Climate Action Plan

Funding Public Transit Is Crucial for California’s Climate Goals

Transit networks need more–not less–support for state to reach 2045 carbon neutrality

It has been widely reported in recent weeks that California’s public transit systems are seeking billions of dollars in support from the state budget to avoid the fiscal cliff they are facing due to slow ridership recovery following the pandemic and shifts in work commute patterns. Without this support, the agencies will need to begin …

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How Cities Can Optimize Federal and State Funding Opportunities for Local Climate Action

Part Three of CLEE’s analysis for funding and financing municipal climate action

As my colleagues Katie Segal and Ted Lamm have covered here and here, last week our team at CLEE released an analysis detailing how San Francisco can fund its ambitious Climate Action Plan. Katie provided an overview of the city’s Climate Action Plan (CAP), describing how San Francisco will need to secure tens of billions …

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Guest Blogger John Graham: California Court Decision Will Affect Future Use of Carbon Offsets to Mitigate Emissions of Development

Aerial view in San Diego, California, looking roughly north toward San Diego State University.

The California Court of Appeal Rules San Diego County’s Climate Action Plan Violates CEQA

The challenge to San Diego County’s Climate Action Plan (“CAP”) in Golden Door has been closely watched by many interested in the use of carbon offsets to mitigate GHG impacts in California. Simply put, carbon offsets are mechanisms that reflect off-site GHG reductions—from activities like reforestation—that can, in some cases, compensate for a project’s GHG …

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What’s the Best Way to Motivate Climate Action?

Answers reside deep in the heart of Texas

Texans have a few things to teach policy advocates about the way to incite and bolster political will for climate action at the local level. This is not a claim based on a lack of climate action, but rather because of a new surge of it. The majority of Texans have begun to recognize the …

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Earth Day, 2017 Should Be The Next Massive Rally

The 47th Earth Day falls this year on April 22, a Saturday.  The fortuity of a weekend date makes Earth Day the perfect opportunity to marshall the energy of the wildly successful Women’s marches around the world to demand that Congress and the Trump Administration protect our planet (hat tip to Emmett Fellow Julia Forgie …

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Addressing Climate Change Without Legislation

A new report from UC Berkeley looks at the underused powers of the US Department of the Interior.

Now that the Environmental Protection Agency has announced its proposed rules for restricting greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants, the climate focus of EPA and the states will first be on polishing the rules for final approval, then on the anticipated law suits, and then on the development of state plans to meet the …

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Lots of Rhetoric, Not Much New in Obama’s Climate Plan

The Obama Administration just released a “Climate Action Plan” to accompany the speech the President will give this morning at Georgetown University.  I applaud the President for delivering a speech devoted exclusively to climate change.  But for all the hooplah surrounding the President’s speech as “major,”  the measures he’s proposed in the new plan  to …

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