Climate 411

EPA Delivers Lump of Coal to America for Holidays

By Vickie Patton / Published: December 20, 2007

Vickie PattonThis post is by Vickie Patton, Deputy General Counsel at Environmental Defense, and a former attorney in the EPA’s General Counsel’s office.

Two years ago, California asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to pave the way for landmark standards to limit global warming from motor vehicles. Seventeen other states plan to implement the Clean Car standards, pending the EPA decision. But today – after two years of stalling – EPA said no. This decision is virtually unprecedented; EPA has granted similar requests over 50 times in 40 years.

The Bush administration is putting the brakes on state action to address the global warming crisis. Doing nothing about global warming is bad enough – but going out of your way to block the state leaders who are taking action is just plain shocking.

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Also posted in Cars and Pollution / Read 6 Responses

New Report on Cars and Carbon

By John DeCicco / Published: August 31, 2007

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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Also posted in Cars and Pollution / Read 6 Responses

Ensuring Carbon Offsets are Real

By Sheryl Canter / Published: August 16, 2007

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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Also posted in Economics / Read 4 Responses

Environmental Groups Put EPA on Notice

By Bill Chameides / Published: May 22, 2007

In 2005, California petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for permission to establish its own, stricter tailpipe emissions standards. Nearly two years have passed, and EPA still has not ruled on the request – despite a recent Supreme Court ruling that EPA has the authority to regulate tailpipe emissions.

Today, Environmental Defense and NRDC sent a letter to EPA warning that they will join California to in a lawsuit to compel "EPA’s unreasonably delayed and unlawfully withheld final action on California’s waiver request" if the agency does not make a decision within 180 days.

Also posted in Cars and Pollution, Clean Air Act, EPA litgation / Read 1 Response

What is a Carbon Footprint?

By Bill Chameides / Published: May 10, 2007

You hear a lot of talk these days about "carbon footprints". But what is a carbon footprint, anyway?

Carbon dioxide (CO2), while not the only greenhouse gas, is the most abundant. CO2 is emitted into the atmosphere when we burn fossil fuels, and most of the energy in this country comes from burning fossil fuels. Thus, anything that requires energy to manufacture, transport, or operate causes the emission of CO2 (see my previous post, The Carbon Footprint of… Everything).

A "carbon footprint" is the amount of CO2 released by an activity or entity. So what’s your carbon footprint?

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Also posted in Economics / Read 12 Responses

Slicing the greenhouse gas pie: Where from?

By Bill Chameides / Published: April 26, 2007

In the previous post, I described which gases are important and what activities they come from. But we can also learn a lot by looking at regional patterns in how those gases are emitted.

For example, most deforestation occurs in poor tropical countries (in fact, in many of these countries deforestation is a much larger source of CO2 than fossil fuel use). In contrast, most CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use come from the developed countries.

As I described in an earlier post, the U.S. is the largest emitter in the world, both today and historically. Next let’s take a closer look at the U.S. greenhouse gas pie.

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Posted in Greenhouse Gas Emissions / Read 5 Responses