Schwarzenegger Warns of California Suit Against EPA

Last year I wrote an article for my school newspaper when I found out about California's attempt to sue automakers for not creating vehicles with stricter emissions standards. While I thought that it was good that someone was doing something, I didn't think this was a good way to go about it. After all, automakers are supplying our need, and obviously enough demand isn't there to make a change. It just seemed akin to suing McDonald's because kids are fat.

What I thought would make more sense is pressuring for stricter standards for automakers to follow, and finally, California is trying to do this. Schwarzenegger threatened the EPA that the state would sue them if they don't act soon on the state's attempt to regulate greenhouse emissions themselves:

Schwarzenegger's move stems from California's request in 2005 to get a federal Clean Air Act waiver that would allow it to regulate auto emissions more aggressively.

The Republican governor said the state Thursday will send a letter to EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson telling the agency of its plans to file legal action if the EPA does not act on the exemption request within six months.

I think it's a good step that individual states want to make stricter regulations, but this can only be effective if the majority of states follow suit. I don't know what the chances are of this happening without federal laws being put in place.

Mankind's rarest view: Earth from afar

It's appropriate that for Earth Day we be reminded how fragile a planet we live on. It may seem huge and invincible, but that's only because we're so small and small-minded. So we should listen to the people who have seen our planet from a different point a view and have been changed by it:

“It’s hard to appreciate the Earth when you’re down right upon it because it’s so huge.

“It gives you in an instant, just at a position 240,000 miles away from it, (an idea of) how insignificant we are, how fragile we are, and how fortunate we are to have a body that will allow us to enjoy the sky and the trees and the water ... It’s something that many people take for granted when they’re born and they grow up within the environment. But they don’t realize what they have. And I didn’t till I left it.”
—Jim Lovell, Apollo 8 and 13.

Al Gore Gets Approval To Install Solar Panels at His Tennessee Home

I know a lot of people think that Gore is only making changes now that he got "caught." I never saw the original article about the energy use at his home, but I did see some responses and I don't think I buy what was said in the original article. Anyone out there have a link to it?

Anyway, Gore finally got it approved to install solar panels in his home, and he'll be doing other renovations along with this:

He is also upgrading the furnace, windows, and light switches, as well as installing new floor radiant heat and solar vents, to improve the home's energy standards, said Kalee Kreider, a Gore spokeswoman.

What bothers me the most about that article calling Gore a hypocrite is that is just gives people a reason to disregard the real issue, and then they can feel satisfied not doing anything about pollution in their daily lives. People are just looking for distractions so that they don't have to make a change.

Skyfarming: Turning Skyscrapers Into Crop Farms

An interesting article from New York Magazine describes a Columbia University professor's plan that could make it possible to have farming in skyscrapers in New York City, or any city for that matter. These so-called vertical farms have many benefits, including producing food for local people, providing sustainable energy, and purifying wastewater, and potentially reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

There is another reason to develop indoor farming: exploding population growth. By 2050, demographers estimate there will be an additional 3 billion people (a global total of 9.2 billion). If current farming practices are maintained, extra landmass as large as Brazil would have to be cultivated to feed them. Yet nearly all the land that can produce food is already being farmed—even without accounting for the possibility of losing more to rising sea levels and climate change (which could turn arable land into dust bowls).

Depending on the crops being grown, a single vertical farm could allow thousands of farmland acres to be permanently reforested. For the moment, these calculations remain highly speculative, but a real-life example offers a clue: After a strawberry farm in Florida was wiped out by Hurricane Andrew, the owners built a hydroponic farm. By growing strawberries indoors and stacking layers on top of each other, they now produce on one acre of land what used to require 30 acres.

The article goes on to provide an interesting and informative diagram about how one of these vertical farms would function. Definitely a neat read.

Study Shows New York City Puts Out Nearly One Percent of Greenhouse Gases in U.S.

Halfway through the article I still wasn't sure if this amount of greenhouse gas output was supposed to be a lot or a little, if the article was praising New York City or condemning it, in it's statement of these facts. But then I finally got to this part:

With 2.7 percent of the country's population -- 8.2 million of 300 million -- the average New York City resident contributes less than a third of the emissions generated by a typical American. This is largely due to the popularity of the city's mass transit system, which cuts down on car emissions, officials said.

Ah, so it's a good thing, I told myself... at least in relation to the rest of our carbon overproducing country. Now that the NYC government has this data, they can figure out how to continue going about lowering the city's amout of greenhouse gas emmissions by 30% by 2030.

Wild Parrots Make a Home in Brooklyn

I'm going to help Steve Baldwin get the word out that there's wild parrots living in Brooklyn. These birds are not new inhabitants of Brooklyn College's soccer field, but many people don't know that they're there. These Quaker parrots come from a more temperate climate and thus, can survive the cold Northeastern winters. They build huge nests and share them with other birds, has anyone ever heard of that before?

"They're so astonishing. You see them and they're loud and they're green and you assume that they're tropical," said Eleanor Miele, associate professor of science education at the college, who has her students observe the birds for class projects. But "they are adaptable for winter."

And, says parrot fan Steve Baldwin, who has dedicated the past couple of years to chronicling the birds, there is no shortage of food because they will eat pretty much anything, like grass, the buds on trees, seeds, fruit.

Some states have banned the ownership of these birds out of fear that their large nests will cause problems or that they will damage agriculture, but Baldwin says they're not really that much of a threat. Perhaps I'll head over to Brooklyn one weekend soon and take some pictures.

Scientists Detail Climate Changes, Poles to Tropics

I kind of dropped the ball on the next report from the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which came out on Friday. This article details the effects of global warming that we're heading towards in the near future and the changes that are already taking place. The scientific evidence in this report could serve as a powerful reminder to governments, especially the U.S., that better environmental policies need to be put in place -- this is something every country in the world needs to cooperate on.

And it seems that representatives from the U.S. are beginning to agree:

The conclusions came after four days of revisions by scientists and then an often rancorous all-night debate with government officials. In a sign of shifting geopolitics on global warming, scientists who worked on the report criticized China for weakening some language in the summary, while they credited the United States, which had for years stressed uncertainty in the science, with playing a mostly constructive role.

Yet, as always, I express concern over governments playing any role in the editing of these kind of reports, and the article does address the problems that come of this.

Under pressure from nations including Russia, China and Saudi Arabia, the authors said, sections on coral damage and tropical storms were softened in the summary. They also got the authors to drop parts of an illustration showing how different emissions policies might limit damage. Officials from those countries argued that data in the report did not support the level of certainty expressed in the final draft.

But some authors were not assuaged. The final document was “much less quantified and much vaguer and much less striking than it could have been,” said Stéphane Hallegatte, a participant from France’s International Center for Research on the Environment and Development.

I know, it is only the summary is what has been edited by this group, but how many people will have access to, and will actually read, the 1,572 page report?

Auto Industry Urges Economy-Wide Approach to Global Warming

Here's something that I didn't know was going on:

The Supreme Court ordered the federal government on Monday to take a fresh look at regulating carbon dioxide emissions from cars, a rebuke to Bush administration policy on global warming. In a 5-4 decision, the court said the Clean Air Act gives the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to regulate the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from cars.

The auto industry reacted as expected. They want to be involved in the decision-making so that they can pressure for more lenient laws.

Dave McCurdy, the [Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers] president and chief executive, said automakers would work with lawmakers and federal agencies to help develop a national approach.

I'll believe the cooperation when I see it.

Changed Climate, Changed Species

MSNBC has put together a document that shows real life examples of the changes that have occurred and will continue to do so because of global warming. This comes along with the second report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which will come out officially on April 6.

It's an interesting read with a cute map showing the areas and species that it focuses on, such as polar bears in the Arctic. One species that I was surprised to find on the map is ticks in Sweden:

Swedish studies have shown that ticks have multiplied countrywide in recent decades, spreading north from traditional breeding grounds in the Stockholm archipelago. The pinhead-sized arachnids have even turned up near the Arctic Circle.

It makes sense that with an increasingly warmer climate, that these pests wouldn't die off every winter. Having grown up with pets, I know what a pain ticks (and fleas) can be, and what a relief it is come winter when we don't have to worry about them.

Another point that I found interesting and sad is the part about the coral reefs and their bleaching due to rising temperatures and an increase in carbon dioxide absorption.