December 18, 2013 — The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) representing nine states (including RI) has submitted comments on proposed carbon pollution rules for existing power plants to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in support of the regional program. Janet Coit, director of the RI Department of Environmental Management (DEM) and Marion Gold, commissioner of the RI Office of Energy serve as directors on the regional panel.
The RGGI states have successfully cut carbon dioxide emissions by 40 percent since 2005. "RGGI's regional approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions is important to Rhode Island… We know that climate change is one of the biggest challenges we face when it comes to ensuring the health and resilience of our regional waters…" said Janet Coit, DEM Director. The RGGI states are encouraging EPA to view their success as a benchmark for national action.
How GHG emissions and global warming impact our fish
GHG emissions create global warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said that most of the observed temperature increase since the middle of the 20th century was caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases resulting from human activity such as fossil fuel burning and deforestation.
GHG emissions and the climate change they create can a positive, negative or neutral effect on fish species with different tolerances.
URI Bay temperature studies confirm that the Bay has warmed 2 to 3 degrees depending on time of year in past 45 years, and the effects of climate change can be seen with storms such as hurricane Sandy.
In 2009 professor Jeremy Collie of URI's Graduate School of Oceanography said that the increase in Bay temperature has created "big changes in the food web…" of the Bay. A delay in spring algae bloom that normally occurs in late winter and early spring has been delayed into the summer. As algae starts to die it uses oxygen in the water. Algae blooms combined with poor dissolved oxygen in portions of the Bay from heavy spring rains and in particular in areas that do not get flushed regularly, has led to hypoxia (low water oxygen). Low or no oxygen has led to fewer fish in the area and/or fish kills which have occurred several times in the Bay.
A study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) related that rising water temperatures are also helping to drive many of New England's fish populations farther from shore and into deeper water.
In this study NOAA biologists analyzed water temperature trends from North Carolina to the Canadian border off Maine from 1968 to 2007. They then looked at fish survey data collected each spring and assessed where the fish were caught and how abundant they were.
Some fish species experienced a lot of movement while other species exhibited little movement to the north, but rather they moved to deeper waters where temperatures are lower.
Read the full story at the Cranston Herald