A Blow for Environmental Groups

A California judge delivered a victory to automakers in a lawsuit brought by the State of California, according to an article in the New York Times (see below for excerpt.)

Suit Blaming Automakers Over Gases Is Dismissed
By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: September 18, 2007
The courts do not have the authority or the expertise to decide injury lawsuits concerning global warming, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled yesterday in dismissing a suit brought by the State of California against six car companies.
The decision, by Judge Martin J. Jenkins, was welcome news for automakers, which had suffered a defeat last week in federal court in Vermont.
In last week’s decision, Judge William K. Sessions III endorsed Vermont’s regulations meant to reduce greenhouse gases emitted by cars and light trucks. More than a dozen states have similar regulations, and a lawsuit challenging such regulations in California is pending.
In the case decided yesterday, California claimed that the six car companies produced vehicles that accounted for more than 20 percent of human-generated carbon dioxide emissions in the United States and more than 30 percent of those in California.
The suit claimed that the emissions were a public nuisance and sought billions of dollars in damages.
Judge Jenkins wrote that a resolving of the questions presented in the suit was not a proper task for the courts.
“The adjudication of plaintiff’s claim would require the court to balance the competing interests of reducing global warming emissions and the interests of advancing and preserving economic and industrial development,” Judge Jenkins wrote.
The two decisions are not necessarily at odds. They collectively suggest that states may address climate change through their legislatures and executive branches but not through the courts.
Given national and international debate on the issues, Judge Jenkins wrote, “the court finds that injecting itself into the global warming thicket at this juncture would require an initial policy determination of the type reserved for the political branches of government.”
Indeed, he continued, a decision from the court on awarding damages for increasing global warming could potentially undermine the choices of the political branches.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 22 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.htmShop for energy Saving Products at www.shopipl.org.

Western States Go Green

According to an article in SFGate, Five western states--Arizona, New Mexico, Washington and Oregon -- announced an agreement to create a regional effort to lower greenhouse gas emissions. The agreement is not as sweeping or strong as new regulations in California, however, leading one environmental advocate, V. John White of the Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies, to say the announcement "may be more sizzle than steak."

Unveiled at a meeting of the National Governors Association in Washington, D.C., the agreement calls for creating a regional goal to reduce emissions and for developing a Western market that could allow companies to buy and sell carbon emission credits. Similar markets operating in the European Union and getting started in the Northeast United States allow companies that dramatically lower their emissions to sell credits to other companies.

"This is a huge jump forward from just California going it alone," said Dan Skopec, undersecretary of Schwarzenegger's Environmental Protection Agency.
But it's not clear whether businesses in other states will buy or sell emissions credits if they are not required to lower emissions, and none of the other states has an anti-global warming law similar to California's. The green politics of California -- where polls show widespread support for tackling global warming -- may not translate as easily to other states.
All four governors have signed executive orders that include goals for reducing emissions, but none seems poised to quickly enact regulations with teeth. A spokesman for Kulongoski said Monday that a law requiring reductions in Oregon was likely a few years from enactment.
The states have all made efforts to reduce greenhouse gases in some ways. Washington voters passed an initiative last fall to increase renewable energy, for example, and New Mexico is proposing to create tax credits to help develop alternative fuels.

IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Power and Light. Visit us at www.irejn.org.

I left my food scraps in San Francisco

That bottle of California Merlot you quaff at a San Francisco eatery may very well have been fertilized by food waste from a meal you ate at the same restaurant a few years ago. Since 1997, over 2000 San Francisco restaurants have joined a composting program that provides them with a discount on their trash hauling bill. These restaurants are getting a head start on complying with a legislative deadline. The city has mandated that 75 percent of its garbage must be recycled or composted by 2010. Read and listen to the story on NPR's Day to Day.

"God's Eye View" of California Coast Goal of New Project

The National Science Foundation has funded the Coast to Mountain Environmental Transect, or COMET, project with a $2.1 million, three-year grant.

Based on existing networks funded by the National Science Foundation, COMET will integrate data data ranging from climate to chemistry to animal counts, over distances from hundreds of miles to a few feet, spanning timescales from minutes to decades, and put it into a "virtual library" for geosciences.

"How is climate change going to change precipitation patterns, summer droughts or snowfall? Will there be more wildfires, and how will that affect climate change? If we're going to understand what's happening with the environment, we need better networks of sensors," said Susan Ustin, professor and director of the Center for Spatial Technologies and Remote Sensing at UC Davis, and of the Western Regional Center of the National Institute for Global Environmental Change.

Read the rest of the story on Yubanet.com.

Visit us at www.irejn.org.