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That’s the number of deaths that could occur worldwide due to air pollution by 2050 if nothing is done to change the fossil fuel-heavy energy mix, according to a new report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). That’s up from 4 million a year today, and it means that air pollution—which includes [...]
Real talk: when it comes to dealing with climate change—and reducing carbon emissions, the top man-made cause of warming—the international community is doing a crap job. The U.N. process is bogged down, with ambitions that seem to shrink each year even as the summits themselves grow longer and longer. Europe’s emissions trading scheme (ETS)—the biggest [...]
China confirmed this week that the number of its citizens living in cities has surpassed the rural population for the first time in its history. That massive urbanization — 690.79 million people are now city-dwellers according to the National Bureau of Statistics — has brought huge benefits, chief among them lifting hundreds of millions out [...]
At the start of the fall, greens were not happy with President Obama. There was lingering disappointment about the failure of climate legislation a year before—a failure that many environmentalists blamed on insufficient action from the White House. That was bad enough, but at the beginning of September Obama shocked many of his environmental allies [...]
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator LISA JACKSON, in a statement announcing the release of the EPA’s long-awaited rules on mercury and other air toxics. The regulations—which have been in the works for two decades—are the first to restrict emissions of mercury, a potent neurotoxin, from power plants. According to the EPA, the new rules—with which [...]
During his career as a running back for the Pittsburgh Steelers, Jerome Bettis made a habit of running over opponents—that’s why they called him “the Bus.” Now the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is hoping that Bettis can handle conservative lawmakers the way he used to brush aside opposing linebackers. Bettis was in Washington on Thursday [...]
Jia Lynn Yang of the Washington Post has a nice piece this morning on the real impact of government regulations on employment, pivoting off the tightening environmental rules that have led some coal plants to close early. She finds that on the whole, regulations don’t have much impact on jobs: Some jobs are lost. Others are [...]
Environmentalists here in the U.S. are not happy with President Obama, in part because he pulled back on a promise to tighten ground-level ozone and smog standards for air pollution. But American greens should remember: much of the rest of the world has it far, far, far worse. That’s one takeaway from a new report [...]
As if the stifling, tripe-digit temperatures gripping much of nation weren’t bad enough, the heat wave is also contributing to dangerously high levels of air pollution—especially around the cities of the Northeast and the Mid-Atlantic region. The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) air quality rankings range from 0 to 500—500 being the worst—and the air quality [...]
Shale natural gas—usually the most boring of fuels—has been one of the hottest energy topics in 2011, alternately lionized as a cleaner-burning and plentiful power source and demonized as a poisoner of local water supplies, and even worse for the climate than coal. That debate will continue to run hot—just last week New York filed [...]
