Emerging Contaminants Program, Department of Defense

The Emerging Contaminants program, an Innovations in American Government Finalist, presented before the National Selection Committee in May 2009. The program promotes proactive, integrated risk management of chemicals used by Department of Defense to facilitate informed risk-based decisions that better protect the environment and serve the Department's operational capacities.

Watch this on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RBiKLzK4MA

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House Passes Historic Waxman-Markey Clean Energy Bill

The House of Representatives passed the landmark American Clean Energy and Security Act, sponsored by Rep. Henry A. Waxman, Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Rep. Edward J. Markey, Chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

This landmark bill will revitalize our economy by creating millions of new jobs, increase our national security by reducing our dependence on foreign oil, and preserve our planet by reducing the pollution that causes global warming.

"Today we have taken decisive and historic action to promote America’s energy security and to create millions of clean energy jobs that will drive our economic recovery and long-term growth," said Chairman Waxman. "After more than three decades of being held hostage to the influence of foreign energy suppliers, this legislation at long last begins to break our addiction to imported foreign oil and put us on a path to true energy security."

"Today the House has passed the most important energy and environment bill in our nation’s history," said Chairman Markey. "Scientists say that global warming is a dangerous man-made problem. Today we are saying clean energy will be the American-made solution. This legislation will create jobs by the millions, save money by the billions and unleash investment in clean energy by the trillions."

The bill contains the following key provisions:

* Requires electric utilities to meet 20% of their electricity demand through renewable energy sources and energy efficiency by 2020.

* Invests $190 billion in new clean energy technologies and energy efficiency, including energy efficiency and renewable energy ($90 billion in new investments by 2025), carbon capture and sequestration ($60 billion), electric and other advanced technology vehicles ($20 billion), and basic scientific research and development ($20 billion).

* Mandates new energy-saving standards for buildings, appliances, and industry.

* Reduces carbon emissions from major U.S. sources by 17% by 2020 and over 80% by 2050 compared to 2005 levels. Complementary measures in the legislation, such as investments in preventing tropical deforestation, will achieve significant additional reductions in carbon emissions.

* Protects consumers from energy price increases. According to recent analyses from the Congressional Budget Office and the Environmental Protection Agency, the legislation will cost each household less than 50 cents per day in 2020 (not including energy efficiency savings).

http://energycommerce.house.gov/

Environmentalists are quietly lauding the city strike for unintentionally converting people to their cause and living a lighter lifestyle.

"It's an unexpected consciousness-raising event," says Mark Winfield, professor of environmental studies at York University.

"When you're faced with a storage problem, it makes you appreciate how much stuff is coming in and out (of your home). You have to ask the bigger question about the role of this stuff and how much of it you really need."

The prospect of smelly garbage piling up on his neighbours' porches convinced Graeme Hussey to finish building the row of backyard compost bins he'd recently started. He invited four neighbouring families to drop off the kitchen scraps that normally would have gone out with their green bins.

"I went to get sushi last night and brought a Tupperware container because I didn't want to have the garbage at home," says Hussey, development director of the Parkdale environmental charity Greenest City. "It's interesting how (the strike) is really making you think."

http://www.thestar.com/article/658121


Related Link:

The Top 10 Ways to Reduce Your Garbage
http://www.thestar.com/Article/658123

WHEN British consumers are compelled to buy energy-efficient lightbulbs from 2012, they will save up to 5m tons of carbon dioxide a year from being pumped into the atmosphere. In China, however, a heavy environmental price is being paid for the production of “green” lightbulbs in cost-cutting factories.

Large numbers of Chinese workers have been poisoned by mercury, which forms part of the compact fluorescent lightbulbs. A surge in foreign demand, set off by a European Union directive making these bulbs compulsory within three years, has also led to the reopening of mercury mines that have ruined the environment.

Doctors, regulators, lawyers and courts in China - which supplies two thirds of the compact fluorescent bulbs sold in Britain - are increasingly alert to the potential impacts on public health of an industry that promotes itself as a friend of the earth but depends on highly toxic mercury.

A survey of published specialist literature and reports by state media shows hundreds of workers at Chinese-owned factories have been poisoned by mercury over the past decade.

In one case, Foshan city officials intervened to order medical tests on workers at the Nanhai Feiyang lighting factory after receiving a petition alleging dangerous conditions, according to a report in the Nanfang Daily newspaper. The tests found 68 out of 72 workers were so badly poisoned they required hospitalisation.

A specialist medical journal, published by the health ministry, describes another compact fluorescent lightbulb factory in Jinzhou, in central China, where 121 out of 123 employees had excessive mercury levels. One man’s level was 150 times the accepted standard.

The same journal identified a compact fluorescent lightbulb factory in Anyang, eastern China, where 35% of workers suffered mercury poisoning, and industrial discharge containing the toxin went straight into the water supply.

It also reported a survey of 18 lightbulb factories near Shanghai, which found that exposure levels to mercury were higher for workers making the new compact fluorescent lightbulbs than for other lights containing the metal.

Full article:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6211261.ece


Related Link:

CFC Bulbs Risky: Health Canada to Study Ultraviolet Emissions & Mercury Poisonings
http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2009/06/29/9967011-sun.html

Emerging Contaminants Program, Department of Defense

The Emerging Contaminants program, an Innovations in American Government Finalist, presented before the National Selection Committee in May 2009. The program promotes proactive, integrated risk management of chemicals used by Department of Defense to facilitate informed risk-based decisions that better protect the environment and serve the Department's operational capacities.

Watch this on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RBiKLzK4MA

According to the National Post’s Allison Hanes, the money for the Sheppard LRT is not, in fact, part of the federal government’s stimulus program and is instead from the Build Canada Fund, which has been maligned frequently by municipal politicians for its endless red tape.

Spacing has also learned that the TTC will receive the money it has already spent preparing for the beginning of the Sheppard line construction from the provincial government through Metrolinx. Although Spacing has been given the impression that there is not a significant amount of money allocated to Sheppard in the TTC/City of Toronto capital budgets, we are still trying to confirm whether money had been planned for Sheppard in the 2010-2014 five-year capital plan. This post will be updated if/when that information is available to us.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Premier Dalton McGuinty this morning announced that the Sheppard LRT line would be funded through the provincial and federal economic stimulus programs.

The $950 million for the Sheppard line of Transit City will be two-thirds provincial money and one-third federal money. That money includes the funds required to pay for the streetcars expected to run on the new line.

The City of Toronto’s request for provincial and federal money continues to be considered by officials at both levels of government, however, no announcement was made on that front this morning.

Mayor David Miller announced on his Twitter feed that he and Prime Minister Stephen Harper will be at the Hillcrest TTC compound at 11AM for a good news announcement. While Mayor Miller didn’t say which project would be funded, Spacing has learned that the project is likely Transit City’s Sheppard line.

Although streetcar funding is a key priority for the TTC and was presented to both the provincial and federal governments in the hope of receiving stimulus funding, it is most likely that the TTC will receive Transit City funding for the Sheppard Line. It has been expected that the Sheppard LRT would have its contracts tendered during summer 2009, however, the April 1 announcement of provincial funding for Transit City excluded the Sheppard Line. This would explain why.

While the smart money is on a Sheppard LRT announcement, it is possible that a streetcar announcement will also be made given that the TTC’s deadline to order streetcars is fast approaching.


http://spacing.ca/wire/2009/05/15/breaking-news-sheppard-lrt-likely-to-be-funded-tomorrow-maybe-streetcars/