Region: National
Getting to Zero Fatalities
Eliminating traffic deaths and vehicle emissions by 2050? Not as crazy as you might think.
Could we have a transportation system with zero deaths from car crashed and zero emissions? That seems utopian but it’s not as crazy as it sounds. Even if we don’t get all the way to zero, we could get much closer than you might think. In The Road to Zero, RAND researchers provide a roadmap …
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CONTINUE READINGAgency U-Turns
Policy reversals are likely to be more frequent in an increasingly polarized society. How should courts respond?
The Trump Administration is doing its best to wipe out Obama’s regulatory legacy. How will the courts respond to such a radical policy change? The philosophical clash between these last two Presidents is especially stark, but this is far from being the first time that agencies have taken U-turns. This is the fifth time in …
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CONTINUE READINGSenate Races and the Environment
Eight races will determine the balance of power in the Senate.
There’s a lot riding on the 2018 elections. The midterms will decide whether the GOP has a large enough majority to pass legislation weakening environmental protection, whether either house of Congress is willing to investigate misconduct by Pruitt and others, and who Trump can appoint to agencies and the judiciary. I’ll post more detailed information …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Puzzle of Capacity Markets
What are capacity markets and why do they matter?
If you live in the Midwest, East of the Mississippi and North of the Mason-Dixon line, or in Arkansas or Louisiana, the companies that generate your electricity are covered by what are called capacity markets. I’ll bet you didn’t know that. That’s actually part of the problem, because there’s very little transparency and hence little …
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CONTINUE READINGA Trumped-Up Bailout Plan
Legally deficient? Arbitrary? Disguised special interest favors? All par for the course in this Administration.
You couldn’t ask for a more typical example of the Trump Administration at work. Nuclear and coal plants are being closed across the country, unable to compete with cheap natural gas and increasingly cheap renewables. In a desperate effort to support the coal industry, Trump wants to force consumers to subsidize these plants. It’s not …
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CONTINUE READINGScenarios
We live in an uncertain world. Scenario planning can help.
When Shell Oil produced a sophisticated scenario of the path to a carbon neutral world in 2070, a lot people took notice. Shell concluded that the “relevant transformations in the energy and natural systems require concurrent climate policy action and the deployment of disruptive new technologies at mass scale within government policy environments that strongly …
CONTINUE READINGWhat Trump Gives Appalachia With One Hand, He Takes Away with the Other
Ryan Zinke’s public land policies are accelerating the decline of eastern coal.
There is no one who Trump loves more than coal miners, and he has surrounded himself with Appalachian coal miners on important occasions. One of his most fervent pledges was to “end the war on coal.” Yet, Trump’s public lands policies are helping to accelerate the decline of eastern coal. A recent study by researchers …
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CONTINUE READINGFlood Safety, Infrastructure, and the Feds
Standards for levees, seawalls, and other infrastructure urgently need attention.
The federal government is responsible for responding to major floods and runs the federal flood insurance program. It also has millions of dollars of its own infrastructure at risk from floods. Yet the government is failing to deal effectively with flood risks before the fact. Let’s begin with the levees that are the main defense …
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CONTINUE READINGCRISPR Approaches to Environmental Problems
Breakthroughs in gene editing might open the door to improved environmental protections. Or maybe not.
CRISPR is a breakthrough gene editing method. (I can’t refrain from noting that a key role in the discovery was played Jennifer Doudna at Berkeley.) There are potential risks from gene editing to the environment, similar to other types of GMOs. But there may be environmental benefits too. Here are a few that have been …
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CONTINUE READINGMaladaptation
It’s not just that we’re slow in achieving resilience. It’s that often we’re moving in the opposite direction.
Some economic models of climate change come out with low damages because they assume smooth and effective adaptation efforts. That never made much sense. There’s a lot of inertia in social systems, and planning major projects can take a long time. Some of what we’re seeing lately is worse than that, however. We’re seeing cases …
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