‘Green News Report’ – November 26, 2013

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IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: Last-minute agreement at contentious UN climate talks in Warsaw; U.S. methane emissions 50% higher than previously thought; World’s 1st genetically modified food animal one step closer to market; PLUS: Ontario, Canada breaks up with coal, and Al Gore is happy about it! … All that and more in today’s Green News Report!

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IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (see links below): “We have to consume less”: Scientists call for end to mindless consumption; Chicago seeks to shut down Koch Industries’ petcoke piles; Say goodbye to toxic couches in CA; Warming ‘will be hard to reverse for centuries’: study; Unprecedented $1m fine for wind farm over eagle deaths; CT: Don’t rake fall leaves – mulch them; NYT climate coverage suffers after closing ‘Green’ blog; Evacuation questions after 55 killed in China pipeline explosion; Shanghai opens carbon trading scheme; Setback for CA high-speed rail; … PLUS: Drowning Kiribati: This entire country is about to be drowned by climate change. It won’t be the last … and much, MUCH more! …

STORIES DISCUSSED ON TODAY’S ‘GREEN NEWS REPORT’…

• COP19 Warsaw: UN Climate Talks End In Modest Agreement to 2015:
• UN climate talks: what was decided in Warsaw? (RTCC)
• Warsaw climate talks set 2015 target for plans to curb emissions (Guardian UK) [emphasis added]:
  Christiana Figueres, the UN’s leading climate official, said: “We have seen essential progress. But let us again be clear that we are witnessing ever more frequent, extreme weather events, and the poor and vulnerable are already paying the price. Now governments, and especially developed nations, must go back to do their homework so they can put their plans on the table ahead of the Paris conference.”
  …
  The emissions goals, to come into force from 2020, will be set at a national level, but after they are published there will be a chance for other countries to scrutinise them and assess whether they are fair and sufficiently ambitious.
• WATCH On Demand: United Nations Climate Change Conference COP19/CMP9 Warsaw 2013 (UNFCC)
• UN climate talks: how did countries come to agreement in Warsaw? (RTCC)
• “Africa Is Being Pushed Closer to the Fire”: Africans Say Continent Can’t Wait for Climate Action (Democracy Now!)
• UN climate talks in Warsaw: what you need to know (Guardian UK)
• Why the U.N. climate talks keep breaking down, in five simple charts (Washington Post)
• Dirty Energy Subsidies Still 5x More Than Pledged Climate Aid, Activists Ask #WTF? (DeSmogBlog)
• U.N. Climate Chief To Industry Leaders: ‘Coal Must Change Rapidly And Dramatically’ (Climate Progress)
• New Partnership Between Governments And Industry To Reduce Methane (Climate Progress)
• 3 Countries That Are Bailing on Climate Action: Japan, Canada, Australia (Mother Jones)
• Lord Stern: global climate ambition lacking at Warsaw summit (RTCC):
  Leading climate change economist says Warsaw summit conclusions indicates leading countries do not take climate change seriously.
• U.S. Methane Emissions 50% Higher Than Previous Estimates:
• U.S. May Be Producing 50 Percent More Methane Than EPA Thinks (NPR) [emphasis added]:
  “Our numbers for the entire United States are about a factor of 1.5 times larger than the [estimates of] the EPA,” says the study’s co-author , a doctoral student in earth sciences at Harvard University. That’s a serious discrepancy, Miller says, considering the hundreds of millions of tons of a very potent greenhouse gas going up every year.
• World’s 1st Genetically Modified Animal One Step Closer To Market:
• Canada approves production of GM salmon eggs on commercial scale (Guardian UK):
  The decision marked the first time any government had given the go-ahead to commercial scale production involving a GM food animal. … The Food and Drug Administration is expected to render a decision in the near future on the sale of GM salmon, and in due course some 30 other species of GM fish currently under development, campaigners and industry figures said.
• Food & Water Watch: Fact Page on Genetically Engineered Salmon (Food & Water Watch)
• A new method against genetically modified salmon: Get retailers to refuse to sell it (Washington Post)
• Canadian Approval of GE Salmon Egg Production Draws Sharp Criticism (press release, Center for Food Safety)
In a dubiously complicated production scheme, the company responsible for the GE salmon plans to produce the eggs on PEI, ship them to be raised in a small facility in Panama, and then ultimately sell the GE fish to consumers in the United States. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not yet approved the GE salmon.
• Ontario, Canada Breaks Up With Coal:
• Ontario Premier’s Bill Bans Coal-Fired Power in the Province (Environment News Service)
• VIDEO: Al Gore praises Ontario’s Wynne for coal-banning initiative (Globe & Mail)
• Canada’s Most Populated Region Is Banning Coal Forever (Climate Progress)
• Ontario Cleans Its Hands Of Coal (Clean Technica)
• How Ontario Went Coal-Free (National Journal) [emphasis added]:
  The shutdown of Ontario’s last coal-burning plant—slated to happen before the end of this year—is the culmination of a goal set 10 years ago, when the province produced a quarter of its electricity with coal power. The milestone isn’t a stopping point, said Premier Kathleen Wynne, who used the event to propose a ban for all future coal-plant construction.
• Ontario Goes Coal-Free in a Decade (PowerMag, May 2013)
• Don’t Waste Your Energy: Energy Efficient Electronic Gadget Guide:
• Just in Time for Black Friday: NRDC’s Green Electronics Holiday Shopping Guide 2013 (NRDC)
• Living Green’s Green Gadget Gift Guide (Living Green)
• LEDs: A Holiday Gift That Keeps on Giving (NRDC) [emphasis added]:
  Here’s an even bigger holiday gift suggestion: If we could get an energy-efficient LED light bulb into each of America’s 3 billion screw-based sockets that still contain an inefficient incandescent or halogen bulb, we could save a whopping $13 billion annually on our utility bills and 30 coal-burning power plants’ worth of electricity.

‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (Stuff we didn’t have time for in today’s audio report)…

• Drowning Kiribati: This entire country is about to be drowned by climate change. It won’t be the last. (BusinessWeek):
  “All it takes is one wave,” Anderson says. When Ban Ki Moon, the secretary-general of the United Nations, paid an overnight visit to Tarawa a couple of years ago, his security guards placed a life jacket in his hotel room, just in case.
• VIDEO: “We Have to Consume Less”: Scientists Call For Radical Economic Overhaul to Avert Climate Crisis (Democracy Now!)
• Chicago: City, State Seek to Shut Down Koch’s Petcoke Pile (Chicago Tribune):
  In an online photo gallery of neighborhood picnics and sunrises over Lake Michigan, an image of black dust blotting out the sky galvanized residents of Chicago’s Southeast Side to demand action against companies storing enormous mounds of petroleum coke along the Calumet River.
• Warming ‘Will Be Hard to Reverse’ (Climate News Network via Truthdig) [emphasis added]:
  They simulated a planet in which greenhouse gas emissions continued to rise, until concentrations in the atmosphere had reached four times the pre-Industrial levels, and a total of 1,800 billion tons had been released into the atmosphere. … [A]fter an initial period in which temperatures started to drop, something else happened. The simulated planet started to warm again, and go on warming for another 400 years or more.
• Eagle deaths: Unprecedented $1 million fine for Wyoming wind farms (CS Monitor):
  The wind farms in Friday’s settlement came on line before the Obama administration drafted voluntary guidelines encouraging wind energy companies to work with the Fish and Wildlife Service to avoid locations that would impact wildlife. Companies that choose to cooperate get rewarded because prosecutors take it into consideration before pursuing prosecution.
• Rake the Leaves? Some Towns Say Mow Them (NY Times)
• Prepare to say goodbye to toxic couches (NRDC Switchboard):
  An obscure California regulation has led to the use of toxic and untested flame retardant chemicals in furniture in California and also around the country and beyond. Unfortunately, this stupid use of dangerous chemicals has not provided additional fire safety, but it has exposed people to health risks. Because of the widespread use of flame retardant chemicals in furniture and other products, Americans carry much higher levels of these chemicals in their bodies than people elsewhere in the world and California children have some of the highest levels ever measured. The old regulation did not even protect against the cause of the vast majority of fires—smoldering materials, like cigarettes.
• NY Times’ Climate Coverage Suffers After Disbanding Environmental Team, Dropping Green Blog (Media Matters)
• Evacuation Questions After China Pipe Blast (NY Times)
• Shanghai carbon trading scheme opens for business (RTCC)
• VIDEO: Fox’s Bolling Attacks Sports Teams For Addressing Climate Change Because It’s Not “Proven” (Media Matters)
• Sacramento judge delivers setback to high-speed rail project (Sacramento Bee):
  While the rulings appeared to be a setback for construction of a bullet train that would travel from Los Angeles to San Francisco through the Central Valley, advocates on both sides argued over just how bad it was for the future of high-speed rail in California.
• Warsaw’s widening climate chasm could lead to 4C warming (Guardian UK) [emphasis added]:
  At an average global temperature rise of 4C, the hottest days experienced would be 6C to 12C hotter, sea levels would rise by 80 cm or higher and the yields for key crops such as maize, wheat and rice would drop by as much as 40 per cent. “Those sorts of things would be absolutely devastating – they would be catastrophic” she said. “There’s a widespread view that four degrees could be incompatible with organised global community and would inevitably lead to conflict and disruption and could potentially be beyond adaptation. Ecosystems are already being threatened – at four degrees we have irreversible impacts on ecosystems.”
• Ninety Companies Responsible For Two-Thirds Of Global Warming Emissions (Climate Progress):
  According to the research, 90 companies on the list of top emitters produced 63% of the cumulative global emissions of industrial carbon dioxide and methane between 1751 to 2010, amounting to about 914 gigatons of CO2 emissions. Aside from seven cement manufacturers, the rest of the emitters were [large] energy companies producing oil, gas, and coal.
• ANGA’s Tax Forms: Fracking Lobby Gives Big Bucks to Media Outlets, “Other ALECs” (DeSmogBlog):
  If ANGA’s latest 990 forms prove anything, it’s the “golden rule.” Just not the one you’re taught as a kid. That is, when it comes to money in politics, “He who has the gold makes the rules.”

FOR MORE on Climate Science and Climate Change, go to our Green News Report: Essential Background Page

• Video Proof That Global Warming is a ‘Hoax’!: NASA Temperature Data 1888-2011 (The BRAD BLOG):



• NASA climate change video: This is the U.S. in 2100 (NASA).