained in my post about nitrogen pollution, and Bill discussed in his post about ocean acidification, fossil fuel use has other unintended consequences.

Here is yet another example: increasing levels of carbon dioxide (CO₂) can affect the food chain. There’s a lot to be concerned about, but today I’ll focus on livestock.

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Today’s post is by John Balbus, M.D., the Chief Health Scientist at Environmental Defense.

“If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” That saying may work for part-time chefs, but it doesn’t do much for the victims of recent heat waves. They couldn’t escape the unusually severe temperatures.

A warmer world is likely to bring two different types of heat: warmer average temperatures, especially at night, and more frequent extremes. What do higher temperatures mean for us? Read more »

The author of today’s post, Sheryl Canter, is an Online Writer and Editorial Manager at Environmental Defense.

When you talk about the consequences of global warming, people can feel overwhelmed and fear there’s no solution. But there is! And a new game illustrates it.

It’s based on work by Princeton University’s Stephen Pacala and Robert Socolow, which they describe in their paper “Wedges”: Early Mitigation with Familiar Techology [PDF]. Their study showed that existing technologies can lower emissions sufficiently to stop global warming. (Bill discussed their work in his post on green technologies.)

Pacala and Socolow identified 15 existing technologies that they refer to as “wedges”. Only seven are needed to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions, so we can choose what combination to use.

To help people, particularly students, understand wedges and explore different scenarios, Princeton University has created the Stabilization Wedge Game, where teams of players can “build a portfolio of stabilization strategies and assess their impacts and costs.”

Try it with your friends or family — you’ll come away understanding better how we can stop global warming. Here’s the background page, and here are the instructions and the game [PDF] – you set it up by printing out and cutting up colored wedges.

The author of today’s post, Lisa Moore, Ph.D., is a scientist in the Climate and Air program.

Last weekend’s Mercury News ran a news story about vehicle emissions harming native species in California. The excess nitrogen from vehicle emissions caused invasive species to displace the plants that feed the bay checkerspot butterfly, which is threatened with extinction. My friend and colleague Dr. Stuart Weiss, the scientist who uncovered the link, calls this "drive-by extinction".

Nitrogen pollution has profound effects on life, health, and climate, yet these go mostly unnoticed by policymakers and the public.

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The author of today’s post, Sheryl Canter, is an Online Writer and Editorial Manager at Environmental Defense.

Carbon offsets are a good idea that, unfortunately, without guidelines, can be implemented badly. The basic idea is to reduce and then offset the carbon emissions produced by your lifestyle by funding projects that reduce carbon emissions elsewhere. This works because, from a global warming perspective, it doesn’t matter where the carbon comes from. A reduction anywhere reduces the global total.

But how do you know a given offset is truly reducing carbon emissions?

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The author of today’s post, Sheryl Canter, is an Online Writer and Editorial Manager at Environmental Defense.

When we think about climate change and the burning of fossil fuels, the discussion often centers around alternative sources of energy. But another key element is energy efficiency – simply using less power. A recent report published titled "The Twin Pillars of Sustainable Energy" says the two should be considered together.

When public policy takes both energy efficiency and renewable energy into account, there can be significant synergies. The report is over 50 pages long with many detailed case studies, but you can find a good summary of the findings on the World Business Council for Sustainable Development Web site.