What's New List Serve Post Display
Below is the List Serve Post you selected to display.
newsclips -- Newsclips for October 4, 2011.
Posted: 04 Oct 2011 13:02:00
California Air Resources Board News Clips for October 4, 2011. 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. AIR POLLUTION EPA chief wanted stricter smog standard before White House intervened in face of GOP criticism. Washington - The head of the Environmental Protection Agency had wanted to set a stricter limit on the main ingredient in smog to better protect children from lung damage before the White House killed the effort. Documents released Monday by the EPA show that administrator Lisa Jackson proposed lowering the ground-level ozone allowed in the air from 75 parts per billion to 70. Posted. http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/epa-chief-wanted-stricter-smog-standard-before-white-house-intervened-in-face-of-gop-criticism/2011/10/03/gIQAug2fIL_story.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/03/lisa-jacksons-epa-chief_n_993173.html http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_19031008 EU Favors Continuation of Kyoto Protocol. New Delhi – Lending support to demands from developing countries for an extension of the Kyoto Protocol, the European Union Tuesday said it favored the continuation of the global pact that is aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. "The Kyoto Protocol should be extended for some time, but I can't say what that sometime would be," E.U. Environment Commissioner Janez Potocnik told a news conference. He didn't give any reason for the E.U.'s proposal for continuing with the pact. Posted. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204612504576610601860779060.html?mod=googlenews_wsj BY SUBSCRIPTION Companies Get New Tools for Calculating Emissions. The creators of influential measures of greenhouse gas emissions plan to announce two new tools for corporations on Tuesday. One is a way to calculate the amount of climate-warming gases released through a company’s supply chain, as well as in the use and disposal of its products. A standardized way of calculating such emissions had eluded energy experts and statisticians for several years. Posted. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/04/business/corporations-getting-new-tools-for-calculating-emissions.html?pagewanted=print Justices request U.S. opinion in California clean-air case. The Supreme Court asks the Obama administration for a brief in the coastal dispute, which involves fuel requirements for ships. Justices also turn down over 1,800 appeals. The Supreme Court asked the Obama administration to weigh in on a clean-air dispute along California's coast and take a stand on whether the state can force oceangoing vessels to switch to more costly low-sulfur fuel when they come within 24 miles of shore. Posted. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-na-court-petitions-20111004,0,1486700.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fnews%2Fnationworld%2Fwashingtondc+%28Los+Angeles+Times+-+Washington+DC%29 Ameren cites EPA rules in closure of 2 Ill. Plants. Ameren Corp. plans to close two power plants in Illinois by the end of the year, and the utility blames the cost of complying with new pollution rules issued by the Environmental Protection Agency. The St. Louis-based utility will shut down plants in Meredosia and Hutsonville. Ninety jobs will be eliminated, though Ameren says it is trying to reassign 22 management and 68 union workers at other locations. Posted. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/10/04/financial/f072633D76.DTL&type=printable http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/industries/ameren-cites-new-epa-anti-pollution-rules-in-decision-to-close-2-power-plants-in-illinois/2011/10/04/gIQAtj9sKL_story.html http://www.fresnobee.com/2011/10/04/2563703/ameren-cites-epa-rules-in-closure.html#storylink=misearch http://www.modbee.com/2011/10/04/1889089/ameren-cites-epa-rules-in-closure.html http://www.vcstar.com/news/2011/oct/04/ameren-cites-epa-rules-in-closure-of-2-02/ http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_19036987 http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_19036987?nclick_check=1 Environmental groups, state regulators win major smog case over home developers. In an environmental case that is expected to have implications across the Bay Area and California, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to take up a lawsuit from the National Association of Home Builders that challenged whether air pollution officials in California can charge developers fees to offset the smog that is caused from new subdivisions and other housing developments. Posted. http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_19032470?source=rss http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_19032470 Valley Air District says it wins development-related emissions legal case. The Valley Air District said it prevailed in a legal challenge by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) to a landmark regulation addressing development-related emissions. Rule 9150, Indirect Source Review, was first upheld by the federal District Court in 2007. The ruling was appealed, and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals again upheld the rule last year. In June of this year, NAHB filed a petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the appellate court decision. Posted. http://www.mercedsunstar.com/2011/10/04/2068449/valley-air-district-says-it-wins.html#ixzz1Zph9N87C http://www.fresnobee.com/2011/10/03/2563361/builders-lose-valley-smog-fee.html http://www.thereporter.com/wirenews/ci_19035964 http://www.timesheraldonline.com/ci_19035957 Mobile lab helps measure air pollutants in Bay Area. Oakland, Calif. -- A new device is giving Bay Area scientists never before seen detail about the quality of the air we breathe. A first-hand look recently gave KTVU insight on several hot spots for high pollutant exposure. The first location the device was tested was the Caldecott Tunnel. At KTVU’s request, a crew from Los Gatos Research tested the air both outside and inside the tunnel. Their mobile lab with sophisticated, instant laser detectors revealed a new truth about Bay Area pollution including lung irritating nitrogen dioxide or NO2. Posted. http://www.ktvu.com/news/29380230/detail.html CLIMATE CHANGE China to Meet Carbon Intensity Goals as Total Emissions Rise, Report Says. China is meeting a pledge to lower its greenhouse-gas emissions relative to its economic growth even as total pollution rises faster than forecast, according to a report from climate researchers. The world’s largest greenhouse-gas emitter is reducing the the amount of carbon dioxide generated per unit of economic growth, according to a report today from Utrecht, Netherlands- based Ecofys, a renewable energy consultant. Posted. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-04/china-to-meet-carbon-intensity-goals-as-total-emissions-rise-report-says.html Group Urges Research Into Aggressive Efforts to Fight Climate Change. With political action on curbing greenhouse gases stalled, a bipartisan panel of scientists, former government officials and national security experts is recommending that the government begin researching a radical fix: directly manipulating the Earth’s climate to lower the temperature. Members said they hoped that such extreme engineering techniques, which include scattering particles in the air to mimic the cooling effect of volcanoes or stationing orbiting mirrors in space to reflect sunlight, would never be needed. Posted. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/04/science/earth/04climate.html DIESEL EMISSIONS EPA approves plan to reduce microscopic pollution. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is approving California's air quality plans for reducing microscopic pollution caused by diesel trucks, ship traffic and other sources in Central and Southern California. Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley suffer from some of the worst pollution in the nation. The plans, approved Monday, are required to reduce pollution to a certain level by 2015. Posted. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/10/03/state/n170711D49.DTL#ixzz1Zpi3bTRD http://www.modbee.com/2011/10/03/1888410/epa-approves-plan-to-reduce-microscopic.html http://www.vcstar.com/news/2011/oct/03/epa-approves-plan-to-reduce-microscopic http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_19032673?nclick_check=1 http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_19032673 http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_19032673 Supreme Court Asks U.S. for Views on California Shipping Pollution Rules. The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday asked the solicitor general to weigh in on the validity of California regulations mandating use of cleaner marine fuels on vessels operating within 24 miles of the state’s coastline. The court, on the first day of its new term, issued a brief order inviting the federal government to express its views on whether the court should grant certiorari in Pacific Merchant Shipping Association v. Goldstene, 10-1555. Posted. http://www.metnews.com/articles/2011/ship100411.htm VEHICLES Governor signs bill to bolster "buy America" rules for new buses and train cars. California public transit agencies soon can adopt stronger "buy America" rules for the content of new bus and rail cars, under a bill signed Monday by Gov. Jerry Brown. Assembly Bill 1097 permits public transit systems to set their own requirements for the minimum percent of American-made content and components in federally funded buses and rail cars. Without the state law, the federal minimum of 60 percent applies to public transit purchases of buses and rail cars, legislative staffers say. Posted. http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_19033346?source=rss Can electric car racing turn geeky into gold? London -- The future of the motorcar is electric because it has to be, and it is the job of auto racing to come up with fully functional zero-emission race cars and make green not just very fast but very cool, too, according to Paul Drayson, a leading exponent of low-carbon life lived at speed. Drayson, a multimillionaire businessman and former U.K. defense minister, is one of those at the forefront of electric race car enthusiasts. Posted. http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/print/2011/10/04/1 BY PAID SUBSCRIPTION ONLY GREEN ENERGY Solar-Panel Firms' Outlook Dims. Solar-panel company stocks have plunged to multiyear lows as slowing demand and a glut of panels from Asia have squeezed margins, creating a cloud that could hang over the industry for some time. Shares of U.S. solar-panel giant First Solar Inc. have been trading at four-year lows, while shares of Chinese rival Suntech Power Holdings Co. Ltd. have reached all-time lows since the company went public in 2005. Posted. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204612504576610941400628636.html BY SUBSCRIPTION At Solar Decathlon Finale, Chu Defends DOE Solar Program, Hails American Ingenuity. Energy Secretary Steven Chu used his address at the closing ceremony of this year's Solar Decathlon to shoot back at critics who have used the failure of the Solyndra Inc. solar energy company to question his agency's renewable energy investments. "Just as there is a fierce competition happening here, there is also a fierce competition happening around the world," Chu said Saturday. Posted. http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2011/10/03/03greenwire-at-solar-decathlon-finale-chu-defends-doe-sola-54319.html Chevron uses solar heat to help extract crude oil. Chevron Corp. has begun extracting crude oil from a Southern California field using steam produced by a 29-megawatt solar-thermal power plant built by BrightSource Energy Inc. The Oakland Company’s system uses mirrors to focus sunlight on a boiler at Chevron's enhanced oil recovery project in Coalinga (Fresno County), the solar company said. Solar-thermal technology companies such as BrightSource are targeting industrial users in the oil-recovery and food-processing industries as customers as well as for power generation. Posted. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/10/03/BUTH1LCV08.DTL#ixzz1ZpqVD8Mp Report says green jobs program far short of goals. A $500 million Labor Department program designed to train workers for green jobs has come up far short of its goals, with only 10 percent of participants finding work so far, the agency's assistant inspector general has found. The report said the low rate makes it unlikely the program will meet the goal of placing nearly 80,000 workers in careers in energy efficiency or renewable energy by 2013. Posted. BY SUBSCRIPTION. http://www.modbee.com/2011/10/03/1888080/report-says-green-jobs-program.html http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_19031033 MISCELLANEOUS McEwen: Look out, air board: Kevin Hall's back. Despite their high profiles, the governing board of the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District operates in near anonymity when making crucial decisions about how to clean our dirty air. This is about to change in a big way. Activist Kevin Hall is back in the air-pollution fight full time after spending several years as a political organizer for Service International Employee Union's United Health Care Workers-West and ran his own political consulting company in Fresno. Posted. http://www.fresnobee.com/2011/10/03/2563334/look-out-air-board-kevin-halls.html#ixzz1ZpdC6KWY 'Eco Freak McMansion' makes up for size with sustainability. Bill Newman's kayak buddies love to tease him about his new house in Brooklyn Center, Minn. It's too big for just one person, they say. It's a McMansion. And it's way too nice for him. Newman just laughs. He erased his guilt about the home's size (more than 3,000 square feet spread over three levels) by packing it with sustainable features, including solar panels … Posted. http://www.fresnobee.com/2011/10/04/2563588/eco-freak-mcmansion-makes-up-for.html#storylink=misearch OPINIONS OUR VIEW: SCOTUS denial has positive impact for all. The San Joaquin Valley gets its air pollution from a variety of sources. Industry, truck traffic, natural geography -- those sources and more contribute to our world-class blanket of smog and ozone. Some pollution-worsening factors are easier to mitigate and modify than others, but where improvement is reasonably possible, we ought to be taking positive action. One way cities and counties can make meaningful improvements is by encouraging homebuilders to grow communities in ways that minimize sprawl, reduce car trips and keep pace with the infrastructure demands that new development creates. Posted. http://www.bakersfield.com/opinion/x2000242132/SCOTUS-denial-has-positive-impact-for-all Who's Bankrolling the Climate-Change Deniers? Not too long ago, belief in climate science wasn't a political issue. Honestly! As recently as the 2008 U.S. presidential election, both the Democratic and Republican candidates professed belief in the threat of global warming, and each advanced policies designed to curb U.S. carbon emissions. Senator John McCain had even co-sponsored one of the first congressional bills to create a carbon cap-and-trade system. Posted. http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2096055,00.html#ixzz1ZpjcNExh BLOGS Chopping Down Trees to Save Forests. Jim Pitts stood on a Forest Service road near the Arizona town of Nutrioso and surveyed the damage in the valley below. It was July, and only a few weeks earlier the Wallow Fire, the largest in recorded history in Arizona, had swept through this section of steep slopes and tightly packed trees. “This is pretty devastating, both from the forest standpoint and the human aspect,” said Mr. Pitts, a Forest Service silviculturist. “It’s going to take a long time to get this forest back to the way it was. It won’t happen in my lifetime when it’s got to start over.” Posted. http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/04/chopping-down-trees-to-save-forests/ What, exactly, are ‘green jobs’? One way to think of the term “green jobs” is as a mundane political framing device. Politicians, after all, always say their favored policies will “create jobs,” even though, in the long run, the unemployment rate is determined by the Federal Reserve. And, as Matt Yglesias has noted, “green jobs” typically gets used as shorthand for policies that will shift the U.S economy toward cleaner sources of energy and less pollution. Posted. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/what-exactly-are-green-jobs/2011/10/04/gIQA4J34KL_blog.html The record-breaking Arctic ozone “hole” and global warming. For years, polls have shown that many Americans have conflated two distinct atmospheric calamities – the destruction of the planet’s stratospheric ozone layer, and global warming. A 2010 poll by Yale University found that 21 percent of respondents believe the greenhouse effect refers to the ozone layer, rather than to gases in the atmosphere that trap heat, such as carbon dioxide. Posted. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/post/the-rare-record-breaking-arctic-ozone-hole-and-global-warming/2011/10/04/gIQAfmWwKL_blog.html Supreme Court rejects builders' challenge to pollution rule. The U.S. Supreme Court today refused to review a case in which builders in the San Joaquin Valley sought to overthrow restrictions on air pollution associated with sprawl. The National Assn. of Home Builders had sought to overturn a rule that requires developers to mitigate additional air pollution associated with large developments -- such as increased automobile traffic with longer commuting distances. Posted. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2011/10/supreme-court-homebuilders-san-joaquin.html NASA issues award in green aviation competition. NASA has seen the future of aviation and awarded it $1.35 million. On Monday, the space agency issued the award to team Pipistrel-USA.com of State College, Pa., as part of the Comparative Aircraft Flight Efficiency, or CAFE, Green Flight Challenge. The competition, sponsored by Google, was created to inspire the development of more fuel-efficient aircraft and spark the start of a new electric airplane industry, NASA said. Posted. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/10/nasa-green-flight-google.html Clean-Tech’s Unlikely Champion. Is the Pentagon setting the pace for renewable energy? Thirty years ago, the idea of a military-alternative energy partnership might have raised some eyebrows, particularly among solar entrepreneurs here in Northern California. But in the wake of Solyndra’s crash and burn, the Pentagon has become one of clean-tech’s strongest remaining allies in Washington. Posted. http://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/2011/10/03/clean-techs-unlikely-champion/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+kqed%2FClimateWatchBlog+%28KQED%27s+Climate+Watch+Blog%29 White House threatens to veto bills to delay EPA air pollution regulations. The White House is threatening to veto two House bills that would delay key Environmental Protection Agency air-pollution regulations. “These bills would prevent the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from moving ahead with long-overdue requirements to reduce air pollution from industrial boilers, solid waste incinerators, and cement plants,” the White House said in a formal “statement of administration policy.” Posted. http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/185209-white-house-threatens-to-veto-bills-to-delay-epa-air-rules SDG&E asks for higher rates on customers who go solar. Homeowners with solar power may have to dig a little deeper to pay off their green investment if regulators approve San Diego Gas & Electric Co.'s request to change the way electricity is billed. Under its proposal, SDG&E would unbundle the charges for electricity and for transporting electricity. The change would have little effect on bills for traditional electricity customers, but customers with solar, …Posted. http://www.nctimes.com/blogsnew/business/energy/article_49671e51-02b5-58a4-9384-10752bb50fa1.html