Climate 411

The Trump administration’s Clean Power Plan replacement – for many states, worse than doing nothing

By Rama Zakaria / Published: September 14, 2018

The Trump Administration’s proposed “replacement” for the Clean Power Plan would not only increase dangerous climate pollution and cost American lives – it would actually be worse than doing nothing at all in many states.

The proposal would severely weaken our nation’s only limits on carbon pollution from existing power plants. It would increase climate and health-harming pollution from those plants, and would lead to more premature deaths compared to leaving the Clean Power Plan in place.

But that’s not all – EPA’s own numbers show that the proposal would also increase pollution in many states compared to a world without the Clean Power Plan.

In many states, this proposal would leave communities worse off than if the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had done nothing at all.

Read More »

Posted in Clean Air Act, Clean Power Plan, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Health, News, Policy, Setting the Facts Straight / Comments are closed

Climate smart rice farming: Integrated co-management of fertilizers with mild-intermittent flooding

By Richie Ahuja / Published: September 10, 2018

This blog was co-authored by Richie Ahuja, Tapan Adhya & Kritee

By applying climate smart farming practices, small-holder farming communities in India can become more climate resilient, as well as improve yield and profit. But as recently revealed by Environmental Defense Fund, rice farmers using the well intentioned current prescribed irrigation practice – intermittent flooding – to improve mitigation and adaptation could be contributing to elevated emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O), a powerful, long-lived greenhouse gas.

In collaboration with the Fair Climate Network and a coalition of grassroots NGOs across India, we worked directly with small-holder farmers across 16,000 acres in five states between 2012 and 2016 to perform high frequency monitoring of methane (CH4) & N2O emissions for both business-as-usual and potential climate smart farming practices.

Photo by Tamil Selvi. A farmer learning to measure water levels in the field using a field water tube

Read More »

Posted in Agriculture, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Science / Comments are closed

Global anthropogenic climate impacts must include nitrous oxide emissions from rice fields

By Kritee / Published: September 10, 2018

This blog was co-authored by Kritee, Jeremy Proville, Terry Loecke, Richie Ahuja

Rice is a critical global crop: it provides livelihood to 150 million households and is a staple for half of humanity. However, it uses 11% of arable land and a third of irrigation water. In addition, continuously flooded rice fields are like wetlands and known to produce about 12% of total anthropogenic methane (CH4), a powerful short-lived greenhouse gas. Despite being one of the few crops whose climate impacts have been deeply studied over two decades, the potential of large emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O), a long-lived greenhouse gas, from rice cultivation was surprisingly missed until recently.

Given that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiators working on agricultural mitigation are set to review the issue of water and nitrogen management in early 2019, it is crucial that the climate impacts of rice cultivation are determined and lowered over both the long- and short-term.

Photo by Rakesh Tiwari: Women harvesting seedlings for rice nursery

Read More »

Posted in Agriculture, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Science / Comments are closed

Once is enough: how climate negotiators can protect the environmental integrity of the Paris Agreement by avoiding double counting

By Alex Hanafi / Published: September 4, 2018

Climate ambition is often thought of in terms of the stringency of emission reduction commitments, expressed by countries under the landmark Paris Agreement as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). While the NDCs that have been pledged by countries are important, they are only the first step.

To truly assess progress in reducing global climate pollution, it is necessary to look behind country pledges to understand exactly how their emissions are counted and reported. We need consistent accounting rules and transparent reporting to ensure the world is on track.

The details of accounting and transparency may sometimes sound boring and technical. But the content of these rules is as important as countries’ headline climate targets, since the headline numbers are only as good as our ability to ensure countries are clearly reducing emissions and counting those reductions accurately.

Fortunately, these same accounting and transparency rules – if done right – can also help unlock the potential of carbon markets to drive investment and innovation up, and pollution down. Read More »

Posted in Aviation, Carbon Markets, United Nations / Comments are closed

The science is clear: We need a stronger smog standard

By EDF Blogs / Published: September 4, 2018

By Ananya Roy

A mom rubs her sons back as she murmurs softly “It’s going to be OK. You are going to feel better soon.”“Mom, am I going to miss baseball practice again?” Frustration lacing every word, as the young boy looked longingly at the sunshine streaming through the emergency department waiting area window. The sound of his wheezing carried across the room.

In the U.S. more than 26 million people are known to have asthma, of which 6 million are children. These are the Americans who may face situations like this one. The CDC estimates that asthma costs the U.S. economy more than $80 billion annually in medical expenses, missed work and school days and deaths.

We can and must do better.

Ground level ozone (also known as smog) is an air pollutant with well-established adverse effects on health including worsening of asthma. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is required by law to set national air quality standards that protect public health with an adequate margin of safety. Read More »

Posted in Clean Air Act, Health, Policy, Setting the Facts Straight / Comments are closed

Experts condemn the Trump administration’s attack on strong Clean Car Standards

By Erin Murphy / Published: August 29, 2018

Americans are already speaking out in droves against the Trump Administration’s proposal to roll back America’s Clean Car Standards.

The proposal, if finalized, would increase pollution by billions of tons, cost consumers hundreds of billions of hard-earned dollars at the gas pump, and attack long-standing state leadership on clean cars.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) are now accepting public comments (you can write to them here) and they’ll hold three public hearings in September – in Fresno, California; Dearborn, Michigan; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (The administration had originally announced hearings in Los Angeles, Detroit and Washington D.C. – then abruptly cancelled them with no explanation.)

But right from the beginning, before the public comment period even started, people across the country were voicing their concerns about rolling back these critical protections. Automakers themselves, including Ford and Honda, have disavowed the path the Trump administration is taking.

Here are a few of the more recent statements:

Read More »

Posted in Cars and Pollution, Clean Air Act, Economics, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Health, Jobs, News, Partners for Change, Policy / Read 1 Response