Britain’s Climate Change Committee will be responsible for establishing emission targets, setting carbon budgets and monitoring government progress when it becomes a legal entity later this year. The head of the committee, Adair Turner, is optimistic towards the government achieving its goal but also sees “tough times ahead.”

Republican John McCain, reaching out to both independents and green-minded social conservatives, argues that global warming is undeniable and the country must take steps to bring it under control while adhering to free-market principles.

For the first time in 30 years, the US Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to further reduce the amount of lead in the air. While leaded gasoline is history, about 1,300 tons of lead a year is emitted into the air from smelters, iron and steel foundries, and general aviation gasoline, the EPA estimates. Once it is airborne, lead can be inhaled. Or, after it settles out of the air onto surfaces, lead can be ingested – the main route of human exposure. Once in the body, lead is rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream and can affect many organ systems.

Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane (DDT), a pesticide banned in the 1970s in the United States, is still showing up in penguins in Antarctica. Researchers are surprised that concentration levels found in their fatty tissues have not declined.

Collecting garbage and recyclables in California is about to get a lot cleaner, thanks to a joint venture between Linde North America and Waste Management (NYSE:WMI) that will create the world’s largest facility to convert landfill gas into clean vehicle fuel.

British Columbia’s carbon tax plays a key role in the government’s plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, it is being challenged by dozens of northern communities in BC, claiming that the tax discriminates rural and northern residents.

Stéphane Dion is poised to unveil a carbon-tax scheme and attempt to neutralize any political damage by offering corresponding personal income tax cuts of between $10-billion and $13-billion to working Canadians, senior Liberal sources say.

The Liberal Leader wants this major environmental policy to be the centrepiece of the party’s election campaign platform, according to the sources, and is anxious to reveal it this summer to give Canadians a chance to digest the idea before a federal election.

The global demand for rich countries to obtain emissions permits is on the rise due to climate change policies limiting greenhouse gas emissions. The World Bank states that “the global carbon market more than doubled in value in 2007 to $64 billion, but that masked slow growth in actual greenhouse gas emissions cuts.”

Former senior advisor to the UK Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, Nick Mabey, warns that governments and businesses must begin to frame climate change as a global security issue.