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Archive for June, 2015
On eve of encyclical, pope appeals for ‘our ruined’ planet
Posted by Reuters: Philip Pullella on June 17th, 2015
Reuters: Pope Francis, on the eve of the most contested papal writing in half a century, said on Wednesday that all should help to save "our ruined" planet and asked critics to read his encyclical with an open spirit. In the highly personal and eloquently written 192-page "Laudato Si (Be Praised), On the Care of Our Common Home", Francis dives head on into the climate change controversy, which has won him the wrath of skeptical conservatives, including two Catholic U.S. Republican presidential candidates....
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on On eve of encyclical, pope appeals for ‘our ruined’ planetAre the politics of climate about to change?
Posted by Hill: Paul Bledsoe on June 17th, 2015
Hill: President Obama and other leaders at the G-7 Summit in Germany made headlines last week pledging to cut greenhouse gas emissions 40 to 70 percent by 2050, the first time leading Western nations have committed to such specific long-term targets.
But even as the targets were being announced, deep skepticism emerged, at home and abroad, about the U.S. ability to meet such ambitious goals. Republicans in Congress, many states and all but one of the Presidential primary candidates, have thus far fought...
GOP uses spending bills to move against EPA rules
Posted by Hill: Devin Henry on June 17th, 2015
Hill: Republicans in both chambers moved bills Tuesday to cut the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) budget and block several of its new regulations.
In the House, the Appropriations Committee approved an Interior and Environment spending bill that would cut the agency's budget by $718 million next year. The bill would block a new EPA rule asserting power over small waterways and its upcoming greenhouse gas regulations for power plants. Members also included a provision blocking a new ground-level...
China bets on ‘sponge cities’ to cope with flooding and drought
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on June 17th, 2015
ClimateWire: The plaza outside Shenzhen's Mass Sports Center looks like any you can find in Chinese cities. But if you look closely, you can still see a critical difference.
Unlike most infrastructures in China, the plaza here has no drains. When rain falls lightly, the water either filters down to the underground through permeable pavements or is soaked up by gardens designed to catch rain. Almost no rainwater flows into street gutters around this plaza. During a period when many big cities -- most recently...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on China bets on ‘sponge cities’ to cope with flooding and droughtHillary would charge new fees for fossil fuel extraction
Posted by High Country News: Elizabeth Shogren on June 17th, 2015
High Country News: During her official launch speech last weekend, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton tossed out a big clue about the direction she would take the country’s climate change policy. If elected, she vowed, she would seek to make the United States a “clean energy superpower” and pay for the transition in part with “additional fees and royalties from fossil fuel extraction.” Coming just days before Pope Francis’s leaked appeal to address climate change grabbed headlines around the globe,...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Hillary would charge new fees for fossil fuel extractionUN chief warns of continuous land degradation
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on June 17th, 2015
Xinhua: The city of Irvine, California, for example, has extensively studied its aquifer. “They know how low they can let the aquifer go before needing to either stop pumping or to supplement supply,” Richey said. “There's a paper that says basically you can't manage what you don't know and right now we aren't really managing groundwater well, if at all.”
Lance Larson, a science center fellow at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said that it’s critical to monitor whatever groundwater is left.
“These...
Human Data Can Make Ecosystem Service Models Better, Researchers Say
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on June 16th, 2015
Yale Environment 360: Protected forests in Brazil, Costa Rica, Indonesia, and Thailand have prevented the release of more than 1 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, an ecosystem service worth at least $5 billion, Georgia State University economists found. Their conclusion about the monetary benefit of those forest protections is based on a new method they derived for valuing services such as carbon capture, conservation, and improvements in air and water quality. Instead of relying on modeling alone, the...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Human Data Can Make Ecosystem Service Models Better, Researchers SayGlobal freshwater consumption crossing its planetary boundary
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on June 16th, 2015
ScienceDaily: The new results account for the freshwater effects of different types of human activity over the twentieth century until present time, including effects of changes in land use (e.g., intensified or extended agriculture, deforestation) and water use (e.g., related to hydropower development). These activities have led to an increased loss of freshwater to the atmosphere due to human-driven increase of evapotranspiration, which includes evaporation from surface and soil water and transpiration by plants....
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Global freshwater consumption crossing its planetary boundaryCampaigning for the climate: activism, arrests and hopes
Posted by Guardian: Adam Ramsay on June 16th, 2015
Guardian: When I was a student at Edinburgh, we used to protest at the career fair every year. One time, Esso [ExxonMobil] had got someone to set up their stall, but their staff failed to show up. My sister and I put on our best suits and staffed the stall for the morning, giving students an honest appraisal of what it was like to work for a company whose work is bound up with brutality, corruption, murder and planetary destruction the world over. After hours of these conversations with students, the poor...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Campaigning for the climate: activism, arrests and hopesAhead of pope’s climate message, U.S. Catholics split on cause of global warming
Posted by Reuters: Mary Wisniewski on June 16th, 2015
Reuters: Ahead of Pope Francis' much-anticipated encyclical on the environment, a poll released on Tuesday found that U.S. Catholics are divided on the causes of global warming, mirroring the views of the general public.
The survey by the Pew Research Center found 71 percent of U.S. Catholics believed the planet was getting warmer, but less than half, or 47 percent, attributed global warming to human causes. About 48 percent viewed it as a very serious problem.
The numbers are similar to the U.S. population...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Ahead of pope’s climate message, U.S. Catholics split on cause of global warming