Mar 27 2009

Climate Changes

Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

Several stories on the science and politics of global warming caught our attention this week:

• Seasonal ice coverage is steadily decreasing on the Great Lakes, which could lead to greater evaporation and depletion of the world's largest system of freshwater lakes, according to the Great Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The loss of ice is also affecting spawning fish and winter recreation. 
• Congressional opposition may force the Obama administration to delay signing the international agreement on climate change in Copenhagen at the end of 2009, according to a report in the London Guardian.
• President Obama called for a cap-and-trade market to help move the U.S. economy toward cleaner energy sources. At his press conference on March 24, Obama said, "I think cap-and-trade is the best way, from my perspective, to achieve some of those gains, because what it does is it starts pricing the pollution that's being sent into the atmosphere. The way it's structured, it has to take into account regional differences. It has to protect consumers from huge spikes in electricity prices."
• The Environmental Protection Agency this week concluded that greenhouse gas pollutants endanger the public's health and welfare by warming the planet. That finding could be the first step toward subjecting those emissions to control under the Clean Air Act, a move lauded by some environmentalists but attacked as too costly by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. 
• A new report finds that city dwellers emit much less greenhouse gases than those in the suburbs or rural areas. The report, issued by the International Institute for Environment and Development, noted that New York City residents had average emissions of just over 7 tons per person in 2005, less than a third of the U.S. national average.

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