Global Warming

As communities throughout the East Coast are still struggling to rebuild 100 days after Superstorm Sandy slammed the Mid-Atlantic, PennEnvironment urged state and federal officials to redouble their efforts to tackle climate change. Scientists have warned that climate change is helping to fuel the recent increase in extreme weather, and will make events like Superstorm Sandy, and last summer’s record drought, more severe and more frequent unless more is done to limit the carbon pollution fueling climate change.

Today the Obama administration finalized new clean car standards that will double the fuel efficiency of today’s vehicles by 2025, drastically reducing emissions of carbon pollution and cutting oil use in Pennsylvania and nationwide.  A recent joint analysis by the Natural Resources Defense Council and Union of Concerned Scientists projects that by 2030 in Pennsylvania alone, the standards will cut carbon pollution from vehicles by 8.4 million metric tons—the equivalent of the annual pollution of 1,285, of today’s vehicles—and save 720 million gallons of fuel. 

Ten months after Tropical Storm Lee led to record flooding that devastated the Susquehanna Valley, a new PennEnvironment Research & Policy Center report confirms that extreme rainstorms and snowstorms are happening 52 percent more frequently in Pennsylvania since 1948. Based on an analysis of state data from the National Climatic Data Center, the new report found that heavy downpours or snowstorms that used to happen once every 12 months on average in the state now happen every 7.9 months on average.  Moreover, the biggest storms are getting bigger.  The largest annual storms in Pennsylvania now produce 23 percent more precipitation, on average, than they did 65 years ago.

As Pennsylvanians get ready for summer road trips, a PennEnvironment Research & Policy Center report finds that cleaner, more fuel efficient cars would significantly slash oil consumption and global warming pollution across the state. The report, Summer on the Road: Going Farther on a Gallon of Gas, was released as the Obama administration is on the verge of finalizing fuel efficiency and global warming pollution standards for cars and light trucks that achieve a 54.5 mpg standard by 2025.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today proposed historic new limits on carbon pollution from new power plants.  Carbon pollution fuels global warming, which leads to poor air quality that triggers asthma attacks and other respiratory problems. 

After a year that saw many parts of hit by severe storms and record flooding, a new PennEnvironment report documents how global warming could lead to certain extreme weather events becoming even more common or more severe in the future.   The report found that, already, more than 9 out of 10 Pennsylvanians live in counties affected by federally declared weather-related disasters since 2006.