Year: 2012
Heller versus Berkley in the Silver State
As in other states, the Nevada Senate race features a gap between the “greener” Democratic candidate, Shelley Berkley, and the Republican Dean Heller. But it plays out a little differently. Heller’s website is strangely reticent about energy and environmental issues, while Berkley focuses heavily on the issues most relevant to Nevada — renewable energy and …
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CONTINUE READINGJust Overheard
A non-renewable natural resource walks into a bar. The bartender growls at it. “Sorry — nothing for you! You’ve been getting wasted all day!” Thank you, thank you; I’ll be here all week.
CONTINUE READINGBarry Commoner and Our Interconnected World
Barry Commoner was born in Brooklyn in 1917 and died there yesterday, having helped conceptualize environmentalism in the meantime. You can learn more about his life from the NY Times obituary. Commoner is probably best known today for his four environmental “laws”: Everything is connected to everything else. Everything must go somewhere. Nature knows best. …
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CONTINUE READINGShould Environmental Lawyers Care about the Alien Tort Statute?
The Supreme Court term tomorrow opens with a bang: Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, which has assumed very large significance in the international human rights community. But should Legal Planet readers care? I think that they should. The plaintiffs in Kiobel allege that Royal Dutch Petroleum (better known in the United States as Shell Oil) …
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CONTINUE READINGPaul Ryan and the National Carbon Debt
Climate denialists applauded Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan for what they call Ryan’s “awesome energy & climate record.” That’s not surprising: Ryan does have a clear record on climate change. As ThinkProgress has documented: Ryan has voted to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from limiting greenhouse pollution, to eliminate White House climate advisers, to …
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CONTINUE READINGUndecided Voters and Climate Change
If you tuned in to the Republican National Convention, you probably heard Republican nominee Mitt Romney take a stab at President Obama’s 2008 remarks about slowing the pace of global warming. Romney allowed his line to speak for itself, and delegates and the audience erupted in laughter. Yes, global warming was used as a laugh …
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CONTINUE READINGMaking the Best of a Bad Day in LA
Drivers in LA may be holding their collective breath waiting for “Carmageddon II” to end, but a new UCLA study suggests that they may have it backwards. For those of you who don’t live with the traffic here in the City of Angels, this weekend a major artery was shut down to allow for removal …
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CONTINUE READINGPresident Obama Dissolves the Gulf Coast Restoration Task Force
Let’s rewind almost exactly two years to early October 2010. In the wake of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history, President Obama established the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Task Force, an advisory group of federal and state officials to coordinate federal Gulf Coast restoration activities. The main …
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CONTINUE READINGRoger Cohen Has a Lazy Day
I suppose that it’s tough writing two 750-word columns each week; that’s why the NYT’s Roger Cohen decided to rehash his hatchet job on organic foods in today’s paper. In a previous column, Cohen ridiculed fans of organic food, pointing to a Stanford study finding that organic foods were no healthier for human beings than …
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CONTINUE READINGCarmaHeaven?–One way to improve air quality in LA
Los Angelenos are mostly dreading the return of “Carmageddon” this weekend, when a key section of one of our city’s main freeway arteries will once again be shut down for construction. But apparently we should be craving the respite from our city’s pervasive air pollution. Researchers at UCLA have just posted an analysis of the effect of the last …
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