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Vermont tailpipe ruling seen as victory in states battle with auto industry
Houston - A state-led effort by California to force the EPA to either regulate greenhouse gas emissions from autos or permit states to do it won out Wednesday in Court and is seen as victory in the battle being led by Calif. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger against the Bush administration.
"The Vermont decision marks another important victory in the fight against global warming," Calif. Gov. Schwarzenegger told reporters.
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Houston - A state-led effort by California to force the EPA to either regulate greenhouse gas emissions from autos or permit states to do it won out Wednesday in Court and is seen as victory in the battle being led by Calif. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger against the Bush administration.
"The Vermont decision marks another important victory in the fight against global warming," Calif. Gov. Schwarzenegger told reporters.
Gov. Schwarzenegger together with California Attorney General Jerry Brown gave the Bush administration until the end of next month to give the state a federal waiver to enact stricter greenhouse gas emissions standards for automakers following a landmark greenhouse gas law California lawmakers passed in 2002 that requires automakers to gradually reduce emissions starting with the 2009 model year. But in order to enact that law, Schwarzenegger needs the federal waiver and has threatened to sue if they don't get it.
Other states copied California's auto emissions law and in Vermont, a federal judge ruled Wednesday that states have the legal right to impose tailpipe emissions standards to reduce greenhouse gases.
Automakers have fought hard to resist Schwarzenegger's drive to curb auto emissions and force them to comply. Their only trump card left has been the Bush administration. In a statement released by the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers following the Vermont court ruling, David McCurdy, its spokesman said, "It makes sense that only the federal government can regulate fuel economy. Federal law is place to ensure that consistency nationally."
In a 240-page ruling. U.S. District Judge William Sessions of Vermont dismissed automaker complaints, citing the industry's track record of claiming regulations cannot be met.
Judge Sessions, a Clinton appointee wrote, "In each case the industry responded with technological advancements designed to meet the standards."
A separate federal case in California was put on hold, with a ruling pending after the Court saw how it played out in Vermont.
But in the past, the automakers saw an out in that the federal government had never recognized greenhouse gas emissions as a pollutant to be regulated, though that change in April when the Supreme Court ruled that greenhouse gases can be regulated as an air pollutant - contrary to the automakers' argument, which was supported by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
But President Bush, who has long been an outspoken ally of the U.S. auto industry, can veto it all, and force California through a lengthy legal battle that ultimately it will win, but not for a long time to come, giving the auto industry time to engineer and manufacture more environmentally friendly vehicles.
Critics of the auto industry have said Detroit is lazy and has fought change for far too long while foreign automakers have passed them by with more fuel efficient vehicles that have cost them market share they can only hope to win back. Wall Street too is growing impatient with General Motors and Ford and want the companies to both resolve labor issues and also develop a more stream lined drawing-board-to-production competitive vehicle if they expect to keep dipping into the money pot.
Used tags: alternative_energy, auto_emissions, auto_industry, climate_change, curbing_greenhouse_gas, emissions, environment, environmental_pollution, epa, global_warming, green_energy, reducing_green_house_gas_emissions, tailpipe_emissions, vermont_tailpipe_ruling
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Saturday 06 March 2010 at 08:30 am
By Peter N. Spotts
The number of hurricanes, typhoons, and tropical storms globally is likely to either fall or remain flat over the course of the 21st century. But an increasing proportion of the storms are likely to hit the highest levels of intensity because of the projected effects of global warming, an international team of scientists concludes.
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Thursday 04 February 2010 at 09:55 am
Is Punxsutawney Phil responding to global warming?
By Eoin O'Carroll
As dawn broke on Monday morning, officials in cities and towns across the United States and Canada, engaged in an annual ritual of attempting to predict the weather by harassing a marmot.
According to the website of the Punxsutawney (Pa.) Groundhog Club, the most famous of these marmots, Punxsutawney Phil, emerged from his burrow (or more accurately, was dragged out of a box), surveyed the 13,000-person crowd that had gathered to see him, and uttered something in the obscure language of Groundhogese to Club President Bill Cooper, who then proclaimed that the large rodent had seen his shadow and we would therefore be getting six more weeks of winter.
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Thursday 04 February 2010 at 09:43 am
Lithium Demand Energizing Exploration
By Dave Porter
Reno - As demand for lithium grows, thanks to the push by the auto industry to produce lithium batteries, exploration for the rare earth is underway and in Nevada where the only operating US lithium mine exists, Lithium Corporation (OTCBB: LTUM) has been locking up properties it believes show promise.
Reno-based Lithium Corp. has managed to acquire claims in several areas considered hotbeds for lithium exploration, three of which are west of Clayton Valley where Silver Peak operates the only US lithium carbonate brine production plant in the US. The Company says samples indicate lithium sediments are double that found at Silver Peak's project with plans calling for further exploration of those properties.
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Saturday 12 December 2009 at 10:20 pm
By Peter Spotts
Copenhagen - Delegates left the Bali climate change talks in December 2007 with high hopes that a grand bargain on reducing greenhouse gas emissions would be secured by now.
But today, as the latest round of climate change talks begin with representatives from more than 190 countries gathered in Copenhagen, Denmark, expectations are far more modest.
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Monday 30 November 2009 at 01:13 am
Washington - UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was encouraged by the interest being shown by world leaders ahead of the United Nations' climate change summit to be held in Copenhagen next month, saying that a strong framework fora Climate Treaty could be in place by 2010.
Ban, who has repeatedly called climate change and its attendant consequences of increased droughts, floods, rising seas and more violent storms "the defining challenge of our era," will urge the leaders of the 53-member Commonwealth to attend the summit, confident that strong momentum is building for a framework that can be molded into a legally binding climate treaty as early as possible in 2010.
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Tuesday 24 November 2009 at 4:28 pm
Hacked climate emails: conspiracy or tempest in a teapot?
By Pete Spotts,
For all its gee-whiz discoveries and its influence on public policy, science can be a messy, sometimes ugly enterprise.
When the science is paleontology, astronomy, or geophysics, internal politics, thinly or not-so-thinly veiled personal attacks, and water-cooler discussions among influential scientists about whose research is junk and not worth publishing draw a collective yawn from anyone outside the relatively small circle of researchers involved.
When the topic is global warming, however, look out.
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Wednesday 04 November 2009 at 3:41 pm
California may pull the plug on power-guzzling flat-screen TVs
By Michael B. Farrell
San Francisco - The state that first championed the ban on energy-hogging refrigerators in the 1970s now has its sights set on power-hungry TVs.
The California Energy Commission (CEC) could adopt new efficiency standards for televisions with screens smaller than 58 inches as early as next week. If the commission OKs the requirement at its Nov. 4 meeting, TVs sold in the state will have to be 33 percent more efficient by 2011 and consume 49 percent less energy by 2013.
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Friday 23 October 2009 at 12:21 pm
By Emily Mullin
Washington - Leading energy-efficiency advocates and appliance manufacturers signed an agreement Tuesday to create new regional efficiency standards for air conditioners, furnaces and heat pumps.
"Energy-efficiency standards may not be sexy, but they are incredibly effective," Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., said at a press conference.
If the Department of Energy adopts the standards, households could save about $100 a year.
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Wednesday 14 October 2009 at 07:32 am
AEN News
Gainesville, FL - University of Florida chemists have pioneered a method to tease out promising molecular structures for capturing energy, a step that could speed the development of more efficient, cheaper solar cells.
"This gives us a new way of studying light-matter interactions," said Valeria Kleiman, a UF associate professor of chemistry. "It enables us to study not just how the molecule reacts, but actually to change how it reacts, so we can test different energy transfer pathways and find the most efficient one."
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Saturday 03 October 2009 at 01:30 am
Schwarzenegger leads governors' summit on global warming
By Daniel B. Wood
Los Angeles - Some 1,200 representatives from more than 70 states, provinces, and countries are meeting here this week for California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Global Climate Summit 2.
Three years after Governor Schwarzenegger won global attention for signing legislation committing the world's eighth largest economy to reduce its greenhouse gases 25 percent by 2020, the gathering is trying to pave the way for a United Nations conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December to establish new, worldwide emissions targets.
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