climate change

With California Carbon Cap-and-Trade Program Launch, Experts Debate Economic Side Effects

Barbara Grady, SF Public Press — Nov 15 2012 - 3:56pm

At 10 a.m. Wednesday, California’s potentially revolutionary carbon cap-and-trade program launched in a humdrum fashion. Numbers began appearing on a secure Web site accessible to the biggest oil exploration companies, manufacturers, utilities, state regulators and independent monitors. No one outside of this select group got to see its inner workings. But the event marked a new phase in the state’s pioneering effort to halt climate change: actual dollars traded for permits to emit carbon dioxide.

Bay Area Carbon Dioxide Sensor Network Aims to Check Climate Change Policies

Ambika Kandasamy, SF Public Press — Oct 22 2012 - 12:11pm

Scientists have devised an intricate network of carbon dioxide sensors in the Bay Area that could offer objective measurements to evaluate which climate change initiatives are effective in reducing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The sensors provide real-time local data on how much carbon dioxide is being emitted, said lead researcher Ronald Cohen, a professor of chemistry and of earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Berkeley.

Cities resist regional plan to limit sprawl

Angela Hart, SF Public Press — Jun 13 2012 - 1:44pm

A high-profile effort to focus new Bay Area housing into energy-efficient transit villages is seen as unworkable even as it makes its public debut this summer, say urban planners, because regional government lacks the authority to make cities build dense urban neighborhoods. The three-decade Plan Bay Area, unveiled in May, is the product of more than two years of research on the region’s demographics, economy, transportation and architecture. Proponents say “smart growth” could be the future of the Bay Area — if regional agencies had either the legal tools to enforce the grand vision or enough money to make it worthwhile for cities to participate.

San Francisco activists wary of U.N. climate reunion in Rio

Ruth Tam, SF Public Press — Jun 7 2012 - 11:33am

The Bay Area is the unofficial headquarters of the green movement and the progenitor of the United Nations. So locally based environmental groups are particularly annoyed this week that the U.S. government continues to sideline climate change as world leaders prepare to gather in Brazil in late June.

Global warming urban landscapes too real for U.S. officials

Eric Klein and Justin Beck, ”Radio Chronicles” on KPFA — Jul 11 2011 - 5:56pm

RADIO DOCUMENTARY / SLIDESHOW: Artist Anthony Holdsworth, who painted a series of urban landscapes that depicted a future San Francisco flooded by rising seas, was invited to show his work last year inside the new “green” San Francisco Federal Building at Seventh and Mission streets. But before the opening reception, the show was ordered taken down. He said the image in one of his paintings, of oil burning on a flooded sidewalk in front of the building was too similar to the news footage of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico for federal authorities to bear. Undeterred, Holdsworth is mounting a new art show at the cafe at SFMOMA.

Apocalyptic beliefs hasten the end of the world

Jason Mark, Earth Island Journal — May 20 2011 - 3:26pm

Commentary: Americans’ Judgment Day visions make it harder to gain traction on climate action

Billboards and bus stop ads, plastered in cities from Florida to California, announce that this coming Saturday, May 21, will be Judgment Day. This “guarantee” actually comes from an 89-year-old Christian fundamentalist, radio host, and co-founder of the Oakland-based Family Radio network, whose outfit has paid for 5,500 billboards worldwide (including many in the Bay Area). That thousands of people around the world are convinced that tomorrow a massive global earthquake is a sign — but not of the biblical sort. Fringe religious rhetoric confuses the very real and urgent issues of environmental degradation and climate change.

 

Minority voters think greener, statewide poll shows

Rosemary Macaulay, SF Public Press — Aug 6 2010 - 12:10pm

A poll of California's voters released last week has revealed disparities between the environmental attitudes of ethnic groups. Asian, black and Latino voters are more concerned about air pollution, more sensitive to the effects of global warming, and more willing to see the government act on environmental issues than white voters. But in the wake of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, all ethnic groups reject more oil drilling off the coast of California.

Cap-and-trade ‘unpollution’ is nonsensical

Andrew Page, KQED — Mar 10 2010 - 12:53pm

When I first heard about cap-and-trade — the plan where a company can emit greenhouse gasses up to a point (the cap) then offset its emissions by investing in “unpollution” somewhere in the world (the trade) — well I thought, “This sounds like it’s worth a shot.” But after some looking into it, I have my doubts.

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