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California Air Resources Board News Clips for November 2, 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

Q+A-What issues are at stake in the EU-U.S. carbon spat?
Twenty-six nations, including the United States, are expected to
lodge a formal protest on Wednesday against a European Union law
to make all airlines travelling to and from Europe pay for their
carbon emissions. The protest at the International Civil Aviation
Organization ICAO.L meeting in Montreal, Canada, is likely to
escalate transatlantic tension, which has triggered an anti-EU
bill in the U.S. Congress. Posted.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/02/uk-airlines-ets-idUSLNE7A102M20111102
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-02/eu-faces-looming-global-airline-industry-protest-at-carbon-dioxide-limits.html
http://travel.usatoday.com/flights/post/2011/11/eu-faces-more-flak-over-carbon-emissions-scheme/560657/1

House panel to vote on phantom EPA dust rule.  Impenetrable
gridlock has forced Washington into an era of
government-by-talking-point, and earlier this year Republicans
found what they saw as the ideal talking point to illustrate a
federal bureaucracy gone batty.  The Environmental Protection
Agency, they warned, was trying to regulate something only God
could control: the dust in the wind.  Posted. 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/house-panel-to-vote-on-phantom-epa-dust-rule/2011/10/26/gIQAFNJ0MM_story.html

Group petitions EPA over air in 8 western states.  An
environmental group has petitioned the federal government to
reduce air pollutants in eight western states.  WildEarth
Guardians says that by law, the Environmental Protection Agency
has to designate areas as "nonattainment" areas if they violate
certain air-quality standards and put them on the path to
cleaning up.  Posted.  
http://www.nctimes.com/news/national/group-petitions-epa-over-air-in-western-states/article_6e05f54a-a3cd-5dcc-bfe4-985200b37464.html
http://www.modbee.com/2011/11/02/1930102/group-petitions-epa-over-air-in.html
BY SUBCRIPTION

Bakersfield-based company leading fight against harmful
emissions. A Bakersfield company is helping in the fight against
air pollution with a revolutionary product aimed at decreasing
the toxins emitted by diesel vehicles. Viscon California is
touting a substance it created that you simply add to diesel fuel
to reduce harmful emissions by 25 to 50 percent. But they aren't
the only ones high on their creation. The California Air
Resources Board or CARB recently verified that Viscon's additive
can reduce particulate matter contained in diesel emissions by at
least 25-percent. Posted.
http://www.kget.com/news/local/story/Bakersfield-based-company-leading-fight-against/kuHmvHqJVkK7zOPKRI3VPQ.cspx

Colder weather ahead, wood-burning prohibition to take effect. 
Now that a mild Halloween has come and gone, Bakersfield
residents should steel themselves for dropping temperatures (and
a little fall of rain) later this week, the National Weather
Service said Tuesday.  Posted. 
http://www.bakersfield.com/news/local/x1967163167/Colder-weather-ahead-wood-burning-prohibition-to-take-effect

VEHICLES

California's high-speed rail backers take steps to quiet critics.
Even as they raised the estimated cost of high-speed rail in
California to almost $100 billion over 20 years, the project's
organizers on Tuesday were staging a comeback bid. The California
High-Speed Rail Authority, which came under criticism in the
Legislature and appeared for months to be on the brink of
collapse, cast the new cost estimate as a measure of its
credibility. Posted.
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/11/02/v-print/4023711/californias-high-speed-rail-backers.html

Why solar and electric cars should be friends.  Solar power and
electric cars are an ideal match. Both are tied to the grid and
disruptive technologies, which are in an early market stage and
which are trying to reduce costs. It just makes sense to partner
up, and that’s exactly what some solar panel companies and EV
developers and chargers are starting to do.  For example, on
Tuesday, solar installer REC Solar announced it will start
selling General Electric’s WattStation, a level-2 charger that
should fill up a car in under eight hours. Posted. 
http://gigaom.com/cleantech/why-solar-and-electric-cars-should-be-friends/

GREEN ENERGY

Solar advocates question Va. charge proposal.  Solar power
advocates are challenging a residential charge proposed by
Dominion Virginia Power they contend would create disincentives
for a renewable energy source that is already lagging in the
state.  The so-called standby charge would apply to large-scale
residential solar customers when their thermal panels are not
generating enough electricity, typically at night. The General
Assembly approved legislation that allows the standby charge for
residential solar generation systems ranging from 10 kilowatt
hours to 20 kilowatt hours.  Posted. 
http://www.vcstar.com/news/2011/nov/02/solar-advocates-question-va-rate-proposal/

OPINIONS

The rich soak up solar subsidies. An 80-kilowatt solar
installation sits in Nipton, California, on December 1, 2010. The
remote, Mojave Desert town has new solar panels that provide
about 85 percent of the community's power. The sun shines on the
beachfront mansions of Malibu and La Jolla, just as it does on
Compton and Barrio Logan in San Diego. It beams down on the most
upscale part of Clovis and its golf course development of
Brighton Crest, and on the gritty flats of south and west Fresno.
Posted.
http://www.modbee.com/2011/11/01/1929542/the-rich-soak-up-solar-subsidies.html

BLOGS

Climate Change and the Developing World. The United Nations
Development Program delivered some dire news Wednesday in its
annual Human Development Report. By midcentury, it said, the
development progress of the poorest countries will be halted or
even reversed if bold steps are not taken to forestall the
effects of climate change. “The poorest countries’ really
remarkable and often overlooked progress in recent decades now
faces this calamity down the road,” said William Orme, a
spokesman for the agency. Posted.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/02/climate-change-and-the-developing-world/?pagemode=print

Climate Change Imperils Global Prosperity, U.N. Warns.  A new
report from the United Nations Development Program warns that if
drastic measures are not taken to prepare nations for the impacts
of climate change, the economic progress of the world’s
developing countries could stall or even be reversed by 2050. 
This year’s annual report, approaches the issue of climate change
and environmental degradation from the standpoint of economic
development and the eradication of poverty.  Posted. 
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/02/climate-change-imperils-global-prosperity-u-n-warns/

More on Energy and Climate Paths for California and Beyond. 
Building on my weekend “Reality Check on Ambitious Climate
Targets,” here are two “Your Dot” views of energy and climate
paths for California and the rest of the planet, one offered by
Alan Nogee, an energy consultant who was until recently the
leader of the Clean Energy Program at the Union of Concerned
Scientists, and Thomas J. Crowley of the University of Edinburgh,
a veteran of decades of climate research who here writes
primarily as a resident of a place, Scotland, where energy prices
are very high.  Posted. 
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/02/more-on-energy-and-climate-paths-for-california-and-beyond/

A Challenge to Europe’s Airline Emissions Curbs.  In another
challenge to the European Union’s plan to regulate emissions from
the world’s airlines, 26 countries including China and the United
States are backing a resolution urging that non-European airlines
be exempted.  A debate on the resolution is anticipated on
Wednesday at a meeting of the International Civil Aviation
Organization, an arm of the United Nations, in Montreal.  Posted.
 http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/02/another-challenge-to-europes-airline-emissions-curbs/

Judge restricts release of emails among climate scientists. A
county Circuit judge in Virginia has sided with the University of
Virginia's effort to restrict the release of personal emails from
one of its former faculty members. The decision late Wednesday
would allow the university to alter an agreement it had reached
with the American Tradition Institute, which was seeking
communications between Michael Mann, a physicist and climate
scientist, and other scientists from 1999 to 2005, when Mann was
employed by the university. Posted.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2011/11/climategate-emails-michael-mann-university-of-virginia.html

Don't make fun of California's carbon reduction efforts.
California is trying to change the rules of the game, getting
polluters to expect that they will be charged a gradually higher
price for carbon emissions. Will the state's leaders be viewed as
a heroes fools? The Editorial writers at the WSJ have some tough
things to say about California's AB32 carbon mitigation effort. 
The regulators at the Air Resources Board are called "elitists"
who do not understand the unintended consequences of their well
meaning regulations.  Posted.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Green-Economics/2011/1102/Don-t-make-fun-of-California-s-carbon-reduction-efforts