Climate change is expected to lead to worsening drought conditions and greater heat extremes, along with myriad health problems. And a new web tool created by the Natural Resources Defense Council lets you see read just how badly your state could be impacted by climate change.
Tags: · Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Drought, extreme heat, greenrightnow.com, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Kim Knowlton, Massachusetts, Montana, Natural Resources Defense Council, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wyoming
The Environmental Protection Agency is threatening to hit five mid-Atlantic states with new rules that could raise sewer bills and limit construction in a large-scale crackdown on pollution in the Chesapeake Bay.
The move represents the most aggressive action in the 27-year history of the Chesapeake cleanup. When states previously failed to meet deadlines in 2000 and 2010, the agency did nothing. The new deadline is 2025, but the EPA served notice that it will not tolerates states lagging behind in improvements.
Virginia, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Delaware and New York are in the EPA crosshairs. Those states combine to account for more than 70 percent of the pollution that causes “dead zones” in the bay. The agency informed those states that their cleanup plans “serious deficiencies” and threatened to force them to make up the difference with costly new measures.
Tags: · Chesapeake Bay, Chesapeake Bay dead zones, Dead Zones, Delaware, Environmental Protection Agency, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia
By John DeFore
This week, for the first time in the United States, an auction was held allowing power plants to bid against each other for the right to spew carbon dioxide into the air.
The goal, of course, is to reduce atmospheric carbon by finding the best way of putting a price tag on it for polluters. Ten Eastern states — Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont — have formed the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (or RGGI, pronounced “Reggie”) to coordinate their efforts by placing mandatory overall caps on emissions levels, then auctioning off allowances for CO2 emissions that can be traded between companies. As a result, companies will have a financial incentive to clean up their own act as quickly as possible.
Tags: · cap-and-trade, Carbon Emissions, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, RGGI, Rhode Island, Vermont
Barbara Kessler
Andrew Winston
Danielle Nierenberg
Anthony Swift