In a move that has irked many of his fellow Republicans, not to mention business leaders, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced last week that he is supporting a plan for his state to put market-based incentives in place to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for exacerbating global warming.
As part of a strategic effort to provide vehicles suitable for use in far-flung locales, the United States Army has begun to test hybrid automobiles fueled by hydrogen instead of gasoline. With fuel cells still cost prohibitive, Army researchers are jazzed by the possibility of combining existing electric drive assist technology with hydrogen fuel. They have started experimenting as such with converted Ford Escape Hybrid SUVs.
When I first met Frank Maisano he was the spokesperson for the Global Climate Coalition (GCC), which with big automakers as sponsors argued that the science wasn’t settled and that regulation was premature. SourceWatch says that GCC "was one of the most outspoken and confrontational industry groups in the United States battling reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Prior to its disbanding in early 2002, it collaborated extensively with a network that included industry trade associations, ‘property rights’ groups affiliated with the anti-environmental Wise Use movement.’"
The controversial Cape Wind Project, which aims to install offshore power-generating windmills across 24 miles of the Atlantic Ocean near Nantucket Sound off the coast of Massachusetts, may face its stiffest challenge yet in the form of recently proposed federal legislation that would allow state governments to nix any projects that could potentially interfere with navigation in shipping lanes.
Residents of the Gulf Coast and Eastern Seaboard should batten down the hatches this coming summer, as researchers are forecasting another whopper of a hurricane season. William Gray and Phillip Klotzbach, atmospheric scientists at Colorado State University, are predicting that 17 named storms, including as many as five major hurricanes, may well land on Florida and the Gulf Coast between late June and November.
In a strange turn of events, Republicans from the U.S. House of Representatives last week put the kybosh on the most recent attempt to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, despite bi-partisan support from the Senate to include such a proposal in the final version of the 2007 federal budget bill. Environmentalists are hopeful that this latest in a long string of Congressional rejections of ANWR drilling will be the last time they must go on the defensive over the issue while pro-drilling President Bush is in office.
In response to a call from President Bush to start weaning America from its petroleum addiction and reducing Middle East oil imports as much as 75 percent by 2025, the federal government has finally implemented a long-awaited bump in gas mileage standards for light trucks such as sport utility vehicles (SUVs) and pickups. Under existing standards, automakers’ 2006 model year light trucks must meet an average of 21.6 miles per gallon (mpg). The new rules call for bumping the fuel economy standard up to 22.2 mpg.
Last week a national panel of scientists commissioned by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recommended lowering the existing federal standard for safe amounts of fluoride in drinking water supplies. The panel, consisting of 12 experts from the National Academies’ National Research Council, cited research showing that children exposed to levels at or near the current standard of a maximum of four milligrams per liter of water can suffer severe tooth enamel damage, while adults with a sustained intake of that much fluoride can be prone to weak bones more susceptible to fracturing.
An international team of researchers using advanced computer models is predicting that at the current rate of development, as much as 40 percent of the Amazon forest as we know it today will be gone by 2050. Britaldo Soares-Filho and his team based at Brazil’s Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais reported in the journal Nature that without more protections, more than 770,000 square miles of rainforest would be lost, with at least 100 native species losing more than half of their habitat.
Two thousand and six is emerging as the year Americans finally wake up to the reality of global warming. Of course, E has been hammering away at the issue for six years or more, but now it has momentum, with the release of several new books and a Time magazine cover story ("Be Worried, Be Very Worried") April 3.
