The global climate change agreement reached in Paris late last year may not be signed, sealed and delivered just yet, but the European Union is determined to maintain the momentum and goodwill generated at the summit. Earlier this month, the European Commission completed an assessment of the deal aimed at determining what the EU must do to implement the agreement.
“We have the deal. Now we need to make it real,” said EU Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy Miguel Arias Cañete. “For the EU, this means completing the 2030 climate and energy legislation without delay, signing and ratifying the agreement as soon as possible, and continuing our leadership in the global transition to a low-carbon future.” Continue reading “Will Europe deliver on its Paris climate promises?”→
People everywhere like to complain about excessive government regulation, and the European Union is no exception. But it’s clear, from a new University of Leeds study, that air quality rules in the EU have saved thousands of lives in recent decades.
2,000 people per day trying to cross the Mediterranean to safety
As the conflict in Syria reaches new levels of brutality, the flow of refugees from the region toward Europe has accelerated, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. By latest count, more than 80,000 refugees and migrants arrived in Europe by boat during the first six weeks of 2016, more than in the first four months of 2015, despite wintry weather and rough seas, the UNHCR officials said Friday.
Already this year, more than 400 people have died trying to cross the Mediterranean. Right now, about 2,000 people are trying to cross the waters each day. Last year, the numbers didn’t reach this level until July.
“The majority of those arriving in January 2016, nearly 58 percent, were women and children … one in three people arriving to Greece were children as compared to just 1 in 10 in September 2015,” UNHCR’s chief spokesperson Melissa Fleming said during a press briefing in Geneva. Fleming said more than 91 per cent of those arriving in Greece come from the world’s top ten refugee producing countries, including Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. Continue reading “Refugee stream intensifies; 400 deaths already in 2016”→
FRISCO — Life-threatening heatwaves like the blazing Russian summer of 2010 will occur as often as every two years across southern Europe, Africa and the Americas if global warming continues at its present pace.
Bill would allow U.S. airlines to disobey duly passed carbon cap regulations
By Bob Berwyn
FRISCO — Congress didn’t accomplish much the past few months, but in one of its last acts before recessing for the upcoming campaign season, the U.S. Senate did manage to throw a monkey wrench into European Union plans to try and cap greenhouse gas emissions from passenger jets.
That’s symbolic for a Congress that has been focused primarily on obstruction for the past two years, and shows how U.S. politicians are out of touch with the global move to try and tackle global warming. That’s probably why the bill was was passed under cover of the night — at 2 a.m. Saturday, to be exact, when nobody was looking. Continue reading “Congress tries to thwart EU action on airline emissions”→
Senate committee passes bill that could block U.S. airlines from joining an EU carbon-reduction plan
By Summit Voice
SUMMIT COUNTY — While much of the world is trying to find ways to reduce greenhouse gas pollution from the commercial air travel, U.S. politicians seen intent on trying to stymy progress in the airline sector.
The Senate Commerce Committee this week passed a bill (S.1956) that would give the U.S. secretary of transportation authority to ban U.S. airlines from participating in the European Union’s Emissions Trading System if he thinks it serves the public interest. The bill does not ban U.S. airlines from participating in the EU system.
“Passage of this disappointing and short-sighted bill today seems only to decrease the odds of action at the international level by calling into question the status of the one lever that actually moved the International Civil Air Organizationto have serious discussions after 15 years of inaction – the EU Emissions Trading System,” said Annie Petsonk, international counsel for Environmental Defense Fund.
“This bill now ups the pressure on the Obama administration to produce a solution at ICAO. We are happy to see the text at least encouraged international negotiations at ICAO, which we believe hold the key to a global agreement to reduce aviation emissions.
“Legislation that blocks American companies from obeying the laws of the countries in which they do business is almost unprecedented in U.S. history, showing up most recently when Congress barred American firms from suborning apartheid in South Africa,” Petsonk said. “How disconcerting that airlines, which are spending significant funds touting their environmental friendliness, are acting as though an anti-pollution law is as grievous as a massive human rights violation.”