Photo Credit: David Boyle
Climate Change policy is like putting together a puzzle. There are many different pieces and all must come together and fit before the big picture is realized.
Two big important pieces of the puzzle came together today as the Senate introduced its climate bill called the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act. The second piece of the puzzle regards the EPA as it revealed today, for the first time, that they will regulate carbon emissions from big industry. This is a huge day in energy policy as two separate forms of government have made their respective strides towards a clean energy future. Read more…
photo credit: Carl Chapman
In 2007 the US Fish and Wildlife Service made the decision to remove the “threatened” label from the Yellowstone Population of Grizzly Bears. The Yellowstone Grizzlies had been designated as “threatened” in 1975 which granted them “special protections” as part of the Endangered Species Act of 1973. The USFWS removed the Grizzlies from the list in 2007 after the population numbers “increased from an estimated population of 136 to 312 when they were listed as threatened in 1975, to more than 500 bears today.” But just recently, Judge Donald Molloy of the Montana District Court ruled that the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision would leave the bears under-protected. Judge Molloy ruled that the existing regulatory plans were inadequate and that they “depend on guidelines, monitoring, and promises or good intentions for future actions (which are) unenforceable and non-binding on state and federal agencies.” Read more…
Photo Credit: Ibrahim Lujaz
Global warming comes with a big price for everyone on this planet. The most recently effected: vacationers.
Visiting the sun-kissed paradise of the Maldives is not only a special treat that may not be possible in the future (since 80% of its 1,200 islands are no more than 1 meter above sea level) but a new environmental tax on tourists is making the trip a bit more costly. The threat of rising water levels could force the country’s 360,000 citizens to evacuate, which explains why it was the first country to sign the Kyoto Protocol, that set targets for cuts in industrialized countries’ greenhouse gas emissions.
The Maldives are a sought after vacation destination, with many luxury hotels and resorts, over a quarter of their $850 million economy is brought in by tourists. Averaging about 700,000 tourists each year (double that of the native population), the green tax of $3 a day per visitor will bring in $6.3 million annually. This money will be used for President Mohammed Nasheed’s plan to make the Maldives the world’s first carbon-neutral nation within a decade Read more…
Daniel Zanini H.
While the world has changed since the onset of the Aguinda vs. Texaco lawsuit in 1993, the issues confronted in the case remain central to the fight for both human rights and environmental protection. The ongoing legal battle is being fought between two sides, one being a dominant oil corporation, and the other being made up of five indigenous tribes and 80 communities (approximately 30,000 inhabitants) of the Amazon rain forest. The indigenous communities of the Ecuadorian portion of the Amazon have accused Texaco of polluting their lands and water sources, as well as destruction of the rain forest that has also led to the destruction of the natives’ community and way of life. Read more…
Photo Credit: Austin Parker
Here’s an idea…maybe nature is better at fighting climate change than we are. A new study out of Europe shows that governments may be able to better fight climate change by investing in the natural world. Certain natural resources like mangroves and forests have a huge potential to fight the effects of climate change. Preserving these resources could end up costing less than investing in other global warming preventative measures and their mitigation effects could last much longer. According to the Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity, or TEEB, our “Natural systems represent one of the biggest untapped allies against the greatest challenge of this generation.” Read more…
Photo Credit: Victor Yeo
Have you ever thought about how much money you would be willing to pull from your wallet to preserve our earth’s forests? $50? $500? $5,000? If you find it extraordinarily difficult to put a monetary value on something so abstract, undefined, and unknown as a forest with all of its diversity and life support services then you are just like the rest of us.
In the past, the monetary value of a forest was based on the timber price that it could be sold for, but that equation leaves out some of the most important aspects of a forest…such as it’s diversity of plants and animals, the oxygen that it creates (which sustains human life), Read more…
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