"I believe that the people who run the private sector, who run these companies, they do have children, they do have grandchildren, they do live and breathe in the world," said Samuel Bodman, U.S. Secretary of Energy. "It’s a matter of working with the leadership of these companies and seeking their participation."

Alexander Downer, Australia’s foreign minister, concurred that the onus of CO2 emissions reduction falls on industry leaders, not governments. "The point here is that indiv?dual companies have to develop their individual strategies ? we’re not trying to run a police state here," he said.

Both men were speaking at the opening meeting of the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, an ad hoc group consisting of senior officials from the U.S., Australia, Japan, China, South Korea and India and executives from energy companies. Many of the partnership’s members share the belief that mandatory emissions cuts?as called for by the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change that the U.S. and Australia did not join?will do irreparable harm to their respective countries’ economies. While Japan, China and India are all Kyoto signatories, the latter two countries do not have any binding emissions targets under the pact due to their status as developing nations.

Reporting by Roddy Scheer

New York, California, and 10 other states have joined forces with Greenpeace and other advocacy groups in arguing that the federal Clean Air Act gives the EPA the authority to regulate any air pollutant–including carbon dioxide–that may hurt public health or welfare.

While EPA officials have acknowledged the risks of global warming, they maintain that their agency does not regulate greenhouse gas emissions because Congress has not granted it such authority under the Clean Air Act.

Meanwhile, the court will also hear arguments from 10 other states, most notably Michigan where the automakers are headquartered, who say the EPA should stay out of the carbon dioxide regulation business, citing concerns about increased regulation leading to higher prices for automo?iles.
According to analysts watching the case, a decision from the court either turning the regulation of greenhouse gases over to the EPA or ruling in favor of the status quo could take several months.

Reporting by Roddy Schee

The street Ford calls home looks like any other suburban stretch, except that its backdrop is a blazing refinery outlined by a gray blanket of smoke. ?The man who lived here just died of cancer,? Ford says, gesturing at a one-story house as the bus rolls past. ?If you look on this side of the street?the lady who lived there died of cancer. The man who lives next to my house had cancer, and the man next door to him has cancer. Over there you can see the elementary school.?

The refinery is lit up all night. Plumes of flame known as flares ignite from the smokestacks periodically. While the flares are only supposed to go off in emergencies, residents say they?re more like business as usual, sparking up an average of once every six days. According to the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic, company accident reports show that chemicals considered ?extremely hazardous substances? by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are routinely discharged, with about one million pounds of pollutants emitted in excess of permitted limits per year. Rotten-egg odors and black coke dust migrate from the refinery to settle around the homes in a dark miasma.

?We need industry,? Ford explains. ?We need the jobs, and we?re not looking to blame anybody. But we also have a right to clean air. I?ve spoken to government officials, politicians, written to Congress. Everybody agrees that we have a problem, but nobody does anything about it.?

When he first complained to company officials about the foul-smelling chemicals permeating the interior of his house, his claims were dismissed. ?Eventually, I realized I?d have to get something to back me up,? he says. ?So I bought a weather monitoring station and started to log the time I smelled the odors, and I built up a case over time.?

Ford?s data collection got easier when the Louisiana Bucket Brigade introduced an EPA-approved, low-cost device that allows anyone to take independent air samples. The tool is simply a five-gallon bucket with a sturdy plastic bag inside and a hand-pumped vacuum on the lid. It?s easy to use: Suspect air is drawn into the bag, sealed in, and sent to a lab for testing. Louisiana Bucket Brigade director Anne Rolfes says that the bucket-gathered data tells a story that contrasts sharply with that of the oil companies.

?When the company gets up and says ?no problem,? what it?s really saying is ?nobody is going to die today,?? Rolfes says. ?We?re concerned with the long-term effects that these pollutants are having on communities.? While the Chalmette refin?ry uses its own fixed monitors, activists say the devices test for too few chemicals, too far from the homes nearby. The company also monitors in parts per million, while more protective provisions set for ambient air standards in Louisiana are in parts per billion.

ExxonMobil?s use of hydrochloric acid in on-site processing demonstrates policy that completely opposes the precautionary principle (see ?The European Dream,? features, this issue). Should a worst-case accident scenario occur, New Orleans could be heavily impacted. A safer alternative for hydrochloric acid not only exists but was patented by ExxonMobil, yet it has not been implemented in Chalmette. In early 2004, the Louisiana Bucket Brigade and Ford?s nonprofit, the St. Bernard Citizens for Environmental Quality, filed a lawsuit under the Clean Air Act against ExxonMobil?s Chalmette Refining. Based upon information from accident records out of the refinery?s own files, the suit cites such problems as the continual leakage of benzene?a known carcinogen and respiratory irritant?from storage tanks on site. Adam Babich, the attorney representing the Bucket Brigade in the lawsuit, argues that many of the incidents reported in the accident records were preventable: ?We?re suing about a slew of violations of permit, and the point we?re making is that a well-run facility should not have this number of incidents.?

?Cases like this are the reason Congress put citizen supervision in the Clean Air Act,? says student attorney Clay Garside. ?When neither the EPA nor state agencies are enforcing the act in courts, the citizens have a right to sue. Sometimes, they?re the best watchdogs.? A class-action lawsuit has been filed against the same refinery.

St. Bernard Parish (which includes Chalmette) has the highest cancer rate in the state, but cancer incidence and routine accidental releases are not confined to that area. About a quarter of the nation?s petrochemicals are produced in Louisiana, and the state ranks second in the nation for benzene pollution and cancer mortality. Louisiana is not alone: activists on the Chalmette tour represented communities in Texas, New York, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Bucket Brigade founder Denny Larson has spent nearly a decade bringing the air-monitoring buckets to communities across the globe. In 1995, attorney Edward Masry and his research assistant, the now-famous Erin Brockovich, became ill from fumes emitted from a Unocal-owned petroleum refinery in the Bay Area of California. Masry, who was representing the surrounding community in a lawsuit against the refinery, hired an environmental engineer to design the ?bucket? to enable his clients to monitor toxic exposure for themselves. Soon, bucket brigade chapters sprung up throughout Texas, Florida, Alabama, Ohio, and of course New Orleans.

?The problem I saw consistently was a lack of information in the face of a credible eye-witness testimony,? Larson says. ?It?s through generating misleading data that companies can get away with what they?re doing. Once you have proof, you can collapse the pyramid of deception, turn the tables, and bring on some dramatic changes.? The Bucket Brigades also use high-tech CEREX monitors that can instantly register what compounds are present in the air, and maintain log books of accident reports. When Bucket Brigades have taken polluters to court, the companies have been forced to relocate communities or invest in more effective monitoring equipment, and they usually settle before going to trial.

Thanks to the efforts of a Bucket Brigade spin-off, Global Community Monitor, communities are now being trained and equipped with buckets in all corners of the world. Larson notes that the most heavily impacted communities consist of people of color in the lowest-income bracket. ?It is a corporate strategy to move pollution away from the eyes of the Western world in order to avoid media oversight and regulatory structure,? Larson says. ?That is exactly why we made the Bucket Brigade into a global movement.??r

Ottawa says that by 2010 it wants car makers to cut emissions by 25 percent from 1995 levels. But major automobile manufacturers say it would be hard to introduce new technologies at such short notice to meet Ottawa’s demands and the two sides have yet to reach a deal.

Environment Minister Stephane Dion threatened on Thursday to impose binding restrictions, saying the talks had gone on long enough.

"This (imposing restrictions) is something we want to avoid in Canada because we want an agreement with the car makers. But at the same time, if unfortunately we don’t get an agreement, we’ll have to act," he told Reuters in an interview.

"We’ve been discussing things for a long time and now it’s enough. I hope we’ll come to an agreement very soon because we can’t carry on for months with this lack of certainty which is good for neither the economy or the environment."

Cutting emissions from cars is one way Canada hopes to meet its targets under the Kyoto protocol on climate change, which obliges Ottawa to cut output of greenhouse gases by six percent from 1990 levels by 2012.

Canadian emissions are in fact about 20 percent above 1990 levels and senior government officials candidly admit the country has no chance of meeting its Kyoto goals.

One of the reasons Canada is struggling is that the climate change file is shared between the environment ministry and the ministry of natural resources, which is responsible for the well-being of Canada’s booming energy sector.

Natural Resources Minister John Efford, who along with Dion is talking to the car makers, was noticeably less enthusiastic about the idea of binding regulations on the major car makers.

"I want to give them a chance … I feel confident that they will come back with some good recommendations," he told Reuters in a separate interview.

"If not, then we have to take some alternative measures. But I am working with the automobile industry on a voluntary protocol and I want to continue on with that," he said.

Efford said he and Dion had "a very frank discussion" with the car makers in December about the need to meet the 25 percent emissions cut target. He said new talks were planned for the near future but did not na?e a specific date.

Last week Dion visited California, which has told car makers to cut emissions by 30 percent by 2016.

"The Californians showed us that … the technologies are in place and this could be done easily. The higher (purchase) price people would pay would very rapidly be made up by the savings at the pump," he said.

The NODA is part of the EPA process toward delivering a final mercury rule by March 15, 2005. Initially proposed on Jan. 30, 2004, the Clean Air Mercury Rule would reduce mercury emissions from power plants for the first time ever.

Administr?tor Mike Leavitt has outlined five guiding principles that provide context for additional inquiry and that narrow the focus of the Agency?s deliberations. The five principles will ensure that the final mercury rule:

(1) concentrates on the need to protect children and pregnant women from the health impacts of mercury;

(2) stimulates and encourages early adopters of new technology that can be adequately tested and widely deployed across the full fleet of U.S. power plants utilizing various coal types;

(3) significantly reduces total emissions by leveraging the $50 billion investment that CAIR will require;

(4) considers the need to maintain America?s competitiveness; and

(5) comprises one of many agency actions to reduce mercury emissions.

In December 2003, EPA proposed two alternatives for controlling mercury. One approach would require power plants to install controls known as "maximum achievable control technology? (MACT) under section 112 of the Clean Air Act. If implemented, this proposal would reduce nationwide mercury by 14 tons or about 30 percent by early 2008. Currently, nationwide mercury emissions from power plants are about 48 tons per year.

A second approach would create a market-based "cap and trade" program that, if implemented, would reduce nationwide power plant emissions of mercury in two phases. Beginning in 2010, the first phase would reduce power plant mercury emissions by taking advantage of ?co-benefit? controls ? mercury reductions achieved by reducing SO2, and NOx emissions under the Clean Air Interstate Rule. In 2018, the second phase of the mercury program sets a cap of 15 tons. When fully implemented, mercury emissions would be reduced by 33 tons (nearly 70 percent).

The protocol will become legally binding on its 128 Parties on February 16 2005,” the UNFCCC said in a statement received here, released after Russia handed the document to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in Nairobi. The Bonn-based U?FCCC, the offshoot of the 1992 Rio Summit, is Kyoto’s parent convention. Continue reading →

Russia will deposit the ratification instruments to the secretary general of the UN” Kofi Annan at the United Nationsoffices in Nairobi, where the Security Council is Thursday and Friday holding an extraordinary session on Sudan, a senior UN source said, asking not to be named. Continue reading →

Ratification is a certainty after parliamentary speaker Boris Gryzlov, quoted by Interfax news agency, said the dominant, pro-Kremlin party in the State Duma would back it.
“We understand that without Russia’s participation in the protocol, it cannot begin to work,” he said last week.

Russian ratification will push the 126-nation U.N. accord, aimed at battling global warming, over the threshold of 55 percent of developed nations’ greenhouse gas emissions needed to make it internationally binding after a U.S. pullout in 2001. Continue reading →