Pollution Control

For all of its 21st-century advancements, the shipping industry drags a lot of old technology around. Giant vessels are so sophisticated these days that they require only a handful of crew members. But the ships still burn a thick, dirty sludge called bunker fuel while at sea and slurp diesel to keep the lights and air conditioning running while in port. Inefficient yard tractors and cranes guzzle fuel and spew exhaust as they stack containers.

President-elect Barack Obama sent an explicit message Tuesday to international negotiators of a new global warming treaty that, under his administration, the U.S would move to slash its own greenhouse gas emissions by more than 80% by mid-century, and "help lead the world toward a new era of global cooperation on climate change."

The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday abandoned its push to revise two air pollution rules in ways that environmentalists had long opposed, abruptly dropping measures that the Bush administration had spent years preparing. One proposal would have made it easier to build a coal-fired power plant, refinery or factory near a national park. The other would have altered the rules that govern when power plants must install antipollution devices.

Union dockworkers are finding there isn't enough work to go around. Big cargo ships are joining the ranks of the unemployed. And yet, the people who run the nation's two largest container ports are convinced that now is the time to build for the future. And they're bracing for lots of objections. Los Angeles and Long Beach port officials see the signs of retrenchment in the shipping industry.

California's two senators this week offered markedly different approaches to slowing global warming, with Dianne Feinstein saying she may move to exempt power companies from her home state's landmark global warming laws and bring them under federal regulation instead. Coal-fired and other fossil-burning power plants are the largest source of greenhouse gases in the United States, producing a third of all emissions.

IN his determined style, environmentalist John Francis juggles a busy speaking schedule at schools, colleges and Earth-friendly conferences nationwide. He's in such demand in large part because from 1973 to 1990, Francis refused to utter a single word, stubbornly keeping a vow of silence as a protest against pollution. He also swore off motor vehicles and walked wherever he went. Francis engaged the modern culture he sought to change.

After the winter thaw, a huge enterprise -- so expensive and risky that it ranks among the most ambitious environmental projects on Earth -- will rise up from an abandoned cornfield in upstate New York. Not far from Saratoga, where Americans defeated British soldiers in the Revolutionary War, 40 miles of the Hudson River will be excavated to remove hazardous compounds discharged by General Electric.

In his first major action as California attorney general, Jerry Brown signaled to the nation's Big Six automakers Thursday that he would like to reach a compromise in a high-stakes legal battle over how to curb global warming. But Brown left no doubt that he would press a lawsuit by the state against the companies if they failed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from car tailpipes.

A United Nations report released Friday that blames humans for the "runaway train" of global warming has abruptly shifted the international debate from "Are humans to blame?" to "What are we going to do about it?" "The world's scientists have spoken," said Timothy E. Wirth, president of the United Nations Foundation. "It is time now to hear from the world's policymakers. The so-called and long-overstated 'debate' about global warming is now over."

Everybody in the United States could switch from cars to bicycles. The Chinese could close all their factories. Europe could give up electricity and return to the age of the lantern. But all those steps together would not come close to stopping global warming.