Month: April 2010

Moby Slick

Knowing that the area of the Gulf of Mexico covered by the BP oil slick is important habitat for sperm whales, I’d been wondering about effects of the oil spill on those whales and on marine mammals generally.  Sperm whales were long hunted (Moby Dick is the most famous specimen) and are listed as endangered …

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Energy Conservation, Southern Style

A new report finds lots of room for energy efficiency in the American South. Here are the main findings.  Energy efficiency improvements could: 1. Prevent energy consumption from growing over the next 20 years. In the absence of such initiatives, energy consumption in these three sectors is forecast to grow by approximately 16 percent between …

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Climate Change and Two Forms of Justice

Via David Brooks today, Jim Manzi from several months ago makes an intriguing argument regarding the equities of international climate change policy.  Developing nations consistently say that developed countries should pay for the lion’s share of climate mitigation because developed countries have caused the problem.  But says Manzi, What this ignores is that the reason …

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Gulf oil spill update

The Deepwater Horizon oil rig rig explosion was bound to put some pressure on the Obama administration to renounce the plan it announced just three weeks earlier to open new areas to offshore drilling. Today, the President ordered Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to report on how to reduce the risk of oil spills from offshore …

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Surprise! Words don’t save biodiversity

The Convention on Biological Diversity was adopted in 1992 and entered into force in 1993 amid much fanfare. It’s been a rousing success in attracting adherents; it currently has 193 parties, with the only major outlier being the United States, which has some of the strongest conservation laws in the world. But a new report …

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UC San Francisco Throws Its Hat Into the Nanotechnology Policy Ring

The UCSF Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment recently released a draft set of policy recommendations to address  nanotechnology meeting for comments on May 5 in Oakland, CA. The report is in draft form and the authors are seeking comment, so there will likely be a fair amount of modification as commenters with different perspectives and …

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Ocean acidification gets new attention

Although EPA is beginning to pay attention, the rapidly increasing acidity of the oceans remains a little-known consequence of global atmospheric CO2 loading. But two recent events may be raising the public profile of ocean acidification. First, a National Research Council committee convened to examine the consequences of ocean acidification and make recommendations for a …

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More Bad News on Climate: Boxer is in Deep Trouble

Barbara Boxer has been a US Senator for 18 years.  She is chair of the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee, and is a real environmental hero.  If we ever get a climate bill, she will have a lot to do with it. And she is also in deep political trouble. Take a look at …

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A good time to think about off-shore energy

Rick recently pointed out the ironic timing of the tragic Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion. The news from the Gulf in the wake of that explosion just gets worse. The first report was that the well had sealed. Offshore wells have “blowout preventer” valves which are supposed to shut in the event of an emergency …

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Kammen to be Energy Envoy

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton named Dan Kammen as a Senior Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas (ECPA) Fellow to advise Western Hemisphere governments on clean energy issues. As one of the first ECPA fellows, Kammen, the Class of 1935 Distinguished Professor in UC Berkeley’s Energy and Resources Group will consult with and offer …

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