Green Options

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been ordered to release all documents pertaining to Administrator Stephen Johnson’s controversial blocking of California’s waiver to control greenhouse gasses in that state.

The announcement came in an email released by Public Employees forEnvironmental Responsibility (PEER), saying Johnson has bowed to a Congressional request for the information, following the controversy sparked by his controversial decision.

PEER’s Executive Director Jeff Ruch is quoted as saying: “What made Johnson’s decision so striking is that for months he said he was basing it on the scientific and legal merits and then did the precise opposite. One employee told me ‘I am ashamed to admit that I work at EPA’ and another asked ‘What am I supposed to tell my children when they ask me what I am doing to fight global warming?’”

Johnson has said he will not attend a field hearing of Senator Barbara Boxer’s (D-CA), Senate Environment & Public Works Committee on January 10th in Los Angeles. His appearance before Congress, however, promises to be contentious at best.

Is it my imagination, or has the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency gone out of its way this year to live down its name? Already criticized by many green types for doing more to protect the Bush administration agenda than the environment, the EPA made 2007 a banner year … in a bad way.

One of its most recent decisions — its denial of California’s effort to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from […]

It’s time to end Washington’s “We know what’s best for you” grip on this country. The latest incident is the Environmental Protection Agency’s denial of California’s bid for greenhouse gas limits on cars, trucks and SUV’s. The landmark regulations would have resulted in a 30 percent reduction in tailpipe greenhouse emissions in new cars and trucks by 2016, with cutbacks beginning in the 2009 model year. The EPA’s action was taken according to rules of the Clean Air Act, which says the state needed a federal waiver to implement the rules.

The EPA, in refusing the waiver, said the Bush administration was forging a national solution rather than accepting a patchwork of state regulations. At least 12 other states have adopted the California standards with four planning adoption. That, it appears, would qualify as a “patchwork” of standards.

But wait a minute. If the California standards were adopted, car makers could just go ahead and bring their product up to that level and sell the vehicles anywhere they wish. What’s the problem here? Everybody would win with less pollution and more fuel efficient cars and trucks nationwide. Sounds like some smoke and mirrors to me, and if they sell that kind of drivel to the public, we need a better system of education. But the feds are going to hold their ground, so I have a plan, and here’s the challenge.

In my last post, Recycling Misconceptions part 1, I touched on the uncertainties of recycling, plastics in particular, that I think perplex many of us. Well last week I attended a Green Renter lecture here in NYC and found out some more interesting things about recycling that I didn’t know. The evening’s lecturer, Samantha MacBride of NYC bureau of waste prevention, reuse and recycling was able to put many things into perspective, the most interesting being the amount of paper we consume and the amount that ends up in our landfills.

She got me thinking. Since recycling has been on my radar lately, I have been more aware of my habits and the habits of the people around me. I noticed that I am much more diligent in getting my plastic and glass bottles in the correct place for recycling than I am with all my paper products. It wasn’t until I attended the lecture that I realized how much less of a guessing game paper recycling is, just how important it really is — more important than the resin code mystery in my last post — and how much I neglect the privilege. According to Samantha Macbride, if you want to make a difference, recycle more paper. She explained to us that paper is the most under recycled material. According to the EPA, 35% of total U.S. municipal solid waste generated in 2006 was paper and paperboard (graph source: EPA report).

What do mercury, cyanide, lead, ammonia, and benzo(a)pyrene have in common? These make up the 1.7 million pounds of pollutants that were dumped by U.S. Steel into Lake Michigan (via the Grand Calumet River) in 2005. A water discharge permit was recently proposed that may reduce or eliminate limits on heavy metals and toxic chemicals discharged by U.S. Steel into the Grand Calumet River, which flows into Lake Michigan.

The

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It looks like ethanol subsidies may impede efforts to reduce the size of the Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico. A draft report from the EPA Science Advisory Board says that ethanol subsidies could lead to a dramatic increase in nutrient loading in the Mississippi river basin, due to diverting cropland to corn production.

Recent energy policies, combined with pre-existing crop subsidies, tax policies, global market conditions and trade barriers all provide economic

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I once had someone suggest to me that environmentalists didn’t have enough fun. Granted, that person was a flame-throwing stilt walker, so her idea of fun might be a bit different from yours and mine. But the question remains: do environmentalists take themselves too seriously?

Now you may be shocked by this question. I was. I mean, if you can’t see the fun in trying to save the world from global warming and mass

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A Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement under the Clean Water Act was written in 1972 to set a cap on the amount of crud that could be dumped into Lake Michigan annually. The law set a limit on how much pollution companies could legally dump into the lake. The law also prevented any company that was dumping under the limit from increasing their dumped pollution.

Well,

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The oceans and atmosphere are warming, and now the global warming blame game is also heating up. Inuit in Shishmaref are seeking damages for the climate change that has forced them from their 4,000-year-old community. And 12 states recently prevailed in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that states carbon dioxide is a pollutant that can be regulated by the U.S. EPA.

In the past week alone, we've seen the U.N. point

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April was a monster month in the biofuel world. I've already written about a few top stories, including a biofuel race from Washington, D.C. to San Jose, Costa Rica, UC Berkeley proposing a biofuel rating system, and San Francisco announcing it will be turning restaurant oil into biodiesel.

I couldn't write about it all though, so I thought a summary of other big stories was in order:

1. A […]

Ask the White House began in 2003 as an "online interactive forum" on the White House webiste that "allows you to interact with Bush administration officials and friends of the White House." It is set up as a Q&A where the American public can ask government officials what is on their mind.

This week's guests coincide with Earth Day. Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Stephen L. Johnson, will host Ask

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