Month: August 2009

Travel is Broadening: Idaho & the Wider Reality of Water Supply and Water Waste

They say that travel is broadening.  The recent experience of this Californian in the wilds of Idaho attests to the wisdom of that axiom. Earlier this month, I had to journey to Idaho to attend a conference and give a talk.  While there, I listened with interest as a former Idaho Supreme Court justice and …

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“Removing the Roadblocks” op-ed

Assemblyman Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) and I had an op-ed published in yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle that outlined steps to remove the barriers to more sustainable development. The op-ed is based on findings from the report that the environmental law programs at UCLA and UC Berkeley and the California Attorney General’s Office released last week, …

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The Fire This Time

Here in southern California, we are currently living through our annual late August-early September ritual of wildfires.  In the San Fernando Valley, where I live, the air is heavy with smoke, and people are staying inside.  It was worse in Pasadena, where I attend a Quaker meeting, and where the houses of several Friends are …

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Insurance in a Complex World

Roger Cook and Carolyn Kousky make some intriguing points in an article in the Summer issue of Resources.  They discuss three problems confronting insurance companies, all of them probably exacerbated by climate change: fat tails, tail dependence, and micro-correlations.  Although the names may not be self-explanatory, these are phenomena with great significance for society’s management …

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Remembering Katrina

Four years ago today, at about this time of day, Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana after it’s previous brief encounter with Florida.  A picture of the landfall is below. I remember thinking that, “as usual,” the weather people were hyping the possible impacts. As it turns out, my skepticism was partly justified because the …

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Movie Stars, Solar Cells

Flowers are beginning to bloom through the cracks in the foundation that formerly was the economy in the state of Michigan.  With the precipitous closure of auto manufacturing plants, and the strong ripples throughout the state’s employment base, the state of Michigan has come close to the economic bottom.  Now come the opportunities for rebirth. …

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Good fish news of the week

We know that environmentalists in general, and environmental lawyers in particular, typically seem to have nothing but bad news on their minds. So we’re always happy to convey good news when we hear it. This week, it comes out of northern New York, where the USGS reports that wild-spawned Atlantic salmon have been found in …

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The Kennedy seat

It may be gauche to admit to worrying about this so soon after Ted Kennedy’s death, but the conversations have already begun: How much harder will it be to get to 60 votes on healthcare reform and, more relevant here, climate change legislation without his seat filled?  Massachusetts procedures for finding a new senator, and …

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Q (circa 2100): Whatever Happened to Kansas? A: It Burned Up.

The Nature Conservancy has released a projection of business-as-usual climate impacts, which shows particularly heavy impacts in Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa.  The predictions are fairly grim. The analysis is based on averaging model results for IPCC Scenarios B1 assumes a (decrease in emission rates over the next century for a total concentration of 538ppm by …

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Openings for Env. Law Profs

The law school hiring season is beginning.  PrawfsBlawg lists names of hiring committee chairs and for many schools adds a list of fields that the school is targeting.  Here is a list of schools hiring in environmental law and related fields: Indianapolis University (Land Use, Admin.), St. Thomas (Minn.) (Env.), University of Illinois (Admin.)  Colorado …

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