Word: bille
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...increasing global greenhouse-gas emissions instead of reducing them. In the second paper, another team of researchers led by Tim Searchinger of Princeton University uncovered a potentially damaging flaw in the way carbon emissions from bioenergy are calculated under the Kyoto Protocol and in the carbon cap-and-trade bill currently being debated in Congress. If that error in calculation goes unfixed, a future increase in biofuel use could end up backfiring and derailing efforts to control global warming, according to the paper. "Biofuels can be an important part of the portfolio of climate-change activities," says Steve Hamburg, chief...
...using biofuels. CO2 emissions resulting from deforestation or other changes in the way we use land are not evaluated at all. The result is a huge, if accidental error in the existing global carbon accounting system - and one that now stands to be repeated in the cap-and-trade bill up for debate in Congress. "It's a very, very large loophole," says Searchinger, who had done pioneering work on problems of biofuels. "We're just effectively ignoring what happens on land." (See TIME's special report on the environment...
...credit for those cuts. But politics will be another matter - the biofuel industry already has a lot of weight, especially in the U.S., where environmentalists need the votes of rural and Midwestern representatives in Congress if they are to have any hope of passing a cap-and-trade bill. Challenging the biofuel loophole could effectively scuttle cap-and-trade...
...that may well be a boon. If cap-and-trade were passed with the existing biofuel loophole, it could set up a system that would incentivize the expansion of bioenergy at the expense of the environment and carbon cutting. Certainly the error could be fixed later, after the bill is passed - but by that time the financial interests in favor of biofuels would be even stronger, and would surely resist changes. "If this isn't fixed, you could give companies a very powerful financial incentive to go clear land," says Searchinger, who has briefed members of Congress on his research...
...National Security Council, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice - all of whom have lobbied for Gration to take the Sudan policy in a different direction. Rice in particular stands in opposition to Gration's approach to Sudan. In 1998 she was instrumental in President Bill Clinton's decision to send 18 cruise missiles slamming into a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory (it was thought to produce chemical weapons for al-Qaeda) in retaliation for the U.S.-embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya. Rice was an early supporter of Obama, and when he won the election last November...