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All ships, trains and trucks serving the port will be monitored to comply with state law

SACRAMENTO – 12/18/07 – All vehicles involved in moving cargo in and out of the Port of Los Angeles will be monitored to track their greenhouse gas emissions under the terms of a new agreement signed between Los Angeles city officials and the State of California.

The program will gather information on all ships bound for the port, as well as all rail lines and trucks used to transport goods to and from the port’s terminals. The data will then be reported to the California Climate Action Registry (CCAR) on an annual basis.

The accumulated data will assist port officials in bringing the port complex, the busiest container port in the country, into compliance with AB 32, a state bill that requires the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to find ways to reduce the state's greenhouse gas emissions by 25% by 2020.

The legislation also requires the CARB to track emissions from certain, as yet unnamed, industries it determines to be significant sources of gases that contribute to global warming.

Under the agreement, port officials will also build a 10 megawatt photovoltaic solar system to offset 17,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide a year.

Last year, the Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners and its Long Beach counterpart approved the 2-billion-dollar Clean Air Action Plan to cut air pollution at the adjacent ports.

The new agreement was called ''path-breaking,'' by California Attorney General Jerry Brown, who said it ''demonstrates the commitment of the city and port of Los Angeles to take specific and concrete steps to fight global warming.''

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WTO Highlights Pluses, Minuses of Global Trade

GENEVA, Switzerland – 12/21/07 – The global trading system still faces some formidable challenges despite its ''significant'' contributions to postwar prosperity, according to the World Trade Organization’s latest World Trade Report; global trade has grown twenty-seven fold in volume terms since 1950, but the progress made in trade liberalization has been ''uneven with success limited in some areas,'' the report says.