So why are Nike, Johnson Controls and Sempra Energy sending top execs to Copenhagen to monitor the international climate talks.
To block a strong climate deal, right? No, wrong.
Dozens of U.S. companies are here advocating for a tough international pact that reduces pollution and accelerates clean energy innovation. The political uncertainty surrounding climate change regulation — both in the U.S. and globally – is stifling their businesses.
| Sourced From Bizjournals.com |
Carbon Solutions America said Thursday that it was awarded a $75,000 contract to measure the city of Fort Lauderdale’s carbon footprint.
Carbon footprinting has become widely accepted as the first step toward going green in a serious way. It provides a benchmark to measure how much carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are being produced by an operation.
Alex Hernandez, managing partner for Deerfield Beach-based CSA, said he thinks Fort Lauderdale is the first major municipality in Florida – outside of Miami Dade County – to undertake a comprehensive carbon footprinting process. Carbon footprinting focuses heavily on electricity usage and fuel consumption, with travel and other sources of carbon emissions factored in.
“We have seen a number of municipalities say they’ve done it, but when we look, it’s just their fleet or some narrow scope of carbon footprinting, not a comprehensive effort,” Hernandez said.
Fort Lauderdale spokesman Chaz Adams said the goal of the project will be reducing greenhouse gas emissions, consumption of natural resources and total energy use, and improving energy efficiency.
The company will also prepare a sustainability action plan, which will lay out how the city’s carbon footprint will be reduced over time. CSA has partnered on the project with the Florida Center of Environmental Studies and sustainable architectural firm Environmental Dynamics.
The project will include calculating the city’s greenhouse gas inventory, developing energy conservation and emission reduction goals, prioritizing projects and creating a monitoring plan to measure success. CSA will also assist in the preparation of the city’s energy efficiency conservation block grant and provide an overall sustainability blue print. The city is receiving a $2 million grant from that program’s stimulus funding.
Hernandez said public input about the best way to reduce carbon, including such things as more efficient lighting and planting trees, will be gathered.
Nick Loeb, a Palm Beach County businessman and politician, is a principal at CSA. The company has done carbon footprinting for school districts and provides environmental consulting services.
Dec. 4 (Bloomberg) — Across Uganda, thousands of women warm supper over new, $8 orange-painted stoves. The clay-and- metal pots burn about two-thirds the charcoal of the open-fire cooking typical of East Africa, where forests are being chopped down in the struggle to feed the region’s 125 million people.
Four thousand miles away, at the Charles Hurst Land Rover dealership in southwest London, a Range Rover Vogue sells for 90,000 pounds ($151,000). A blue windshield sticker proclaims that the gasoline-powered truck’s first 45,000 miles (72,421 kilometers) will be carbon neutral.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration took a major step Monday toward imposing the first federal limits on climate-changing pollution from cars, power plants and factories, declaring there was compelling scientific evidence that global warming from manmade greenhouse gases endangers Americans’ health.
The announcement by the Environmental Protection Agency was clearly timed to build momentum toward an agreement at the international conference on climate change that opened Monday in Copenhagen, Denmark. It signaled the administration was prepared to push ahead for significant controls in the U.S. if Congress doesn’t act first on its own.
In 2002 Responsible Travel became one of the first travel companies to offer customers the option of buying so-called carbon offsets to counter the planet-warming emissions generated by their airline flights.
But last month Responsible Travel canceled the program, saying that while it might help travelers feel virtuous, it was not helping to reduce global emissions. In fact, company officials said, it might even encourage some people to travel or consume more.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Financial benefits from climate change legislation for U.S. farmers will greatly outweigh any additional costs they face from measures limiting greenhouse gas emissions, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said on Wednesday.
Overall, the U.S. agriculture sector could receive additional income over the coming decades from the climate bill that passed the House earlier this year, Vilsack said.
“I think this is a real opportunity for farmers,” Vilsack told reporters on a teleconference.