An appeals court declined Wednesday to order the Iowa Department of Natural Resources to adopt rules limiting greenhouse gas emissions, saying the agency does not have a legal duty to protect the atmosphere for future generations. The Iowa Court of Appeals declined to extend Iowa’s public trust doctrine, which requires the state to protect lakes,

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Mark LeBel, an energy fellow at the Connecticut Fund for the Environment, told DEEP officials Tuesday that the price difference between oil and natural gas is not the headline … To LeBel it doesn’t matter whether it’s oil or natural gas, if the furnace burning the fuel isn’t efficient and there’s insulation hanging from the ceiling then it really doesn’t matter why type of energy someone is using. Christine Stuart of CT News Junkie reports.

FuelCell Energy, a leading developer of hydrogen fuel cells based in Connecticut, has qualified for $800,000 in funding from the U.S. government concerning an ambitious carbon capture initiative. Click on this environmental headline for more on this local business story.

Increased burning of fossil fuels, producing higher rates of emission of greenhouse gases, generates worsening patterns of extreme weather events that affect human well being. In response to this trend, policies are being proposed to abate emissions. This post summarizes two recent newspaper articles proposing use of a carbon tax, or a more limited gasoline tax, for lowering emissions. It is judged that a carbon tax is simpler and more effective than establishing a cap-and-trade regime for limiting emissions.

Relying on public data mining, traffic simulations and building-by-building energy consumption, researchers develop software capable of estimating greenhouse gas emissions across entire urban landscapes. [Phys.org] For more on this story, visit: On Our Radar: Visualizing Your City’s Emissions – NYTimes.com.

The Obama administration has finalized new clean car standards that will double the fuel efficiency of today’s vehicles by 2025, drastically reducing emissions of carbon pollution and cutting oil use in Connecticut and nationwide. The standards will cover new cars and light trucks in model years 2017-2025, and require those vehicles to meet the equivalent of a 54.5 miles-per-gallon standard by 2025.

Reel mowers are like many little scissors snipping the grass, which is why they are healthier for the grass than rotary power mowers which rip the grass rather than clip it. However, sometimes the cut is smoother with rotaries, especially when grass gets too long for reel mowers to be effective. Click on this environmental headline for more from one of our favorite supporters!

This week the NRDC released a report, Poisoning the Great Lakes: Mercury Emissions from Coal Fired Power Plants in the Great Lakes Region, which highlights the impacts of mercury emissions from Great Lakes power plants on the people, fish, birds, and wildlife of our region.

In a letter to Joseph H. Boardman, President, Amtrak, Rail*Trains*Ecology*Cycling, along with 70 co-signatories, asks Amtrak to draw on the success of the California Amtrak lines “in devising simple, low-cost ways to accommodate bicycles on all Amtrak trains nationwide.” Click on this environmental headline to read the letter.

The world’s air has reached what scientists call a troubling new milestone for carbon dioxide, the main global warming pollutant. Monitoring stations across the Arctic this spring are measuring more than 400 parts per million of the heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere. The number isn’t quite a surprise, because it’s been rising at an accelerating

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As a fellow registered professional engineer, I am writing to clarify the information provided by Mr. Neumann (Connecticut Post, Feb. 16) regarding electric cars and carbon emissions. It is true that most of the electrical energy consumed in the Bridgeport area is produced by coal fired plants and that adding electric cars to the consumption

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BARACK Obama’s visit raises a single basic challenge for Julia Gillard. Unless the Prime Minister openly confirms whether the US will have a full national carbon tax or cap and trade scheme by 2016, she will have failed a bedrock test of leadership. Labor was quick to accuse Tony Abbott of being a coward for

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Diesel engines contribute significantly to air pollution, especially in urban areas. The fine particles in diesel exhaust pose serious health risks, including aggravated asthma and other respiratory symptoms. Children are especially vulnerable to these effects. The Northeast has some of the highest asthma rates in the nation, including a childhood asthma rate above 10 percent in all six New England states.

Shame on Congress and the coal and oil lobby for blocking progress. But we can act at the local and state level and begin to reduce pollution today. We’ll show it can be done while building political support for a comprehensive national strategy. For more on this story, visit: Trailblazing States on Pollution – NYTimes.com.

The window to limit global warming to less than two degrees C is closing so fast it can be measured in months, a new scientific analysis revealed Sunday. The International Energy Agency estimates that 80 percent of projected emissions from the power sector in 2020 are already locked in.

For the fourth consecutive year, the Carbon Disclosure Project has recognized The Hartford for its approach to corporate governance for climate change reporting practices.

The Economic Analysis of a Program to Promote Clean Transportation Fuels in the Northeast/Mid-Atlantic Region released by the Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management, summarizes the results of an analysis of potential economic impacts of reducing carbon emissions from transportation fuels in the eleven state northeast and mid-Atlantic region. On a regional basis, the transportation sector accounts for about one-third of all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Nearly 100 percent of the transportation fuel used in the region is imported from outside the eleven states. Click on this environmental headline to read more about this report and find out about an upcoming meeting in Hartford with the authors.

U.S. State Department Secretary Hillary Clinton will make oil spill response a key issue at the Arctic Council meeting on Thursday. If you need other voices in any stories on the issues facing the Council at today’s summit, consider Earthjustice attorneys who have expertise in the fields of offshore oil spill prevention and response, climate change and short-lived forcers like black carbon.

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Two of the 10 Northeast states that agreed to dedicate millions of dollars to reduce carbon emissions and promote green energy have reneged on their promise, instead diverting substantial funds to saving their budgets. Participating states are Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont.

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Almost all U.S. states have transportation policies that either fail to curb carbon emission rates or actually increase them, says a 50-state analysis.