What's New List Serve Post Display

ARB Newsclips for December 31, 2012. 

This is a service of the California Air Resources Board’s Office
of Communications.  You may need to sign in or register with
individual websites to view some of the following news articles.

CLIMATE CHANGE

Carbon Taxes Make Ireland Even Greener. Over the last three
years, with its economy in tatters, Ireland embraced a novel
strategy to help reduce its staggering deficit: charging
households and businesses for the environmental damage they
cause. The government imposed taxes on most of the fossil fuels
used by homes, offices, vehicles and farms, based on each fuel’s
carbon dioxide emissions, a move that immediately drove up prices
for oil, natural gas and kerosene. Posted.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/28/science/earth/in-ireland-carbon-taxes-pay-off.html?ref=earth&_r=0


2013: A Tipping Year For Climate Change?  This year's extreme
weather was one for the record books; 2012 is slated to be the
hottest summer on record.  The worst drought in 50 years struck
the South and Midwest, devastating the U.S. agriculture industry.
Deadly floods and superstorms paralyzed the northeast and other
parts of the country.  While the public is in shock by extreme
weather events that have taken place, environmentalist Bill
McKibben and other members of the science community say it is a
result of climate change.  Posted. 
http://www.npr.org/2012/12/30/168310474/2012-a-tipping-year-for-climate-change
 

Annual bird counts give scientists climate clues.  Armed with
flashlights, recordings of bird calls, a small notebook and a
stash of candy bars, scientist Rich Kostecke embarked on an
annual 24-hour Christmastime count of birds along the Texas Gulf
Coast. Yellow rail. Barn owl. Bittern. Crested Cara-Cara.
Kostecke rattled off the names and scribbled them in his
notebook.  His data, along with that from more than 50 other
volunteers spread out into six groups across the 7,000-acre Mad
Island preserve, will be analyzed regionally and then added to a
database with the results of more than 2,200 other bird counts
going on from mid-December to Jan. 5 across the Western
Hemisphere.  Posted. 
http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/Annual-bird-counts-give-scientists-climate-clues-4157422.php
 

Other related articles:
http://www.fresnobee.com/2012/12/31/3117854/annual-bird-counts-give-scientists.html#storylink=misearch
 
http://www.sacbee.com/2012/12/31/5084521/annual-bird-counts-give-scientists.html#storylink=misearch
 
http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_22287403/annual-bird-counts-give-scientists-climate-clues?IADID=Search-www.contracostatimes.com-www.contracostatimes.com
 
http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_22287403/annual-bird-counts-give-scientists-climate-clues?IADID=Search-www.insidebayarea.com-www.insidebayarea.com
  
California's New Cap-and-Trade Law: A Model for the Country?  If
you thought cap-and-trade was dead and buried, think again.  It’s
true that in Washington, the controversial proposal to fight
climate change was squelched after a sweeping 2010 bill crashed
in Congress and an aggressive media campaign by the fossil-fuel
industry made the phrase “cap-and-trade” political poison. But on
Jan. 1, California—the largest economy in the nation and the
eighth-largest in the world—will start enforcing a robust
cap-and-trade law that’s the first of its kind in the United
States.  Posted. 
http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/california-s-new-cap-and-trade-law-a-model-for-the-country-20121213
 

California cap-and-trade program set for second auction.  In
early 2012, California introduced an ambitious cap-and-trade
initiative that aimed to significantly reduce the greenhouse
emissions that the state produces. The initiative was an offshoot
of a similar measure that was shaping up from the U.S. government
at the time. While the federal measure collapsed, the California
cap-and-trade program continued taking form. The California Air
Resources Board, which oversees the program, recently held the
first carbon credit auction for the program, which set a high
standards due to its success and proved that the cap-and-trade
program could be a powerful new revenue source for the state. 
Posted. 
http://www.hydrogenfuelnews.com/california-cap-and-trade-program-set-for-second-auction/857858/


Arnold Schwarzenegger: Terminator, Body-Builder, and Global
Leader on Climate-Change. If the United States ever enacts a
major climate-change law, it will owe a debt to Arnold
Schwarzenegger. Strange as it sounds, the Austrian-born
bodybuilder, former California governor, and movie star has
flexed more legislative muscle on climate change than President
Obama--who ran for office on the promise of curbing sea level
rise and creating millions of green jobs--and Al Gore, the former
vice president who won a Nobel Prize for his advocacy on climate
change.  Posted.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/energy/arnold-schwarzenegger-terminator-body-builder-and-global-leader-on-climate-change-20121230
 

DIESEL EMISSIONS

California Air Resources Board Adds New Regulations; Truckers
Struggling to Meet Them. Some trucking companies will be out of
business as of January 1 because of new requirements from the
California Air Resources Board. Ron Lord, the owner of Lord
Trucking out of Red Bluff said many of these truckers will be
facing unemployment because they simply cannot afford to meet the
new requirements. Lord has been in the industry for almost 30
years. He said he received a letter from the board last week. It
states that all vehicles weighing more than 26,000 pounds from
the 2000 to 2004 model years will be forced to upgrade to a
verified soot filter or be replaced altogether.  Posted.
http://www.krcrtv.com/news/local/California-Air-Resources-Board-Adds-New-Regulations-Truckers-Struggling-to-Meet-Them/-/14322302/17941474/-/ie5bd4/-/index.html



MISCELLANEOUS

EPA faces legal battles, might take easy confirmation road. PA
Administrator Lisa Jackson, who spearheaded the Obama
administration's regulation of carbon emissions, said on Thursday
she will step down after almost four years. Her tenure was marked
by opposition from industry groups and Republican lawmakers to
the EPA's first-ever crackdown on carbon emissions, as well as
other anti-pollution measures. Analysts said whoever succeeds
Jackson will probably face a spate of lawsuits to challenge rules
that the EPA will finalize governing power plants, industrial
sources and oil and gas production. Posted.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/31/us-epa-legal-idUSBRE8BT02J20121231


Air board chair on pundits' list for EPA.  The woman who led
California through the development and implementation of some
groundbreaking environmental policies could soon be headed to
Washington, D.C.  U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Administrator Lisa Jackson announced her resignation this week,
and already people are speculating about who will next head the
agency. One name on nearly every pundit's short list: California
Air Resources Board Chairwoman Mary Nichols.  Posted. 
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/capitolnotebook/article/Air-board-chair-on-pundits-list-for-EPA-4153321.php


OPINION

California’s climate-change experiment. Starting on jan. 1,
California will begin the nation’s most ambitious experiment yet
in fighting climate change, and it will do it more or less alone.
For environmentalists depressed by years of the United States’
unproductive “debate” on global warming, this moment is heady —
and perilous. Beginning in 2013, the nation’s largest state, the
ninth-largest economy in the world, will put a price on the
greenhouse gas emissions responsible for global warming. Posted.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/californias-climate-change-experiment/2012/12/30/942d4c40-4fb5-11e2-839d-d54cc6e49b63_story.html


BLOGS

Coal Giant Drops Claim That it is ‘the Global Leader in Clean
Energy Solutions’. Peabody Energy, the biggest private-sector
coal company in the world, has removed the claim that it is “the
global leader in clean energy solutions” from its home page. The
two images below show the shift (sometime between Dec. 19 and
Dec. 29), with the claim now reading that it the company is “the
global leader in clean coal solutions.” Posted.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/29/coal-giant-drops-claim-that-it-is-the-global-leader-in-clean-energy-solutions/