States can lead the way on climate change policy a...

As Trump guts environmental protections, states must take charge on smart climate policy. The world’s leading panel of climate experts sounded the alarm this week that we are running out of time to get rising temperatures under control. Its latest report calls for “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented” steps to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, from worsening wildfires and extreme drought to rising sea levels and...

Ohio Residents Fed Up With Fracking Wastewater

Much of the wastewater from Pennsylvania’s fracking industry is trucked across the border to Ohio.  Last year, Pennsylvania and West Virginia contributed nearly half of the more than a billion gallons of frack waste that were  injected into underground wells in Ohio. Residents in at least one county say they’ve had enough. State representative Glenn Holmes (third from right) has introduced two bills in the Ohio House of...

Editorial: United States can’t afford to wai...

Buried in a report from the National Highway Safety Transportation Administration of President Donald Trump is an acknowledgement that the planet is on course to warm by 6 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100. That could be disastrous, and carbon emissions from car and truck tailpipes is contributing to that. This acknowledgement, from a Republican environmental administration, no less, weakens the case that was already not fully...

Editorial: The government needs to take action aga...

On Oct. 8, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report saying humanity has until 2030 to prevent a disastrous level of global warming. If we continue on the same path, by 2030 the Earth will have warmed by 1.5 degrees Celsius. This may not seem like a lot, but a temperature increase of this magnitude would drastically increase “climate-related risks to health, livelihoods, food security, water...

Climate reality requires starting at home: Weaning...

Fossil fuels have to go. It didn’t take the latest report from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to tell us that: we’ve known it for three decades. But the report makes it clearer than ever: Burning billions of tons of coal, oil, and natural gas is creating a thickening blanket over the Earth, holding in its heat and disrupting all kinds of systems, from oceans temperatures and chemistry to storm patterns,...

Net-zero emissions energy systems

Prof. Nathan S. Lewis from California Institute of Technology mentioned this article during his presentation at Denison on 10/11/2018. Path to zero carbon emissions Models show that to avert dangerous levels of climate change, global carbon dioxide emissions must fall to zero later this century. Most of these emissions arise from energy use. Davis et al. review what it would take to achieve decarbonization of the energy...

Why We Can’t Reverse Climate Change With ‘Negative...

In a much-anticipated report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said the world will need to take dramatic and drastic steps to avoid the catastrophic effects of climate change. Featured prominently in the report is a discussion of a range of techniques for removing carbon dioxide from the air, called Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) technologies or negative emissions technologies (NETs). The IPCC said the...

Climate Change Economists Win Nobel Prize

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the 2018 Nobel Prize in Economics to a duo for their work on how the world can achieve sustainable growth. The prize was divided equally to William D. Nordhaus of Yale University and to Paul M. Romer of New York University’s Stern School of Business, both Americans, who have “designed methods for addressing some of our time’s most basic and pressing questions...

Historical records in the climate crosshairs

Climate change is a high priority for many Americans. But on election days, many of those passionate environmentalists do not vote. Stinnett: “We’ve identified 10.1 million who didn’t even vote in the 2016 presidential election, an election that was only decided by seventy-seven-thousand votes. So this is an enormous population of environmentalists just waiting to be energized.” They contact unlikely voters – Republican,...

Don’t Frack So Close to Me: Colorado to Vote on Dr...

Coloradans will vote on a ballot initiative in November that requires new oil and gas projects to be set back at least 2,500 feet from occupied buildings. If approved, the measure—known as both Initiative 97 and Proposition 112—would mark a major change from their state’s current limits: 500 feet from homes and 1,000 feet from schools. As sociologists who have researched oil and gas drilling in the communities that...

DOE spent more than $500M on dead projects

CARBON CAPTURE Nearly half the $2.7 billion in fossil research money spent by the Department of Energy over the last seven years supported nine carbon capture demonstration projects, the majority of which were canceled or withdrawn, according to a report yesterday from the Government Accountability Office. The GAO analysis highlights an ongoing debate about carbon capture, utilization and sequestration (CCUS). Opponents say...

The US would suffer some of the biggest costs of c...

The exact cost estimates vary, but the US consistently ranks near the top. Climate change is a classic tragedy of the commons: every country acting in its own self-interest contributes to depleting a joint resource, making the world worse for everyone. If you’ve ever lived with bad roommates, the concept will be easy to grasp. The social cost of carbon (or SCC) is a way to put a price tag on the result of that tragedy,...

Former Koch staffer appointed to key EPA position

The agency is stocked full of industry insiders. The Environmental Protection Agency has hired a former Koch Industries staffer who worked on water and chemical policy to fill a key role within the agency, continuing a Trump administration trend of appointing company insiders to oversee the industries they are meant to regulate. David Dunlap, a former Koch chemical engineer who has served as director of policy and regulatory...

Air quality still poor in Columbus; EPA gives metr...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has set a three-year deadline for the Columbus metro area to come into compliance with revised Clean Air Act standards. “Most recently, EPA has promulgated designations for the 2015 ozone standard, which became effective on (Friday),” said Joshua Singer, a spokesman for the federal agency, in a statement emailed to The Dispatch. The Columbus metro area, which includes Franklin,...

Trump Administration Prepares a Major Weakening of...

The Trump administration has completed a detailed legal proposal to dramatically weaken a major environmental regulation covering mercury, a toxic chemical emitted from coal-burning power plants, according to a person who has seen the document but is not authorized to speak publicly about it. The proposal would not eliminate the mercury regulation entirely, but it is designed to put in place the legal justification for the...