A Dream for a Better World

Representatives from more than 140 countries committed to reduce global mercury pollution, which will help protect the world’s citizens from the dangerous neurotoxin. This agreement was propelled by the United States’ reversal in policy, which also influenced policy reversals of other countries, including China and India. The announcement is a historic step forward in the fight against mercury pollution, according to scientists and policy experts at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).   The committed countries will reduce risks to human health and the environment from mercury by coordinating global cuts in the use and release of mercury into our air, water and land.

Japan has ruled out cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2020 from 1990 — the most ambitious possible action according to a reference target set by a U.N. panel of climate scientists.  Agreeing a 2020 target to curb greenhouse gases is one of the most contentious aspects for rich countries of U.N. climate talks meant to end with a new treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol in December this year.  Japan is expected to announce its 2020 goal by June. The country argues that because it is so energy efficient already, it will be more expensive to meet the same emissions-cutting target of other rich countries.

The Environmental Protection Agency will reopen the possibility of regulating carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants, tossing aside a December Bush administration memorandum that declared that the agency would not limit the emissions.  The decision could mark the first step toward placing limits on greenhouse gases emitted by coal plants, an issue that has been hotly contested by the coal industry and environmentalists since April 2007, when the Supreme Court ruled that carbon dioxide should be considered a pollutant under the Clean Air Act.

The battle to control air pollution moved indoors such as homes and businesses. Studies have shown that people are exposed to higher concentrations of air pollution for longer periods of time inside buildings than out-of-doors. Furthermore, evidence indicates that this exposure is contributing to a rapidly increasing incidence of illness, thus costing businesses, taxpayers, and the government billions of dollars in health care costs and lost work time. The typical U.S. home contains many hazardous chemicals and substances, including radon, which has been linked to lung cancer and other ailments. Congress has responded to public concern about indoor air quality by requiring the EPA to establish a program to study the problem and make appropriate recommendations.

New California laws will force ships to use low-sulphur fuel, saving lives and reducing pollution on land according to the state’s Air Resources Board. The laws also open the door to a major legal brawl.  In steps beginning in 2009 ocean-going vessels within 24 nautical miles of California’s coast will have to use lower-sulphur fuels in their engines and boilers, in place of heavy and dirty bunker oil. The board says around 2,000 vessels will be subject to the rules, which will be the strictest in the world.  Whether it will stand up to legal scrutiny remains to be seen.

Dee Boersma, a biologist at the University of Washington, has just written a new article in the journal BioScience warning that penguins, the animals that she has been studying for 30 years, are ‘sentinels’, and these ‘canaries in the mine’ are telling that danger is present with their declining population numbers.  The danger is a combination of climate change, fishing and pollution.  She says that penguins are among those species that show us that we are making fundamental changes to our world.  The fate of all species is to go extinct, but there are some species that go extinct before their time and we are facing that possibility with some penguins.

Coal is finally getting a bad rap.  For example, in America, a judge in Georgia has cancelled a permit for a new coal power station citing carbon dioxide emissions concerns. Environmentalists think this is the beginning of the end of conventional coal-fired power plants, because of the enormity of their emissions.  In the UK, a think tank is recommending a minimum two-year block on coal-power investment. The Institute for Public Policy Research says this is needed to hit Europe’s 21% reduction in heavy industry greenhouse emissions by 2020.  Finally, in Australia, eco-campaigners have decried a new AU$750 million coal power plant as “complete madness”.

Thanks to these different kinds of emission controls, the air in the United States is better than it used to be. Amounts of most major air pollutants have gone down. For example, amounts of carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide in the air dropped an average of more than 30 percent while the amount of lead dropped 70 percent.  New technology in pollution prevention, emission reductions, and improved manufacturing methods has cut down emissions and removed pollutants from emissions.  In addition, since the 1970s, cars now come equipped with catalytic converter for the engine system. The converter changes the harmful hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide that a car produces when it burns fuel into harmless carbon dioxide and water. Since a car with a converter uses unleaded gas, converters also reduce the amount of lead in the air.

In the developing countries, it is the rural areas that face the greatest threat from indoor pollution, where some 3.5 billion people continue to rely on traditional fuels such as firewood and charcoal for cooking and heating. Burning such fuels produces large amount of smoke and other air pollutants in the confined space of the home, resulting in high exposure. Women and children are the groups most vulnerable as they spend more time indoors and are exposed to the smoke. In 1992, the World Bank designated indoor air pollution in the developing countries as one of the four most critical global environmental problems.  Although many hundreds of separate chemical agents have been identified in the smoke from biofuels, the four most serious pollutants are particulates, carbon monoxide, polycyclic organic matter, and formaldehyde.

City folk have better carbon footprints than their country cousins, according to a new report.  Produced by the Brookings Institution, the report is all over the US press although it doesn’t yet appear to be online. Researchers looked at electricity, heating and transportation in the 100 largest metropolitan areas in 2005. They then compared this data to the US national average.  While urbanites put out 2.47 tons of carbon dioxide on average, the overall US figure was 2.87 tons, a clear 0.4 ton victory for the city dwellers.  The worst area looked at was Lexington-Fayette, at 3.4 tons, while the best was Honolulu at 1.3.

Scientists have found corrosive water off the coast of North America, a result of carbon dioxide being absorbed from the atmosphere. This is reputedly the first time acidified ocean water has been detected on the continental shelf of the western United States and it’s climate change that’s causing it.  Acidification of the Earth’s ocean water could have far-reaching impacts on the health of the near-shore environment, and on the sustainability of ecosystems that support human populations through nourishment and jobs.  This shows for the first time that a large section of the North American continental shelf is impacted by ocean acidification.

Following months of bad news on biofuels, a non-profit research institute is injecting a bit of optimism into the public debate by highlighting an old crop that can simultaneously provide both food and fuel: sweet sorghum.  The timing couldn’t be better, given the ongoing global food crisis and the now ever-present worries about where our next gallon of fuel will come from. One report went so far as to suggest sweet sorghum might be the perfect bioenergy crop researchers have been looking for.  Sweet sorghum would appear to have some promising qualities, not the least of which is its ability to grow in dry climates.

Republican Presidential candidate John McCain made his first major climate address last May, largely reaffirming a position on climate change that has long separated him from his Republican colleagues.  The speech was widely interpreted as an effort to distance himself from President George W. Bush and ‘woo’ independent voters. McCain endorsed cap-and-trade regulation and called for a return to 2005 emissions levels by 2012, a return to 1990 levels by 2020, and a reduction of at least 60 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2050.  Some environmentalists gave McCain due credit, but others refused to cede ground.  The Sierra Club said McCain’s climate policies are like President Bush, offering more of the same.

Nearly 80 rail cars loaded with contaminated sand from Kuwait are headed toward a dump in southwestern Idaho.  American Ecology Corp. is shipping about 6,700 tons of sand containing traces of depleted uranium and lead to a hazardous waste disposal site 70 miles southeast of Boise. The company has previously disposed of low-level radioactive waste and hazardous materials from U.S. military bases overseas at facilities in Idaho, Nevada and Texas.  The sand coming to Idaho from Camp Doha, a U.S. Army Base in Kuwait, was contaminated with uranium after military vehicles and munitions caught fire during the first Iraq war in 1991.