Environmental Law

In The News (September 25)

By Dennis Pfaff and Kevin Livingston, Editors

• The battle to curb heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere just keeps getting tougher, it seems, with the release of a study showing that global carbon emissions rose rapidly in 2007, from a Reuters dispatch. The news agency also produced a fact box displaying information from the study. The full report is here.
• The United Nations has launched a program it hopes could be the foundation for a system in which rich countries would pay poor ones to slow climate change by protecting and planting forests, from another Reuters report.  
• In a related vein, there's evidence that northern forests may soak up carbon longer than previously believed, a finding that could influence efforts to control climate change, reports the Christian Science Monitor. 
• There may not be many short-term consequences for the renewable energy industry from the financial crisis on Wall Street but it may -- or may not -- be another story in the long term. One key: keeping costs under control, suggests this posting from Fortune's Green Wombat.
• A major environmental group has joined with Boeing and some big airlines collectively accounting for about 15 percent of jet fuel use worldwide in an effort to develop and bring to market sustainable aviation fuels, from a statement from the Natural Resources Defense Council.
• A small program at the National Center for Atmospheric Research working to help poor deal with climate change had its budget eliminated this year but it will be re-born at the University of Colorado, reports Dot Earth, environmental blog of The New York Times.
• The findings are preliminary but sobering: There's evidence that millions of tons of a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide is being released into the atmosphere from beneath the Arctic seabed as the region becomes warmer, according to the U.K.'s Independent.
• Where some see green scum others see the color of money, as this look at a man who is betting he can produce biodiesel from algae shows, in a report from the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
• The U.S. House has formally moved to drop a quarter-century congressional ban on drilling off the East and West coasts, but the Bush administration is moving even faster, preparing for the day companies might gain access to now off-limit waters, the Houston Chronicle reports.

Full post as published by Climate Law Update on September 25, 2008 (boomark / email).