Guest Blogger Divya Rao: Confronting Reality: A Lack of Accountability at COP25

Action at Madrid COP25

The Support of Toyota and Other Manufacturers for the Trump Administration's Policy Rollbacks Shows the Need to Confront Corporate Decisionmaking on Energy and Climate

As Cara Horowitz and Idalmis Vaquero discussed in their blog posts, the true highlight of COP 25 has been the numerous youth and indigenous interventions, actions, and disruptions. After spending four days at the COP, I came away from the events surprised by the level of corporate visibility and greenwashing in the side events, but also impressed by the activists asking corporate panelists sharp and insightful questions to try and hold them accountable. At one poi...

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The Decade in Review

Like many humans, the Twenty-First Century’s teenage years were stormy.

“It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.”  That pretty much sums up the ten years from January 2010 to January 2020. As the decade began, Barrack Obama was in the White House and the Democrats controlled Congress but were one vote short of a filibuster-proof majority in the House.  Under Nancy Pelosi’s leadership, the Waxman-Markey bill had passed the House, but it never made it to a vote in the Senate.  When the Democratic majority in the House ...

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COP-Out 25: Why Madrid’s Failure May Not Really Matter

Carbon markets are unlikely to be central to global decarbonization efforts

The 25th United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP) in Madrid ended largely in failure on Sunday, with the parties unable to come to agreement on provisions governing a potential international carbon market. How big a deal is that failure? Like my UCLA Law colleagues, I attended the conference in Madrid and witnessed similar dynamics that they described. I’ve been a skeptic of these UN processes since as long as I’ve worked in the climate field. On one hand, the...

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COP25 in Context, or “How Bad is It?”

Scientists have concluded we should keep global heating below 1.5 degrees to be sure we avoid catastrophic effects

Reflections on Stopping Speeding Locomotives and Falling Off Cliffs

In my last post, I sketched a few of the many intense tensions and contradictions swirling around this year’s Conference of the Parties (COP25) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC). In this post, I’ll try to make some sense of the biggest tension of all, one that folks working on climate are asked about all the time – how to characterize the overall prospects for human welfare in the face of climate change. How bad is it? Is this our last cha...

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Disorientation, Rage, Despair – and Hope? The Contradictions of COP25

COP25

Personal Notes on the Conference of the Parties in Madrid

As you’ve seen from several recent posts (and more to come), the UCLA Law Emmett Institute has had an observer delegation – as we do every few years – at the 25th annual Conference of the Parties (COP25) to the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC). I’ve been there with faculty colleagues Cara Horowitz and Alex Wang, Emmett fellow Siyi Shen, and students Tom Callahan, Divya Rao, and Idalmis Vaquero. I’ll be doing a few posts on what happened – and ...

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BoJo versus Trump on Climate

Why is the GOP such an outlier on climate change?

Boris Johnson is like Trump in many ways, including a casual disregar for truth, but they’re not alike on climate change. Right after his victory, Johnson renewed his pledge to make the UK carbon-neutral by 2050. He called for “colossal new investments. . . to make this country the cleanest, greenest on earth, with the most far-reaching environmental programme.” Like Trump in 2016, Johnson enters office with firm control of the government, but with minority popu...

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Guest Blogger Tom Callahan: The Fallacy of Climate Choice

COP 25 Blumenthal panel climate choice

Promoting Positive Climate Choices at Every Level of Decision-making

One of the undercurrents of the negotiations at COP 25 in Madrid is the lack of leadership from the United States government after the decision to pull out of the Paris Agreement. While the formal decision-making process here only involves nations that are party to the agreement, there are numerous NGOs, business groups and other non-state parties that participate as observers by attending the COP and putting on side events. One of the most interesting parts of the C...

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Making It Work: Administrative Reform of California’s Housing Framework

How recent legislative changes have been the state greater power to enable prohousing policies

This blog post is coauthored by Chris Elmendorf, Eric Biber, Paavo Monkkonen, and Moira O’Neill. As California’s housing crisis swirls through the national news, attention has focused on statewide upzoning bills. Sen. Scott Wiener’s ballyhooed effort to allow 4-5 story buildings near transit was tabled until 2020, but earlier this fall the legislature effectively terminated single-family zoning, authorizing homeowners to add two “accessory” dwellings to thei...

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Guest Blogger Idalmis Vaquero: Women of Color Leading Climate Justice at COP 25

COP 25 photo Global South women and young feminist meet the climate crisis: alternatives, solutions and narrative

Young Advocates Call For More Inclusive and Culturally Responsive Negotiations

Four years after the Paris Agreement was adopted by member countries of the United Nations Framework on Convention on Climate Change, countries are still working out the details on how they will reduce their carbon emissions. This year the Conference of the Parties (COP) 25 is taking place in Madrid, Spain under the leadership of the Chilean government. I am a law student at UCLA School of Law attending these talks as a credentialed delegate, and I have been struck b...

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Coal in 2019: A Tale of Decline

Like Canute & the ocean, Trump may wave his hands, but he can't stop the tide.

Coal is just about the worst possible way of generating electricity in terms of its climate impacts. It’s also a serious public health hazard due to the particulates, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides it produces.  Thus, reducing the use of coal is a high priority.  How did we do in 2019? The short answer is that progress has continued, but there’s a lot more that needs to be done.  Still, considering that for the past three years we’ve had a President who pro...

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