Shipping & Climate Change

Hope is fading for a global deal to regulate the airline industry's greenhouse gas emissions ahead of a fall deadline, even though failure could push the industry back to the brink of a trade war over the European Union's emissions trading system.

Detroit’s ever-growing black mountain is the unloved, unwanted and long overlooked byproduct of Canada’s oil sands boom. And no one knows quite what to do about it, except Koch Carbon, which owns it.

In the last eight years, corporate donors — most notably, a group of mining, gas and oil companies — have inundated the provincial Liberals with $46 million in donations. That buys a lot of attention.

The best thing the U.S. could do to tamp down a struggle for Arctic resources would be to ratify the Law of the Sea Convention, as has every other council member.

Lately Canada has banged the military drum less hard, but it remains out of step with the work of the Arctic Council – of which it takes over rotating chairmanship this year – whose members agreed in 1996 to keep military matters off the table and focus on sustainable development and environmental protection.

The Arctic Council added China and five other countries as official observers yesterday, expanding the focus of the organization and underscoring the complicated politics created by newly open waters in the north because of climate change.

Canada, which hosted the founding conference of the Arctic Council in 1996 and was its first chair, again took on that responsibility at the meeting this year in Kiruna, Sweden. The disappearing Arctic ice cover is one of several environmental issues confronting the council.

The United States has proposed launching a global scheme to force all ships to measure and eventually reduce the rate at which they consume energy in a bid to cut emissions of gases blamed for global warming.

In contrast to the many analysts who have been predicting that global oil output will soon reach a "peak" and then subside, three assessments see a significant increase in future oil and gas production. The good news, though, is really the bad news: global warming will accelerate, and its effects will prove increasingly severe.

There is no disputing the real-time effects of climate change. Alaska is warming faster than anywhere else in America, setting off a circumpolar scramble for oil and other resources given up by the melting ice and threatening the livelihood of those who still live off the land and the sea.

Little progress has been made in a United Nations' effort to craft an agreement to lower greenhouse gas emissions from international air travel, raising doubts that its civil aviation body can deliver a final resolution by a September target date, several government officials said on Monday.

A warmer Arctic, where melting sea ice clears sea routes, allowing more traffic and construction for better infrastructure, is certainly more inviting. And this is exactly what is happening.

The tension between conservation and oil and gas drilling is evident in the White House's new Arctic strategy paper. Shifting economic, climatic, and regulatory realities have contributed to what is at least a temporary pause in Arctic oil and gas drilling.

U.S.-based industries and utilities that consume a lot of natural gas have been trying to figure out just how to respond to proposals in Congress to allow expanded natural gas exports, a move that could significantly raise the price of one of their chief inputs.

A domestic natural gas boom already has lowered U.S. energy prices while stoking fears of environmental disaster. Now U.S. producers are poised to ship vast quantities of gas overseas as energy companies seek permits for proposed export projects that could set off a renewed frenzy of fracking.

The battle to build a better battery is intensifying as the United States and other countries, faced with growing global demand for electricity and a need to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that worsen climate change, look to expand carbon-free renewable energy such as wind and solar.

Every time Los Angeles exhales, odd-looking gadgets anchored in the mountains above the city trace the invisible puffs of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases that waft skyward.

A study published yesterday in the journal Science analyzed the longest land-based sediment core ever taken in the Arctic and found that during this period, from 3.6 million to 2.2 million years ago, the area around the North Pole was much warmer and wetter than it is now.

Canada’s government is adjusting its greenhouse gas standards for ships in Canadian waters, a move that matches efforts in the United States.

California ports are going green. In a speech at the 28th World Ports Conference on Tuesday, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said the city's port is at the forefront of pushing for clean energy alternatives and reducing pollution.