Global Warming Solutions News
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| 2010-07-22 | |
| Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced today that Senate democrats were abandoning attempts to pass comprehensive climate legislation this year. Despite the worst manmade environmental disaster in our history unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico and the hottest days months on record, Senate democrats acknowledged they could not overcome obstructionist tactics of the Republican leadership and Big Oil. | |
| 2010-07-06 | |
| Maryland commuters saved 7.1 million gallons of gasoline by riding MARC commuter trains in 2008 – the amount of fuel consumed by 12,000 cars per year. Transportation is responsible for more than two-thirds of our dependence on oil, and about one-third of our carbon dioxide pollution, as Environment Maryland outlined in their new paper, On the Right Track: MARC Saves Money and Protects the Environment. | |
| 2010-06-15 | |
| Environment Maine launched a TV ad today criticizing Senators Snowe and Collins for voting last week to block Clean Air Act limits on global warming pollution. | |
| 2010-06-10 | |
| Washington, DC—Yesterday U.S. Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) introduced a new bill, the “Practical Energy and Climate Plan Act of 2010.” Environment America’s Federal Global Warming Program Director Nathan Willcox issued the following statement in response: “The disaster in the Gulf has reminded us all in stark and heartbreaking terms why this country needs to move away from oil and other fossil fuels. The time is now for Congress to enact comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation that addresses the disaster in the Gulf, reduces our dependence on oil and other fossil fuels, and solves the climate crisis while rebuilding our economy with clean energy. | |
| 2010-06-10 | |
| Environment America applauded the U.S. Senate today for rejecting Senator Murkowski’s Congressional Review Act resolution (S.J.Res. 26). The binding resolution would have increased America’s dependence on oil and blocked Clean Air Act rules to safeguard human health and the environment. | |
| 2010-06-09 | |
| As oil continues to pour into the Gulf of Mexico and just days before a major U.S. Senate vote on legislation that would block new rules requiring cars to use less oil, a new analysis finds that California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois, Ohio, and Pennsylvania would increase their oil consumption the most under the Senate bill – by as much as 62 million gallons in California alone in 2016. The binding resolution, introduced by Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, also would cost individual states millions at the gas pump in 2016 | |
| 2010-05-13 | |
| EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson will finalize today the first-ever global warming pollution standards for large smokestack industries. The action will require coal-fired power plants, oil refineries, and other large polluters to use available technology to cut pollution when new facilities are constructed or existing facilities are upgraded in ways that increase pollution. Environment America Federal Global Warming Program Director Emily Figdor released the following statement in anticipation of the announcement. | |
| 2010-05-12 | |
| Today Senators John Kerry and Joe Lieberman released a new discussion draft for comprehensive federal climate and energy legislation, entitled “The American Power Act.” Environment America Federal Global Warming Program Director Emily Figdor released the following statement in response. | |
| 2010-04-21 | |
| On the eve of Earth Day and just days before the expected unveiling of a new energy and climate bill in the U.S. Senate, state officials, legal experts, and environmental groups called on the U.S. Senate to uphold the historic role that states have played in protecting the environment. Despite the environmental victories won by states in recent decades, there is a push by some industries and their allies in the Senate to block states from adopting their own programs to cut global warming pollution if a federal climate bill is passed. | |
| 2010-04-01 | |
| The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Transportation today will unveil landmark final rules to improve vehicle fuel economy and cut global warming pollution. The new standards, which are based on the clean cars program first developed by California and later adopted in 13 other states, are the first-ever federal limits on global warming pollution – from any source. However, Senator Lisa Murkowski’s “Dirty Air Act” and six separate measures in the House would block the new standards and all other Clean Air Act limits on global warming pollution. | |
| 2010-03-22 | |
| A statewide environmental advocacy group in California, Environment California, is filing a complaint to the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) citing concerns that Valero Energy Corporation may have violated state law by not disclosing campaign contributions for its effort to suspend the state's clean energy law. | |
| 2010-03-11 | |
| The U.S. governors who have publicly opposed recent efforts in Congress to block the Clean Air Act represent a nearly equal portion of the U.S. population as do the governors who signed today’s letter spearheaded by Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, a former utility industry lobbyist, according to an Environment America analysis. | |
| 2010-03-11 | |
| Washington, DC—This morning on Capitol Hill a coalition of environmental and other organizations launched a 40-day campaign for an Earth Day Revolution. Anna Aurilio, Director of the Washington, DC office of Environment America delivered a statement at the launch event. | |
| 2010-03-11 | |
| Washington, D.C. – Today the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will review proposals that would reduce pollution and create hundreds of thousands of clean energy jobs over the next two years through programs that make our homes and buildings more energy efficient. The hearing will focus on the Home Star residential retrofit program, which would provide rebates and incentives to consumers who invest in new energy efficient appliances, weatherize their homes, or purchase other efficient technologies for their home. Environment America’s Clean Energy Associate Alex Wall released a statement in response. | |
| 2010-03-04 | |
| Senator Jay Rockefeller and Representative Nick Rahall today introduced legislation to establish a two-year freeze on enforcement of the Clean Air Act for global warming pollution. The two-year freeze would affect America’s biggest polluters, including coal plants, oil refineries, and other major polluters. | |
| 2010-03-02 | |
| On the heels of Senator John Kerry promising to produce in the next two weeks an energy and global warming bill that can pass the U.S. Senate, 13 senators today sent Majority Leader Harry Reid a letter urging him to ensure that the bill does not repeal Clean Air Act protections that require coal-fired power plants to meet modern standards for global warming pollution. | |
| 2010-02-16 | |
| Governor Perry announced that the state of Texas will take legal action in the U.S. Court of Appeals challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) endangerment finding for greenhouse gases. | |
| 2010-02-08 | |
| Today, polar explorer Will Steger and several Minnesota business leaders discussed the opportunities for clean energy solutions in Minnesota. They gathered at a press conference co-hosted by Environment Minnesota at a solar energy business in Minneapolis. The group illustrated the importance a strong limit on carbon emissions has on future investments and job growth and why the U.S. needs bold climate action in 2010. | |
| 2010-01-21 | |
| Senator Lisa Murkowski introduced a resolution today disapproving of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s December 2009 scientific finding that carbon dioxide and other global warming pollutants threaten human health and the environment. She crafted the resolution pursuant to the Congressional Review Act, a law that enables Congress to veto federal agency rules using special, expedited procedures. | |
| 2010-01-20 | |
| Detroit, MI —Increasing America’s use of plug-in electric (PEV) and plug in hybrid vehicles (PHEV) would dramatically reduce emissions that cause global warming and air pollution and would curb our dependence on oil, according to a new white paper released today by Environment America at the North American International Auto Show. | |
| 2009-12-30 | |
| Today eleven Northeast and mid-Atlantic states took another step toward reducing the region’s dangerous dependence on oil and fostering the growth of clean fuel alternatives when their governors signed a Memorandum of Understanding to develop a mandatory, multi-state Low Carbon Fuel Standard. | |
| 2009-12-19 | |
| "We applaud the steps taken in Copenhagen but we call on our national and international leaders to build upon the success in the states and commit to reducing global warming pollution to the levels scientists say is necessary." | |
| 2009-12-17 | |
| Republican Senators, including South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, today indicated their desire to pass a resolution disapproving of the Environmental Protection Agency’s recent finding that carbon dioxide and other global warming pollutants threaten human health and the environment. | |
| 2009-12-11 | |
| "For Florida, the irony of drilling in a climate bill is particularly cruel. If enacted as law, these principles may spare much of our coastline from rising seas, only to mar its world renown beauty with toxic pollution and subject it to the threat of a catastrophic oil spill." | |
| 2009-12-11 | |
| Senators Maria Cantwell and Susan Collins today introduced the Carbon Limits and Energy for America’s Renewal (CLEAR) Act, a cap and refund bill to address global warming and move America to clean energy. | |
| 2009-12-07 | |
| The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today will finalize its proposed finding that carbon dioxide and other global warming pollutants threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations, setting the stage for regulating the pollutants under the Clean Air Act. The announcement comes as world leaders kick off two weeks of negotiations in Copenhagen on a global climate treaty. | |
| 2009-12-03 | |
| The United States, long considered a laggard in addressing global warming, is poised to achieve significant reductions in global warming pollution thanks to clean energy and climate policies driven by the states, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis by Environment America. | |
| 2009-11-30 | |
| On November 18, 2009, Federal Global Warming Program Director Emily Figdor gave testimony before the EPA on the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions. The full text of her testimony appears below. | |
| 2009-11-24 | |
| The nation’s power plants emitted 2.56 billion tons of global warming pollution in 2007, which is equivalent to the pollution from nearly 450 million of today’s cars – nearly three times the number of cars registered in the United States in 2007, according to a new analysis of government data released today by Environment America. More than 70 percent of this pollution came from plants – primarily coal plants – built before 1980. | |
| 2009-11-12 | |
| Global warming pollution declined in one-third of the states since 2004, the year in which pollution levels began to peak in many states, according to a new analysis of government data released today by Environment America. States are reducing pollution in part by using cleaner energy that keeps money and jobs in the local economy. Pollution levels, however, rose in the majority of states (33) between 2004 and 2007. | |