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A cold winter in a warming world
January 12th, 2010 · 1 Comment
By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
You’d think in the era of the Weather Channel and 24-hour-news, Americans would be well informed about the difference between “the weather” and “the climate”.
And yet, people seem genuinely befuddled. This winter especially, with the Midwest up to its window sashes in snow and Texas through Florida experiencing protracted periods below freezing, people can be heard questioning climate change and global warming.
How can a warming world be so cold? they ask.
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Tags: · American Farm Bureau Federation, Climate Change, cold winter, evaporation, precipitation patterns, Union of Concerned Scientists, Weather
The Next Decade: Renewable Energy
By Shermakaye Bass
Green Right Now
The clock has just struck midnight on New Year’s Eve, 2020, and your rooftop cocktail party is in full swing. An urban garden, with potted evergreens and fruit trees, carpets the top of your downtown apartment building. The structure itself is vintage – a 1960’s brownstone that’s been retrofitted, by city-wide mandate. It operates on the new multi-source national electrical grid, which is supplied by wind, solar, geothermal power, as well as fossil fuels whose emissions are trapped underground.
[caption id="attachment_7825" align="alignright" width="224" caption="Rooftop Garden (Photo: Adpower99/Dreamstime.)"]  [/caption]
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Tags: · 2010, 2020, Al Gore, Alan Nogee, American Wind Energy Association, clean energy future, Department of Energy, Elliot Nagin, Evaluating the Feasibility of a Large Scale Wind, future energy sources, Geothermal Energy Association, Geothermal Energy Expo, geothermal power, Mark Z. Jaconson, reducing carbon emissions, Renewable Energy, Solar Energy Industries Association, Solar Power, Sopogy, Union of Concerned Scientists, Water and Sun Energy Infrastructure, Wind Power
Report says California’s cap on carbon has negligible impact on small businesses
From Green Right Now Reports
As international climate treaty negotiations continue in Copenhagen amid debate over the potential economic impact of new standards, a new report shows that the costs for small business operating under California’s landmark climate law (AB 32) can be measured in pennies.
[caption id="attachment_7438" align="alignright" width="280" caption="Border Gill in Santa Monica"]  [/caption]
Conducted by leading economists and released by the Union of Concerned Scientists, the report found that AB 32 policies will only increase the percent of small business revenue spent on energy by only 0.3 percentage points–from 1.4 to 1.7 percent–in 2020. In a case study of one small business — Border Grill restaurant — the report fond AB 32 will cost diners 3 cents extra per $20 meal in 2020.
The peer reviewed analysis, The Economic Impact of AB 32 on California Small Businesses, used data on the cost characteristics of small businesses to estimate the economic impacts of AB 32 and was commissioned by UCS and conducted by The Brattle Group, an international economic consulting firm.
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Tags: · Border Grill in Santa Monica, California's climate law (AB 32), climate treaty negotiations, The Brattle Group, The Economic Impact of AB 32 on California Small Businesses, Union of Concerned Scientists
Think healthcare’s costly? Check out the co-pay for climate change
September 10th, 2009 · No Comments
By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
Not convinced that climate change matters? The Union of Concerned Scientists has concluded that if Americans adopt that stance, they’ll be gambling not just with their lungs, but with their pocketbooks.
The UCS surveyed 60 studies to better examine the anticipated financial toll of global warming if we fail to “dramatically curb emissions.” The nonprofit released the findings today in a report called “Climate Change in the United States: The Prohibitive Costs of Inaction”.
It found that rising sea levels, intense hurricanes, flooding, impaired public health and strained energy and water resources would all add up to one monumental price tag.
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Tags: · clean energy, Climate Change, costs of global warming, floods, global warming, hurricanes, sea level rises, Union of Concerned Scientists
CAFOs implicated in swine flu outbreak
April 28th, 2009 · 1 Comment
By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
It’s been reported that the global swine flu outbreak most likely originated in a small town in Mexico that straddles a large pig operation; there a 4-year-old boy was believed to have been the first victim of the influenza virus.
Now officials say there was a larger outbreak of a respiratory illness in La Gloria earlier in April, with some victims falling sick as early as February, according to a report in The Times of London.
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Tags: · CAFO, Confined Agricultural Feeding Operations, La Gloria, pandemic, swine flu, Union of Concerned Scientists
25 percent renewables by 2025 would bring jobs, lower electric bills and rural benefits
By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
Shifting the U.S. toward more renewable wind and solar power would not only generate thousands of jobs and lower consumers’ electric bills, it would create new income for rural residents and vastly reduce carbon emissions, according to a new analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The UCS released a study today showing that if utilities were required to obtain 25 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2025 it would:
- Create nearly 300,000 new domestic jobs
- Save consumers some $65 billion in lower gas and electricity bills through 2025; up to $95 billion through 2030.
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Tags: · clean energy, Congress, Electricity, Green jobs, power generation, renewable energy standard, RES, Solar Power, U.S. Department of Energy, Union of Concerned Scientists, Wind Power
Union of Concerned Scientists raises questions about genetically modified corn for biofuel
By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
Corn-based ethanol, once a star on the alternative energy scene, has fallen from favor in the past year, battered by reports that raising corn for fuel raids the world’s pantry and that corn ethanol has a heavier carbon footprint than originally thought.
 Many now argue over whether the US should continue to grow corn for fuel or make the switch to grasses that can be grown on less desirable land, with fewer pesticides and fertilizers, or use plant waste to make fuel.
Now a new debate looms: Should the US allow genetically altered corn to be grown for use as biofuel?
The Union of Concerned Scientists wants to stop that genie before it leaves the bottle, because it believes that genetically modified corn will inevitably mix with and contaminate corn grown for food products.
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Tags: · Amylase Corn, Biofuels, Cellulose, FDA, GMO foods, switch grass, Syngenta, Union of Concerned Scientists, USDA
Automakers bailout should carry improved gas mileage requirements
By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
Remember when Congress passed legislation one year ago raising the bar on gas mileage? The law they passed required automakers to have a fleet average of 35 mpg by 2020.
Automakers, not just the U.S. Big Three, but Toyota as well, opposed it. They spent millions lobbying against the law, and to find out just how much they spent and whose wheels they tried to grease, see the Huffington Post story Big Three Promise Green Future But Spent Almost $50 Million Since 2007 Lobbying Against It
which dug out the actual dollar figures. (Just as good as the story are some of the bloggers responding, who have some interesting ideas for how to rescue the car industry.)
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Tags: · automakers, bailout, BarbaraKesslerBlog, Congress, gas mileage, Union of Concerned Scientists
Western climate initiative sets emissions targets
September 23rd, 2008 · No Comments
By Barbara Kessler
While the world waits for Washington to act on one looming crisis – the Wall Street mortgage debacle –  states in the Western U.S. acted today on another crisis, announcing a plan to reduce emissions to combat global warming.
The Western Climate Initiative, a collaborative of seven Western states and four Canadian provinces, agreed to try to reduce carbon emissions to 15 percent lower than 2005 levels by 2020.
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Tags: · Arizona, British Columbia, California, Climate Change, Manitoba, Montana, New Mexico, Ontario, Oregon, Quebec, Union of Concerned Scientists, Utah, Washington, Western Climate Initiative
Cartoon contest satirizes government interference in scientific inquiry
September 16th, 2008 · No Comments
By Barbara Kessler
And the winner of the Union of Concerned Scientist’s “Science Idol” cartoon contest is. . . Justin Bilicki, a senior art director at ad agency Avenue A/Razorfish, who lives in Brooklyn.
 The contest, an annual event for the non-profit alliance of scientists, invited cartoonists to explore the challenges and political pressures that impede or distort scientific inquiry. Bilicki’s cartoon, clearly informed by the debate over climate change and global resource depletion, features a scientist in a lab coat with a poster that declares: RESEARCH CONCLUDES: WE ARE DESTROYING EARTH.
Two men in suits look on, and one, holding a briefcase overstuffed with money and labeled “Government” asks, “Could you kindly rephrase that in equivocal, inaccurate, vague, self-serving and roundabout terms that we can all understand?”
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Tags: · Climate Change, global warming, Union of Concerned Scientists
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