Written by Amy Heinzerling

The latest EPI release is on carbon emissions trends and the potential results.

In 2009, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in China—the world’s leading emitter—grew by nearly 9 percent. At the same time, emissions in most industrial countries dropped, bringing global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use down from a high of 8.5 billion tons of carbon in 2008 to 8.4 billion tons in 2009. Yet this drop follows a decade of rapid growth: over the 10 previous years, global CO2 emissions rose by an average of 2.5 percent a year—nearly four times as fast as in the 1990s. Increasing temperatures and the resulting melting ice sheets and rising sea levels demonstrate the destructive effects of the carbon accumulating in the atmosphere.

Written by Joshua S. Hill

America’s winter just passed might be melting in the current heat, but the snow that fell was not affected by climate change or a warming planet.

New research published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters found that the heavier than normal snows that fell along the east coast of America, making it the snowiest winter on record for Washington D.C., Baltimore and Philadelphia, was a result of a collision of two periodic weather patterns in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Written by Alex Steffen

In wake of the devastating announcement that the U.S. Senate will not be advancing a climate bill, of any kind, there's been a crash of morale across the spectrum of American environmentalists, climate advocates and bright green business types. And, yes, the Senate and the President have shown an extreme degree of moral cowardice on what is one of the most important issues ever to face our nation. Advocates who've spent years of their time and huge portions of their limited resources fighting for a climate bill have every right to be down.

Written by Zachary Shanan

Climate Change Solutions and Failures

Though China has just lept forward with an economically based cap-and-trade system, the US Senate, ExxonMobil & friends and Obama (not environmentalists) have seriously failed us all by killing similar (capitalistic not communistic) legislation in the US, and despite the great efforts of war veterans.