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...most far-reaching environmental regulation in U.S. history. The EPA's finding triggers a 60-day public-comment period before any proposed regulations could be announced, and most observers expect it would take months, if not years, for the EPA to produce rules that could control the 7.3 billion metric tons of CO2 the U.S. produces, from sources that range from giant power plants to planes and cars. The initial regulations would likely center on emissions from motor vehicles - the cause behind the 2007 Supreme Court case that originally spurred the endangerment finding. (In the case, Massachusetts...
Last month, scientists at the Space Applications Centre in Ahmedabad in western India published a pan-India livestock methane-emission inventory, the first ever, which put the figure at 11.75 million metric tons per year - higher than the 9 million metric tons estimated in 1994. This amount is likely to increase as higher incomes and consumption rates put pressure on the country's dairy industry to become even more productive. (See pictures of China's cow town...
Already the world's largest producer of milk, India will have to yank up production from the current 100 million metric tons to 180 million metric tons by 2021-22 to keep pace with growing population and expanding disposable incomes. Livestock such as cows, buffalo, goats, sheep, horses and mules are indispensable to India's rural economy - whether the animals are yoked to plow land, raised for milk and manure or harnessed to pull carts to move goods and people. The Ministry of Agriculture estimates that livestock contribute 5.3% to total GDP, up from 4.8% during 1980-81. But, says...
...Using the industry metric, which estimates that about three-quarters of current sales are replacement vehicles, demand will push past 13 million cars by 2012. O.K., so assume that some people will drive less, run their cars into the ground or - gulp - give up driving. You still don't lose much. What's known in the industry as "density" - the ratio of vehicles to drivers - continues to increase...
...gases pose a threat to human welfare, the EPA's finding could lay the groundwork for nationwide regulation of CO2 emissions - just as the EPA is require to regulate pollutants like smog-causing sulfur dioxide. But regulating CO2 will be immensely more complicated - the U.S. emitted over 6 billion metric tons of CO2 in 2007 from countless sources - and business groups have raised the specter of a meddlesome EPA using greenhouse gases as an excuse to regulate projects large and small...