Climate Change

Despite the US government’s opposition to the Kyoto Protocol, California, New York and New Jersey embraced carbon trading Tuesday as they joined European governments, Canadian provinces, and New Zealand to launch a forum known as the International Carbon Action Partnership.

a decade-long partnership between the World Resources Institute and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development

Designing a Customized Greenhouse Gas Calculation Tool

The GHG Protocol provides the accounting framework for nearly every GHG standard and program in the world - from the International Standards Organization to the EU Emissions Trading Scheme to the California Climate Registry - as well as hundreds of GHG inventories prepared by individual companies.

Many plants have been the source for medicine that cures disease. Take the rosy periwinkle, which is native to Madigascar. Before its properties were discovered, only 10 percent of children with leukemia lived. But from the plant, scientists created a compound that helped increase the survival rate. "With the compound, the rate has now gone up to 95 percent,” Raven says. “Who knows what else is out there in nature's pharmacy.”

"We will have 10 percent of the world’s seeds by 2010 and we would like to go on and have a quarter of the world’s species by 2020,” says Paul Smith, director of the Millennium Seed Bank Project.

One in six of all wild plants are used for medicine. One in 10 are used for food, especially in developing countries.

Landfilling, the most common waste management practice, results in the release of methane from the anaerobic decomposition of organic materials. Methane is 21 times more potent a GHG than carbon dioxide. However, landfill methane is also a source of energy, and some landfills capture and use it for energy. In addition, many materials in landfills do not decompose fully, and the carbon that remains is sequestered in the landfill and not released into the atmosphere.

The image above illustrates the four main stages of product life-cycles, all of which provide opportunities for GHG emissions and/or offsets. These stages are: raw material acquisition, manufacturing, recycling, and waste management.

Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are those who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will.                                                                                                                         --Frederick Douglass 1857

on September 4th, give up food for a day, And Send a powerful message on global warming.

Register for the fast>> Find a faster near you>> ESSAY: No Time for Activism as Usual>>

The state of California is implementing an even more restrictive standard in 2004, allowing only 0.006 grams per kilometer [0.01 grams per mile] of particulate emissions.

Even if the California standard were introduced worldwide, says Jacobson, diesel cars may still warm the climate more than gasoline cars over 13 to 54 years.

Jacobson says that new particle traps being introduced by some European automobile manufacturers in their diesel cars appear to reduce black carbon emissions to 0.003 grams per kilometer [0.005 grams per mile], even below the California standard.

Thursday, January 31st, 2008KPFA brings you a day-long broadcast from the largest teach-in in US history, from the campus of San Francisco State University.

Thursday, January 31st, 2008KPFA continues its day-long broadcast from the campus of San Francisco State University. Focus the Nation is the largest teach-in in US history.

Thursday, January 31st, 2008KPFA continues its day-long broadcast from the campus of San Francisco State University. Focus the Nation is the largest teach-in in US history

In 2005, the weighted average combined fuel economy of cars and light trucks combined was 19.7 miles per gallon (FHWA 2006).

The average vehicle miles traveled in 2005 was 11,856 miles per year.

In addition to having high global warming potentials, SF6 and PFCs have extremely long atmospheric lifetimes, resulting in their essentially irreversible accumulation in the atmosphere once emitted (see below).

The definition of a GWP for a particular greenhouse gas is the ratio of heat trapped by one unit mass of the greenhouse gas to that of one unit mass of CO2 over a specified time period.

While the most current estimates for GWPs are listed in the IPCC's Third Assessment Report (TAR), EPA analyses use the 100-year GWPs listed in the IPCC's Second Assessment Report (SAR) to be consistent with the international standards under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) (IPCC, 1996