Green Options

The Environmental Protection Agency has granted California’s waiver request that will allow the state to enforce strict greenhouse gas emissions standards on cars beginning with the present model year. California first applied for the waiver in 2005, but was denied several years later. Now, the EPA grants the waiver based on the need for California to improve its air pollution conditions.

It’s in the papers and on TV. It spreads across the Internet (including this very post), and it is finding its way into the classroom. Global climate change is nothing new. And it certainly isn’t going away. Not yet, anyway.

Editor’s Note: This was a multi-party contribution involving Kim Komenich (photos) Kwan Booth (text) NewsDesk.org (editing) Spot.Us (financial support). This is part of a series that we’ll be posting over the next week.

Tuesday night saw the end of two years of negotiations between the Port of Oakland, environmentalists, truckers and West Oakland residents, with a vote to reduce toxic emissions from trucks serving the busy shipping center.

The Comprehensive Truck Management Plan aims to reduce the levels of diesel particulates in the air around the port, by banning diesel trucks built before 1994 — as well as newer trucks that lack air filters.

The plan also authorized a registration system for all trucks doing business with the port, and $3 million for independent truckers who need to upgrade their vehicles.

Editor’s Note: This was a multi-party contribution involving Kim Komenich (photos) Kwan Booth (text) NewsDesk.org (editing) Spot.Us (financial support). This is part of a series that we’ll be posting over the next week.

West Oakland is pinned between the Bay Area’s largest, busiest port and two major commuter freeways, and is home to decades of legacy pollution, making this marginalized but determined community a hotspot for childhood asthma and other illnesses.

Editor’s Note: This was a multi-party contribution involving Kim Komenich (photos) Kwan Booth (text) NewsDesk.org (editing) Spot.Us (financial support). This is part of a series that we’ll be posting over the next week.

While much of the debate on reducing emissions from the Port of Oakland has revolved around trucks, diesel pollution from the trucks is estimated to make up only 4 percent of West Oakland’s overall toxic burden.

A much larger percentage has been attributed to the international shipping companies that rent the ports — yet attempts to impose fees to pay for pollution controls have been sidetracked by global trade regulations and opposition by the state of California and even special interest groups in Oakland and the Bay Area.

Congatulations to Adam of St. Louis for his contest winning caption! Stay tuned for another caption contest in August…

Dioxin exposure during pregnancy impairs the development of mammary glands during pregnancy and may cause women to not produce enough milk for their newborns, a new study finds.

Breast milk is an amazing food for babies, and breastfeeding has many benefits for both mother and child, including reducing the risk of heart attacks for mothers, reducing asthma risks for babies, and reducing anxiety in children. But up to 6 million women either can’t breastfeed, or don’t produce enough milk for their child, and dioxin in our food chain may be to blame.

When it comes to environmental news, doom and gloom often rules the day. And it’s easy to get discouraged. But scientists from Yale University say most polluted ecosystems can recover in as little as 5 or 10 years.

The study means it’s not too late to turn things around if societies commit to cleanup, restoration and sustainability, according to Yale’s analysis of 240 independent studies. The findings appear in this month’s issue of the peer-reviewed journal PLoS ONE.

Much ado and attention has been paid to the pollutants emmitted from the tail pipes of cars and trucks in recent years, both here in the U.S. and across the pond in Europe. With an estimated 250 million passenger vehicles in the U.S. alone, it would seem that cars would be a major contributor to pollution and air quality issues here and abroad. But newly released data from Europe suggests that a single container ship may cause as much pollution as 50 million cars and release as much as 5,000 tons of sulfur oxide into the air annually. And there are 90,000 such ships of varying sizes across the world at any one time.

Technological innovations can solve some of the world’s biggest problems right? That’s what a firm of Chilean architects would like us to believe. They’ve come up with a creative idea for how land-locked Bolivia could regain access to the ocean. It was not too long ago, in 1883 to be exact, that Bolivia lost the little coastline it had in a war with Chile. Since it’s only be gone for a short time, now’s the perfect time to get it back!

At the end of the line, old ships are sent to developing countries to be broken down. But the environmental and human consequences are severe.