Year: 2009
To auction or not to auction
In the comments to a recent post, Red Desert raises a good question about the application of cap-and-trade to greenhouse gases. Red points to this report in The Wonk Room of a letter signed by 14 Democratic senators asking that the leadership “ensure that emission allowances allocated to the electricity sector – and thus, electricity …
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CONTINUE READINGMore on the recent Pew poll and on debating the science
My colleague Steve Weissman writes well here about the recently released Pew poll on Americans’ beliefs about climate change. Like Steve, I find the most troubling statistics from the poll to be the plunging numbers of people who seem to believe the underlying science. This is from Pew’s write-up: 57% [of all respondents] think there is solid evidence that the …
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CONTINUE READINGBrown pelican to fly off protected list
The Fish and Wildlife Service today announced some very good news — the brown pelican will soon be removed from the list of endangered and threatened species. This enormous fish-eating bird has been protected since 1970, when it was included on the very first list of US endangered species under a predecessor to the current …
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CONTINUE READINGPublic Focus on Climate Change Slow to Develop, Hard to Sustain
The date was August 4, 1977, and Congressman Peter Rodino inserted, in the Congressional Record, an article from the New York Times that had run a week earlier. The Times article reflected on the Carter Administration’s effort to encourage the greater of coal as a power plant fuel. The Times said: “The National Academy of …
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CONTINUE READINGSaving the Japanese Black Bear
Grist had a really interesting story at the end of last month about Japanese black bears — or ツキノワグマ if you prefer — which have a tenuous hold on survival. What makes this story particularly interesting is that it is a preview of a world in which the idea of the “natural” has become problematic. …
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CONTINUE READINGEPA to reconsider water transfers rule
I can’t find this on EPA’s web site, but BNA’s U.S. Law Week and the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies are reporting that the agency plans to reconsider the Bush-era rule exempting water transfers from the Clean Water Act’s NPDES permit requirements. As I previously explained, the 11th Circuit upheld the water transfers rule this …
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CONTINUE READINGSuperFreakonomics and Climate Change
If you haven’t been following the controversy that has erupted with the publication of SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance, you should be. In SuperFreakonomics — the sequel to Steven Levitt and Stephen Duber’s wildly popular Freakonomics — the authors take on climate change. Their arguments are somewhat …
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CONTINUE READINGClimate Change versus the Benzene Case
The Benzene Case — more properly, Industrial Union Dept. v. American Petroleum Inst. — is almost thirty years old, but is still the Supreme Court’s most important statement on risk regulation. After considering mountains of evidence, OSHA issued a rule restricting benzene in the workplace. Benzene was known to be a carcinogen; the evidence was …
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CONTINUE READINGOne-Stop Shopping for Climate Information
CITRIS, which is a University of California engineering consortium, has a really useful site called Climate Navigator. The site is a great source of information about the many dimensions of climate change, from policy to energy technology. One neat feature is an interactive model that allows you to design your own global climate policy, setting …
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CONTINUE READINGA New Beginning for the California Delta?
Early this past Wednesday morning, following an all-night session that would have made any college freshman proud, the California Legislature enacted major legislation designed to address the myriad problems affecting California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The package of five bills, SB 7X 1, SB 7X 2, SB 7X 6, SB 7X 7, and SB 7X 8, …
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