Environment

The Global North-South Carbon Divide

The global discussion on climate change has quickly degenerated into a north-south confrontation, for perhaps obvious reasons. On average, carbon emissions per capita in the developed world are about five times those in developing countries.

Negotiators Urged to Speed up Climate Pact Talks

A power station is seen in Sun Valley, California. The UN climate chief warned that time was running out to break a deadlock on a global warming pact, telling delegates in Bangkok that failure to do so by December would threaten future generations.
(AFP/Getty Images/File/David Mcnew)

BANGKOK - Delegates at the start of marathon climate talks in Thailand on Monday were told to speed up "painfully slow" negotiations as they struggle to settle on the outline of a tougher pact to fight global warming.

The Bangkok talks, which run until October 9, is the last major negotiating round before a gathering in Copenhagen in December that the United Nations has set as a deadline to seal a broad agreement on a pact to expand and replace the Kyoto Protocol.

Activist's 'Necessity' Defense May Get the Boot

Tim DeCristopher speaks with members of the news media after he was escorted out of the Bureau of Land Management offices in Salt Lake City on Friday, Dec. 19, 2008 following DeChristoper's bid on several oil and gas leases during a BLM auction. (Steve Griffin/The Salt Lake Tribune)

A federal judge is expected to hear arguments Friday detailing why environmental activist Timothy DeChristopher should be allowed or prohibited from presenting evidence he acted out of "necessity" when he deliberately bid on and won oil and gas leases he couldn't pay for as part of a protest.

The December disruption of the Bureau of Land Management auction in Salt Lake City led to an indictment on two criminal charges against DeChristopher - violation of the federal oil and gas leasing reform act and providing a false statement.

Group Calls for End to National Forest Logging

Aspen trees in the Caribou-Targhee National Forest in Idaho are seen in this undated photograph. (REUTERS/U.S. Forest Service/Handout)

RICHMOND - A Vermont group has called on the Obama administration to end logging and road building in undeveloped areas of the White Mountain National Forest and other federal woodlands to protect some of the last pristine public lands across the country.

"Americans have waited eight ... years to see our last pristine forests protected ..." said Mollie Matteson, a Vermont-based conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity.

3 Environmental Groups to Sue EPA Over Coal-Ash Ponds

In this July 8, 2009 photo, Canada Geese swim near a floating yellow barrier in the Clinch River designed to catch fly ash from a massive coal ash spill at the Kingston Fossil Plant at Kingston, Tenn, shown in background. (AP Photo/Duncan Mansfield)

Three environmental groups have put the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on notice that they intend to sue the agency, alleging it has failed to regulate water pollution from the nation's electric utilities, including discharges into rivers and lakes from hundreds of coal-ash ponds.

Defenders of Wildlife, the Sierra Club and the Environmental Integrity Project on Monday filed their notice of intent to sue the EPA - the first step in a federal lawsuit - alleging that EPA officials should have tightened their rules on power plant water pollution as far back as 1982.

Canada's Becoming a 'Global Carbon Bully': Greenpeace

Sludge spews into a tailings pond at the Syncrude plant site in Fort McMurray, Alta.
(Photograph by: Chris Schwarz, CanWest News Service)

MONTREAL - A new report from Greenpeace says oil production in Alberta's tar sands has made Canada into a "global carbon bully."

Little has been done to tackle climate change in Canada, and the federal government has actively tried to block international agreements and laws targeting climate change, says the report, called Dirty Oil: How The Tar Sands Are Fuelling the Global Climate Crisis.

US Calls for More Action to Restore Chesapeake Bay

Declaring the Chesapeake Bay a national treasure that needs urgent help, the Obama administration unveiled sweeping plans Thursday for jump-starting restoration efforts, including proposals to crack down on pollution from farming and development in the six-state region that drains into North America's largest estuary.

Climate Changes Creating Hunger Ahead of Summit

Nepalese Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal, seen here with students holding a banner on climate change. The first climate change talks between Himalayan nations ended with a call for international assistance for poor countries struggling to cope with the effects of global warming. (AFP/File/Prakash Mathema)

WASHINGTON - Changing weather patterns have decimated crops in several of the world's poorest countries this year, leaving millions in need of food aid and humanitarian workers warning about the dangerous effects of climate change.

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EPA to Declare CO2 a Dangerous Pollutant

Greenpeace activists burn a symbol of carbon dioxide in 2008. Carbon dioxide will soon be declared a dangerous pollutant - a move that could help propel slow-moving climate-change legislation on Capitol Hill, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency said Monday. (AFP/DDP/File/Theo Heimann)

WASHINGTON - Carbon dioxide will soon be declared a dangerous pollutant - a move that could help propel slow-moving climate-change legislation on Capitol Hill, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency said Monday.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson told reporters that a formal "endangerment finding," which would trigger federal regulations on greenhouse gas emissions, probably would "happen in the next months."

Carbon Controversies in Costa Rica

Everyone needs something to believe in, and for many Latin American progressives, that something for years has been Costa Rica. The country has long been cited as a beacon of progressive tranquility in a region better known for violence, inequality and poverty. Following an uprising in 1948 led by Jose Figueres Ferrer, the country embarked on its own unique path of social democracy, involving extensive progressive taxation, universal health and education availability, and no armed forces.

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