Region: National

Eco-Friendly Gift Guide

Gift Ideas to Keep Your Holidays Green

To celebrate the holiday spirit, here are some gift ideas for your eco-savvy friends and family. May your holidays be warm (but not too warm) and bright. For the foodie: An “Eat Local” calendar For the techie: A portable solar charger For the minimalist: The gift of carbon offsets For the chef: A reclaimed wood …

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Going for Broke at the Climate Casino

The new Nordhaus book is good as far as it goes. But its analysis is muddled in crucial respects.

I finally had a chance to read Nordhaus’s new book, The Climate Casino, on a long flight.  There are some goods lessons in the book. The book makes the case for serious mitigation, even rhough Nordhaus takes a fairly optimistic view about adaptation. Nordhaus also tells us that “it would be relatively inexpensive to slow …

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Why Pollution Regulations Aren’t Taxes

Opponents of environmental regulations love to call them hidden taxes. But constant repetition doesn’t make this idea true.

If you’ve seen a statement that regulations are hidden taxes, that’s not too surprising.  Googling  “regulation hidden taxes” produces over three million hits.  But in fact, pollution regulations and taxes are completely different. The reason is simple. A tax removes value  from the private sector.   Environmental regulations simultaneously remove value  from one part of …

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A solar energy fight in Arizona

The rising political power of residential solar power

There’s a fight over renewable energy occurring in Arizona right now.  The state’s largest public utility asked state regulators for permission to greatly increase the fees paid by homeowners who have solar power on their houses.  The utility’s argument is that the increase in solar power produced by these houses is putting a burden on …

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Conspiracy!

Even as conspiracy theories go, the

Some members of Congress — not to mention any number of bloggers — think climate change is a hoax.  Most famously, Senator Inhofe has said: With all of the hysteria, all of the fear, all of the phony science, could it be that manmade global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American …

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A Follow-up on the NYT’s Environmental Coverage

Environmental journalism in decline at the NYT

  Last March, the New York Times killed its Green blog and disassembled its environment desk, distributing the staff into other units.  Jayni noted the possible concern that this change might result in diminished resources for environmental coverage at the Times; she also noted the positive spin that some Times people put on the change, …

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Is Climate Change a Bulldozer or Bullet Train?

How fast will climate change happen? Maybe faster than we expect, according to the National Academy of Sciences.

We’re in the early stages of climate change — just how much depending in large part on whether we control our emissions.  But how quickly will this happen?  Is it a bulldozer we can dodge or a bullet train that’s too fast to avoid?  That makes a lot of difference in terms of our ability …

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The Significance of EPA’s Proposed Power Plant Standards

Although they won’t have immediate impacts, EPA’s proposed rules for new coal plants will indirectly help shape the future of the industry.

There’s an uproar over EPA’s proposed rules for CO2 emissions from new coal plants, even though no one expects anyone to build a new coal plant for at least a decade.  I’ve argued (here and here) that the industry won’t have standing to challenge the rules because they won’t have any imminent impact.  In fact, …

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The Filibuster and the Environment

In the short run, limiting the filibuster will strengthen the hands of environmental regulators. What about the long run effects?

The filibuster arguably served a useful function when it allowed the minority to block action in extraordinary cases where its views were especially intense.  It became no longer tolerable when it became a routine barrier to Senate action. Last week, the Senate abolished filibusters for nominations (except the Supreme Court). What does this mean for environmental …

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The Rhetoric of Cap and Trade

Different ways of framing the concept of cap and trade help drive the public debate.

Discussions of cap and trade tend to frame it in various ways, which often skews the debate.  These different frameworks guide the thoughts of both supporters and critics, sometimes in surprising ways.  There are four different ways to talk about cap and trade, and they tend to lead the debate in very different directions. The …

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