While not a stand-alone climate change-fighting measure, converting roofs and pavements in tropical and temperate cities of one million or more people to light-colored materials would provide the equivalent one-time benefit of eliminating two years' worth of global CO2 emissions, or eliminating the emissions of 300 million vehicles for 20 years.
Sandia National Laboratories and the Natural Resources Defense Council independently publish similar conclusions based on a range of scenarios developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Fourth Assessment Report, in conjunction with various economic models.
"The House of Representatives on Friday approved the toughest reforms ever to offshore energy drilling practices, as Democrats narrowly pushed through an election-year response to BP's massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico."
"The worst floods in memory in Pakistan have devastated the lives of more than 3 million people, a U.N. spokesman said on Tuesday, while outrage over the unpopular government's response to the suffering spreads."
"Environmentalists are suing U.S. EPA over a rule that aims to regulate greenhouse gases from only the largest industrial sources, arguing that the agency exempts too many big polluters."
"Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill asked Russians to pray for rain on Sunday as wildfires raged across the European parts of the vast country, sweltering since June in an unprecedented heat wave."
"A new split over climate policy is brewing within the ranks of the US Chamber of Commerce as a breakaway group of local chambers is getting ready to publicly split with the business lobby's hardline stance against climate legislation."
"Pacific oysters in the wild on Washington's coast haven't reproduced in six seasons. Scientists suspect ocean-chemistry changes linked to the fossil-fuel emissions that cause global warming are helping kill these juvenile shellfish. The oceans are becoming more acidic, and that corrosive water is finding its way into Puget Sound."
"Forest fires continue to rage around several Russian cities and officials say at least seven people have died, including two firefighters."
"The Environmental Protection Agency unleashed a full-throated defense on Thursday of scientific evidence that mankind is dangerously warming the planet, and of the Obama administration's unilateral moves to curb the heat-trapping gas emissions scientists blame for climate change."
