Also see our Top 10 Environmental Stories of 2014
1. China and the U.S. Pledge Joint Action on Global Warming:
In what was widely seen as a possible breakthrough in the battle to coordinate some kind of response to global warming, China and the U.S. announced joint actions this year. On November 12th, the world’s two most powerful countries surprised pretty much everyone by announcing that they would work together to tackle the crisis. The U.S. committed to reduce its carbon emissions 26-28 percent by 2025, based on 2005 levels. Meanwhile, China said that its emissions would peak by 2030 (or sooner) and 20 percent of its energy would come from clean sources. While these commitments are no-where near what’s needed to avoid catastrophic climate—not even combined with the EU’s pledge to cut emission 40 percent by 2030–they signaled that both the U.S. and China were finally on board in the more than 25-year endeavor to deal with climate change on a global scale. The optimism that followed didn’t produce much progress at the Climate Summit in Lima months later—though it’s impossible to know what would have happened without the commitments—but the real test will be Paris next year and beyond. Jeremy Hance
Read more: http://news.mongabay.com/2014/1229-hance-butler-happy-top-ten.html#ixzz3OT9tlGTL
Ann Novek( Luure)--With the Sky as the Ceiling and the Heart Outdoors 