Global Warming

The Environmental Protection Agency has sent a proposal to the White House finding that global warming is endangering the public's health and welfare, according to several sources, a move that could have far-reaching implications for the economy and environment.

Frank Eddy pulled off his dusty boots and slid into a chair, taking his place at the dining room table where most of the critical family issues are hashed out. Spreading hands as dry and cracked as the orchards he tends, the stout man his mates call Tank explained what damage a decade of drought has done . "Suicide is high. Depression is huge. Families are breaking up. It's devastation," he said, shaking his head. "I've got a neighbor in terrible trouble.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin acknowledged Tuesday that global warming was harming her state but said stepped-up natural-gas production could mitigate its effects. Speaking at a hearing before Interior Secretary Ken Salazar -- the third of several he is holding across the country to consider renewed oil and gas leasing on the outer continental shelf -- Palin said that relatively clean-burning natural gas could supplant dirtier fuels and slow the discharge of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Megadroughts lasting centuries are part of the normal weather pattern in sub-Saharan Africa, researchers reported Friday, a finding they say bodes ill for what could happen if the effects of global warming are added in.

Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire sidestepped her Legislature's refusal to adopt a cap-and-trade program to limit greenhouse gases, signing an executive order Thursday to achieve similar reductions by ratcheting back coal-fired electricity and automobile emissions. "I wanted cap-and-trade.

Key Democrats reached a deal Tuesday that its supporters hope will lead to House passage of the biggest environmental bill in decades, one aimed at slowing the heating of the planet. Farm-state Democrats won concessions that will delay the Environmental Protection Agency from drafting regulations that could hamper the ethanol industry and will hand the Agriculture Department oversight of potentially lucrative projects to reduce greenhouse gases on farms.

President Obama on Wednesday defended his assertion that a climate-change measure making its way through Congress would greatly reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil, even as government figures raised questions about whether he was overstating its effect. Obama has intensified his lobbying effort ahead of an expected House vote Friday on a Democratic energy proposal designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions sharply by 2050.

President Obama's landmark energy and global warming bill squeaked through the House only after the White House made dozens of concessions to coal, manufacturing and other interests. Now, as the battle moves to the Senate, Obama faces demands for even more concessions -- including pressure to open the nation's coastlines to offshore oil and gas drilling. The Senate also will take up a series of controversial issues that were glossed over or omitted from the House legislation.

Developing nations led by China and India refused Wednesday to back lofty but long-term targets proposed by the Group of 8 industrial nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions, balking at reluctance by leaders of the world's biggest economies to move more quickly on their own.

The Lockes have tilled the rich soil along the Mokelumne River since 1850. Now Chris Locke, 57, looks forward to passing down his orchards of 40,000 walnut trees to his four sons. But the threat of global warming has him worried. "I talk to my boys about climate change," he said. When he was young, frigid fogs rolled off the delta into Lockeford, the town named for his forebears. "We would go a week without seeing the sun. But we don't seem to get that weather anymore."