News: ‘Climate & Energy’ Archive
‘NIPTON, Calif. — The long-promised solar building boom in the desert Southwest is finally under way. Here in the Mojave Desert, a dice throw away from the Nevada border, giant road graders and a small army of laborers began turning the dirt for BrightSource Energy’s $2 billion Ivanpah project, the first large-scale solar thermal power plant to be built in the United States in two decades.’
via Solar Power Projects Face Potential Hurdles – NYTimes.com.
‘Oil producers and refiners, along with manufacturers of steel, aluminum and even home appliances, are fighting a proposal by the Environmental Protection Agency that would make the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that companies release — and the underlying data businesses use to calculate the amounts — available online.’
via Companies fight to keep global warming data secret – Yahoo! News.
‘Politicians gathering in Nagoya, Japan, for the United Nations’ 10th Convention on Biological Diversity — a summit to set conservation goals for 2020 — face grim news: Scientists have reported that one-fifth of Earth’s vertebrate species are at risk of extinction.’
‘…The pledges, inscribed in the Copenhagen Accord, a nonbinding pact that has been signed by about 140 countries, also represented an unprecedented attempt to overcome one of the thorniest problems that has plagued international climate talks: recurrent complaints by poor countries that developed nations, grown prosperous by burning fossil fuels, are behaving hypocritically by demanding emissions limits in the future.’
‘Reuters – Kenya’s Geothermal Development Company GDC said on Friday it has pledges worth $400 million, 40 percent of the amount it needs for a 10-year plan during which it intends to produce 2,000 megawatts MW of steam.’
‘Reuters – China’s push to reduce growing greenhouse gas pollution is impressive but the “juggernaut” nonetheless faces a daunting rise in emissions, the top U.S. climate change envoy said after what he called helpful talks.’
via China greenhouse gas growth daunting: U.S. envoy | Reuters.
‘…The candidates are not simply rejecting solutions, like putting a price on carbon, though these, too, are demonized. They are re-running the strategy of denial perfected by Mr. Cheney a decade ago, repudiating years of peer-reviewed findings about global warming and creating an alternative reality in which climate change is a hoax or conspiracy.’
October 15, 2010 San Francisco
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared at ClimateOne at the Commonwealth Club. In this excerpt, she answers a question about the administrations support for a tar sands pipeline from Alberta. Gregory Dalton asks, “How can the U.S. be saying climate change is a priority when we’re mainlining some of the dirtiest fuel that exists”?
 |
| images by Jill Gustafson |
Partial Excerpt: “We’re either going to be dependent on dirty oil from the Gulf or dependent on dirty oil from Canada, and until we can get our act together as a country, and figure out that clean renewable energy is in both our economic interest and the interest of our planet…”
“I mean I don’t think it will come as a surprise to anyone how deeply disappointed the President and I are about our inability to get the kind of legislation through the Senate that the United States was seeking. That hasn’t stopped what we’re doing. We have moved a lot on the regulatory front through the EPA here at home and we have been working with a number of countries on adaptation and mitigation measures, but obviously it was one of the highest priorities of the administration for us to enshrine in legislation President Obama’s commitment to reducing our emissions. So we do have a lot that still must be done.”
“It’s a hard balancing act. It’s a very hard balancing act. But it is also for me, energy security requires that I look at all of the factors that we have to consider while we try to expedite as much as we can America’s move toward clean renewable energy.”
Clinton concluded her appearance fielding a question from ten year old Eli, who asked what people can do to help the environment.
Speaking as a “private citizen” for a moment, she mentioned the “frustration, anxiety and even anger” in the United States today, “And I hope that people take some of that energy and focus it on the environment and on climate change, because we really need to have a longer range view of what’s going to make our country strong and rich and smart”.
Clinton with ten year old Eli.
report by James George
‘Tropical corals in the western Pacific Ocean revealed that the depth where warm surface water and colder, deeper water meet, known as the thermocline, is getting shallower. The new study is the first physical evidence supporting what climate modelers have been predicting as the effects of global climate change on the ocean circulation below surface waters.’
‘Reuters – China has become the world’s largest energy user, having overtaken the United States, the head of the International Energy Agency said on Tuesday.’
via China overtakes U.S. as biggest energy consumer: IEA | Reuters.