Facing Up to Reality
More frequent heat waves. Droughts. Wildfires. The West is getting a glimpse of its future climate.
The western U.S. is staring climate change in the face. Most of the West is experiencing “severe” or “exceptional” drought. We could be heading into the worst drought period in centuries. Major dam reservoirs are down to record low levels. The region is also in the grips of a record-breaking heatwave. We can expect another bad wildfire season, maybe not as bad as last year but still bad. Power systems from Texas to California are stressed to their limits. Th...
CONTINUE READINGWhy I Was Wrong About Methane
I didn't think cutting methane was a high priority. Now I do. Here's why.
I didn’t use to think that eliminating methane emissions should be a priority. True, methane is a potent greenhouse gas. But it’s also a short-lived one, which only stays in the atmosphere for twenty years or so. In contrast, CO2 emissions cause warming for 2-3 centuries or more. So methane emissions seemed to be something that could be addressed at any point we got around to them. I’ve rethought that conclusion, however for a combination of policy and political ec...
CONTINUE READINGSmall Cannabis Growers and Large Red Tape?
A complicated cannabis regulatory system may be squeezing out small cannabis cultivators
In a prior blog post, I discussed how California’s experiment in legalizing cannabis has not been as effective as hoped for in bringing cultivators into the legal regulatory system. Low levels of compliance might be undermining the possibility of improved environmental outcomes – proponents of legalization argued that bringing formerly illegal cannabis cultivation into a legal regulatory system would also mean these cultivators would comply with environmental regulat...
CONTINUE READINGDiagnosing Why More Growers Aren’t In California’s Cannabis System
Understanding why more outdoor cultivators aren’t entering into the new legal regulatory system for cannabis is important for reducing the environmental impacts of cannabis cultivation
When California voters legalized cannabis in 2016, a key argument for legalization was that legalization would benefit the environment. If cannabis growers necessarily operated outside the law, then they had little incentive to comply with environmental regulatory standards. Instead, cannabis growers might trespass on private and public lands, cause significant damage to habitat, use illegal pesticides and chemicals, illegally divert water and dry up streams needed by fi...
CONTINUE READINGThe Hidden Green-Infrastructure Bill
Every year, Congress provides lavish funding for clean energy and climate adaptation. No one notices.
Biden’s green-infrastructure bill is headline news. Republicans are up in arms. Yet every year there’s already a green-infrastructure bill. Hardly anyone notices. Republicans vote for it without a fuss. Why? It’s part of the annual funding bill for the military. The Defense Department remains the biggest single consumer of energy in the country, and it has made major investments in solar power. It also plays a major role in developing new technologies. A...
CONTINUE READINGAnti—Anti-#ClimateEmergency
Whether to declare a climate emergency is debatable. But some critics have gone way overboard.
Should Biden declare a national climate emergency? There are certainly arguments that, on balance, it would be better not to take that step. Some opponents argue that declaring a climate emergency would be horribly anti-democratic, polarizing, and counterproductive. Those arguments seem to me seriously overstated. I’d like to go through the major arguments against declaring a climate emergency one by one. A presidential declaration would be based on the Nati...
CONTINUE READINGWhat Have We Learned from Recent Disasters?
Disasters are getting bigger, badder, and less predictable. We need to adjust.
Hurricanes Harvey and Maria. California wildfires. Superstorm Sandy. The great Texas blackout. The list goes on. These mega-events dramatize the need to improve our disaster response system. The trends are striking: escalating disaster impacts, more disaster clustering, more disaster cascades, and less predictability. We need to up our game. Lisa Grow Sun and I discuss the implications in a new paper, but here are a few of the key takeaways. Escalating im...
CONTINUE READINGThe Turning Tide
Last week featured some remarkable developments relating to climate policy.
Some events last week sent a strong signal that the tide is turning against fossil fuels. Each of the events standing alone would have been noteworthy. The clustering of these events dramatizes an important shift. To paraphrase Churchill, this may not be beginning of the end for fossil fuels, but at least it is the end of the beginning of the campaign against them. Two of the events involved striking decisions in lawsuits in other countries involving fossil fuels...
CONTINUE READINGAnother Historic Climate Court Ruling in the Netherlands
A court orders Shell to cut its emissions, including of its consumers. But will this stand after appeal?
In recent years, The Netherlands has become the leading site of climate change litigation. Contrary to expectations (including my own!), its district, appellate, and supreme courts decided in favor of Urgenda, an upstart environmental organization, ordering the government to more aggressively reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Now the same district court has gone further, again in favor of environmental groups but now against Royal Dutch Shell (“Shell”), the world...
CONTINUE READINGMiami’s New Chief Heat Officer Is a Model for California Cities
Local leaders should embrace the approach
Last month, Miami appointed the country’s first Chief Heat Officer charged with addressing the impacts of extreme heat. Heat is already the leading climate-related cause of death and health impacts, responsible for thousands of US deaths and emergency room visits each year and countless hours of lost productivity and educational attainment. Recent research indicates that over one third of global heat-related deaths (which total tens of millions since the 1990s) are att...
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