Glass Recycling Rates In Europe

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is a cap and trade program involving nine northeastern states:  Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont. New Jersey was a part of the program but Gov. Christie pulled the state out of the agreement in 2011. The purpose of the program is to lower emissions from power plants in the northeast. On its face, carbon emissions have declined from 188 million tons of carbon-dioxide in 2005 to 91 million tons in 2012. However, much of that is due to the recession and cheap natural gas replacing dirty coal. At present, power plants emit less carbon than the current cap. This gives little incentive for them to invest in energy efficiency and renewable energy.

In an effort to further drive investment in efficiency and renewables, the RGGI released a proposal to progressively lower the emissions cap through 2020. The 2020 cap will be 14% below the current level of emissions.

Brad Plumer of the Washington Posts notes that "Between now and 2020, the new RGGI scheme is hoping to cut annual emissions by about 13 million tons. That’s about 0.06 of all power plant emissions in the United States last year. A rounding error. Ultimately, RGGI might best be thought of less as a solution to climate change and more of a revenue-raiser for the Northeast. It’s also an experiment of sorts — a way for policymakers to figure out what works and what doesn’t in climate policy." 

Coal's share of U.S. electricity generation has been steadily declining, a result of market forces, particularly the low price of natural gas and the expense of building new coal plants. Since throughout its life cycle coal is arguably our dirtiest fuel source (from mountaintop removal mining, to mercury and air toxics released during combustion, to carbon emissions, to hazardous coal ash), a move away from reliance on coal benefits public health, the environment and the climate.

Average annual net loss and gain of wetlands in the lower 48 states of the U.S. Wetlands protection regulations (such as those under the Clean Water Act 404), incentive programs (such as the Wetlands Reserve Program) and disincentive programs (such as the Swampbuster provision of the Food Security Act of 1985) have substantially reduced wetlands losses.

The larger the share of overall energy jobs that are solar and wind jobs, the more likely a state was to support the Democratic candidate in 2016. This has an important lesson for Trump as his administration crafts energy policy.

Per Axios: 

...for the most part, states that Trump narrowly won have a higher percentage of energy jobs that are renewable-energy jobs than safe Republican states.

Thus, an energy policy that shuns renewables in favor or jobs in fossil fuels could bolster his support in solid red states, while jeopardizing his support in the swing states he narrowly won to give him the presidency. Trump would be wise to continue Obama’s investment in renewables.

Per capita CO2 emissions in Europe

In a report Tuesday, Environment and Climate Change Canada said the 51 separate herds [of boreal caribou] across the country remain under pressure from human and natural disturbances to their habitat more than five years after the federal and provincial governments concluded a protection agreement.

The range of the boreal caribou extends across the country from Yukon to Labrador, but its forest habitat has been increasingly disturbed by industrial activity such as forestry, mining and oil and gas development, as well as by forest fires, the spread of pests and other impacts of climate change.

Good read by Brad Plumer on the recent drop in China’s CO2 emissions.

Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula in 1984, 1995, 2006, and 2016.

Over the last three decades, with the logging industry on the decline, once-logged areas on the peninsula are seeing forest regrowth. Note the return of forests along the western and southern boundaries of the Olympic Mountains.

But as Douglas Scott notes, “While environmentalists will look at these images and beam with pride that the logging seems to have slowed, there is still work to be done. The collapse of the logging industry has caused economic issues around the Peninsula that have been ignored for decades. Logging was what you did if you lived out in Grays Harbor or on the Peninsula and today, there are few jobs outside of the service industry. While the trees have grown back, the badmouthing and down talking to logging communities has created a deep divide that needs to be healed.”