Water Agencies Seek Inclusion in Climate Legislation
For some time we have been hearing about changing precipitation patterns, rising sea levels, and other various ways that climate change will severely impact our nation’s hydrologic systems. In the debate over climate legislation water groups are advocating for congressional funds to assist with mitigating the effects on water supplies of a changing climate. Although water groups are pleased to have been included in funding proposed in the most recent version of Lieberman-Warner, the amendment offered up by Senator Boxer is not specific about what portion of the $136 billion in funding that drinking, waste, storm-water utilities would be eligible for under the energy block grant program. In the last few weeks, water groups have stepped up their efforts and sent letters to Senator Boxer and Congress pushing for assistance and inclusion in a cap and trade program.
Continue Reading...Climate Change and Aviation Fuel: A Tough Problem to Solve
Large aircraft require high energy fuel, and lots of it. But jet fuel is very difficult to clean up to satisfy climate protection imperatives, which has led to a major dispute in the US over the role coal-to-liquids and other alternative aviation fuels may play. Congress, the US Air Force, the major airlines, the US Environmental Protection Agency, its Federal Aviation Administration, a special Defense Department task force, coal-state senators, and many, many others are getting into the dogfight, which may go on for a long time.
Continue Reading...Climate Change Tort Suits: Hot or Cold?
Kivalina, Alaska, a village located eighty miles north of the Arctic Circle on a barrier island, is falling into the sea.
Since the early 1980s, sea ice ‑ which offers seasonal protection from storm surges ‑ has been forming later and melting earlier. As a result, the village is exposed to more winter storms of increasing severity.
In 2006, the US Army Corps of Engineers (“CoE”) concluded that the situation in Kivalina had become “dire” and that the entire town would have to be relocated within six years. A group of 400 Kivalina residents have filed suit against twenty petroleum producers, coal-burning utilities, and other energy companies, asserting that their carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions create a public nuisance and that they conspired to mislead the public about climate change.
Native Village of Kivalina v. ExxonMobil Corp. et al., CV 08-1138 (N.D. Cal., Filed Feb. 26, 2008). Citing a report by the CoE, the Kivalina villagers allege that environmental changes associated with global warming have exacerbated flooding and erosion threats to Kivalina and other coastal villages in the Arctic.
They seek recovery of the estimated $400 million cost to relocate their village, which they claim is a result of the defendants’ climate-changing activities.
Who's in the Driver's Seat? Washington vs the States, Agency vs Agency
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recently dealt a blow to both EPA and the states by proposing preemptive federal fuel economy standards (corporate average fuel economy or CAFE standards) that not only negate the states’ efforts to regulate fuel economy and vehicle greenhouse emissions but also directly challenge EPA’s leading role in regulating vehicle emissions. Will the courts, Congress, or a presidential administration sort out the traffic jam over authority to reduce vehicle greenhouse emissions? At this writing, the governors of twelve states are weighing in against what they view as a “cynical” power grab by the NHTSA, but resolution is nowhere in sight. [summary]
Continue Reading...The US's Existing Climate Protection Laws: Will They Work?
Obtaining GHG Credits Through Managing Water Supply Systems
Most recent climate-oriented discussions of water supply and quality have focused on the potential for altered precipitation, stream flows, groundwater recharge, and other impacts of regional climate change. These impacts are more likely than not to be severe in some locales, and thought is being given to the development of new infrastructure to address these changes (see related item on climate adaptation). But in addition to these obvious impacts on water supply and quality, it is now apparent that "non-trivial" greenhouse gas emissions are associated with the treatment of drinking water and sewage. [summary]
Continue Reading...Global Climate Change Under NEPA
Increasingly, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is being seen as a vehicle for ensuring that the federal government considers the impact of its actions on global climate change. Relying on a string of judicial decisions that require agency NEPA impact statements specifically to address the climate consequences of agency actions, environmental organizations have petitioned the President’s Council on Environmental Quality to conform its NEPA guidelines to the requirements of these cases. Climate will clearly figure prominently in future federal impact statements, and non-federal stakeholders, who often are the real parties in interest in NEPA compliance, would be wise to address climate early and often when developing their NEPA compliance strategies. [summary]
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