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California Air Resources Board News Clips for December 27, 2010. 


This is a service of the California Air Resources Board’s Office
of Communications.  You may need to sign in or register with
individual websites to view some of the following news articles.


CLIMATE CHANGE

Climate Change Effects Vary Widely Between Rich And Poor
Countries. Cancun, Mexico -- When Ulamila Kurai Wragg visited New
York in 2009 to speak about the frightening climatic changes
taking place in the Cook Islands, some audience members stunned
her. "I was hearing, 'There's no such thing as climate change.
What proof have you got?' “Wragg recalled.”The experience I had
in New York was not easy to forget," said the member of the Cook
Islands delegation to this month's United Nations climate summit
in Cancun. Posted.
http://www.contracostatimes.com/environment/ci_16947877?nclick_check=1

Obama Pushed To Deliver On Climate. Jan. 2 isn’t just your
ordinary Sunday. It’s the day the Obama administration will
officially start regulating greenhouse gas emissions, and critics
have issued dire predictions of economic destruction. 
With all the fiery rhetoric about how damaging the regulations
could be, the White House is under pressure to fulfill its pledge
to tackle climate change while avoiding the appearance that it’s
hindering job growth. Posted.
http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=1605B4EB-F1E3-E75E-65B79621A5229A0A

Next Year Offers Little Cheer for Those Battling Climate Change.
Austin, Texas - For advocates of action to prevent climate
change, 2010 was mostly a year to forget. It began with gloom,
after the collapse of the Copenhagen climate meetings in December
2009. The mood darkened further as it became clear that
cap-and-trade legislation to combat greenhouse gas emissions
would not pass the U.S. Congress.  A sliver of hope came from a
modest agreement at climate meetings in Cancún, Mexico, earlier
this month, on a more solid multinational commitment to finding
ways to cut emissions. Posted.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/27/business/energy-environment/27green.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

GREEN ENERGY

State Mandate Will Power Green Job Growth, But Not In Sacramento.
A new state mandate requiring utilities to buy more of their
power from environmentally friendly sources is transforming
communities around California with new solar farms, wind farms
and geothermal projects. But in Sacramento, the local utility is
already so "green" that it has met state requirements to use
renewable power sources. The potentially unfortunate result:
Sacramento lacks a major driver for the kinds of jobs springing
up elsewhere. Posted.
http://www.sacbee.com/2010/12/26/v-print/3278901/state-mandate-will-power-green.html

Dangerous Patriot Games for Renewable Energy. Have you heard
about China's secret plan to build itself a shield against
climate change while everyone else roasts? Neither have we. But
national rivalry always lurks around an industry as dependent on
government support as renewable energy. Just before Christmas,
egged on by the United Steelworkers, the U.S. Trade
Representative said China's subsidies to its wind power firms
blocked American competitors like General Electric. Posted.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203731004576045733497760812.html

Greener Refrigerator Set To Enter U.S. Market In 2011. Greenhouse
gases other than carbon dioxide may not get as much global
attention, but policymakers and business leaders view curbing
these emissions as a way that nations can shrink their carbon
footprints. Refrigerators have a role in this story. For decades,
Americans have known only two types of household refrigerators:
the pre-1996 fridge that uses an ozone-depleting
chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) refrigerant - commonly known by its
trademark name, Freon - and the subsequent models that use the
global-warming refrigerant called hydrofluorocarbon (HFC).
Posted.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/26/AR2010122602479_pf.html

On The Greenbeat: California Electric Car Rebates Could Run Dry;
Carsharing Catches On With Major Automakers. Here’s the latest
action we’re following on the GreenBeat today: California’s
electric car rebates could run out — The state fund that pays
$5,000 rebate California offers for zero-emission cars is
currently funded with $8 million, enough to pay out 1,600 car
buyers. But the amount of money available doesn’t match the pace
of electric car rollouts, and would likely run out by mid-2011,
according to advocacy group Plug In America, the Los Angeles
Times reports. Posted.
http://venturebeat.com/2010/12/27/on-the-greenbeat-california-electric-car-rebates-could-run-dry-carsharing-catches-on-with-major-automakers/

MISCELLANEOUS

California To Rewrite Toxic-Chemical Regulations. California will
take another stab at writing regulations that limit the toxic
chemicals in consumer products after too many people said the
rules weren't strict enough. The state's Department of Toxic
Substances Control will miss a deadline Sunday to approve the new
regulations, designed to remove harmful chemicals from toys,
makeup, household cleaners and other products. California's
regulations could eventually influence how other states govern
such chemicals. “Posted.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/26/BA201GVJFU.DTL&type=printable

OPINION

Failure To Act Led To New Carbon Regs. Unless and until Congress
crafts legislation setting out a sound national policy to address
our energy future as well as global climate change, it should not
bar the Environmental Protection Agency from using its existing
authority to require large new sources of greenhouse gases to
install the best available control technology at the time they
are constructed. The source of EPA's authority — indeed in the
view of the Supreme Court, its mandate to deal with greenhouse
gases — is the Clean Air Act of 1970. Congress made significant
midcourse corrections to it in 1977 and then again in 1990.
Posted.
http://www.sacbee.com/2010/12/26/v-print/3281787/failure-to-act-led-to-new-carbon.html

Climate Change Optimism. This editorial appeared in the Baltimore
Sun on Thursday, Dec. 23: The best news to be found on the
climate change front this month was a report that the polar bear,
a threatened species that has come to symbolize the dangers of
global warming, may yet be saved - if greenhouse emissions are
reduced over the next two decades. Unfortunately, that's a big
"if." International climate talks that ended early this month in
Cancun, Mexico, produced no legally binding agreement. They
weren't expected to - nor is the stalemate expected to break in
the near future. Posted.
http://www.sacbee.com/2010/12/27/v-print/3283041/climate-change-optimism.html

Diesel Nudge. Cleaning California's air at the cost of commercial
devastation would be a Pyrrhic victory at best. Delaying some
diesel emissions rules shows a recognition that the state economy
has tanked. But air quality regulators should beware of easing
rules further: California will never meet clean up its unhealthy
air without cracking down on diesel pollution. The state Air
Resources Board last week pushed back deadlines for new pollution
rules covering diesel-powered trucks, buses and construction
equipment. The board adopted regulations in 2007 and 2008
governing those vehicles. Posted.
http://www.pe.com/localnews/opinion/editorials/stories/PE_OpEd_Opinion_D_op_27_ed_dieselrules.109d37.html

BLOGS

Out With the E-Waste, in With the … Recycling cellphones,
computers and other electronic waste can be a challenge, as my
colleague Elisabeth Rosenthal has observed on this blog. But next
month, the Lower East Side Ecology Center in New York City plans
10 e-waste recycling events throughout the boroughs at which any
type of working or nonworking computers, televisions, DVD
players, phones and other gadgets and audiovisual equipment will
be accepted from both households and small businesses. Posted.
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/

Wintry Weather and Global Warming. Here was the scene out our
back door here in the highlands of the Hudson River Valley early
Monday morning: Countless similar scenes have been recorded early
in the Northern Hemisphere winter across western Europe and big
swathes of the United States. So it wasn’t surprising to read the
takeaway line in an op-ed article over the weekend by Judah
Cohen, a commercial weather analyst, on the seeming paradox of
unusually wintry winters in many populous parts of the Northern
Hemisphere even as the world warms: It’s all a snow job by
nature. Posted.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/27/wintry-weather-and-global-warming/?partner=rss&emc=rss

When Clean Energy Is Not So Clean. The Environmental Protection
Agency’s move to regulate greenhouse gas emissions should be a
boon to so-called “clean energy.” But as examples from Colorado
to California to upstate New York illustrate, the real definition
of clean energy is hard to come by. And limiting greenhouse gas
emissions could lead to a host of other environmental issues. The
latest example, pointed out by the New York Times this morning,
is a controversy in Colorado over processing uranium for nuclear
reactors. Posted.
http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/daily-brief/2010/12/27/when-clean-energy-is-not-so-clean#ixzz19L5IOK3h