October Surprises: A Month of Major Advances in Climate Policy
October has seen major strides toward controlling greenhouse gases.
As the campaign seems to get more and more awful, I thought you might like to hear some good news. Behind the tumult of the campaign, there has been real progress in addressing climate change in the U.S. and around the world. In particular, there were four major advances just this month. The first is that the Paris Agreement is about to go into effect. Before that could happen, the Agreement had to be ratified by at least 55 countries accounting in total for...
CONTINUE READINGBattle for the Senate: North Carolina
An unexpectedly close Senate race in the Tar Heel State.
The North Carolina case features Deborah Ross (D) against incumbent Richard Burr (R). Neither is a well-known figure nationally. Ross was a lawyer and state representative. More surprisingly for a candidate in a Southern swing state, she served as executive director for the state ACLU. Her website reports that she had a 94 percent lifetime score from the North Carolina League of Conservation Voters. (This is the first time I’ve ever seen a reference to a state LCV...
CONTINUE READINGOf Initiative Wars, Plastic Bags and Poison Pills
Deciphering California's (Intentionally) Confusing Plastic Bag Propositions
California's longstanding efforts to eliminate single-use plastic bags from the marketplace and the environment have finally reached California voters. The November 8th general election ballot contains a breathtaking 17 separate propositions--16 proposed initiative measures and one referendum measure. Propositions 65 and 67 both deal with the same subject--a proposed ban on single-use plastic bags. Those dueling measures are confusing--intentionally so. To ...
CONTINUE READINGCutting HFCs under the Montreal Protocol — A few thoughts
Yup, international diplomacy is slow. One year ago, at their last meeting, the parties to the Montreal Protocol decided to proceed with negotiating an amendment to the treaty to limit HFCs. They negotiated that amendment in several sessions over the past year, and adopted it last Friday at the end of their 2016 meeting in Kigali, Rwanda. I posted a discussion of the background issues involved with that decision at the time, and Sarah Duffy posted a discussion of th...
CONTINUE READINGGlobal Climate Cabal Revealed!!
Now it can told! Exclusive interview with cabal leader.
My eyes were opened at last.Last week, one Presidential candidate accused the other of meeting “in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers.” The candidate also spoke of a global conspiracy of multinational corporations and media. Inspired by this speech, I was able to contact a member of this international cabal in their secret headquarters in Zurich. It turns out you just dia...
CONTINUE READINGBattle for the Senate: Missouri
The Missouri Senate seat is unexpectedly in play.
Missouri, the “Show Me” state, wasn’t on my original list of states with close Senate races. But the race has tightened since then, rather surprisingly. It pits incumbent Republican Roy Blunt against Jason Kander, an Afghanistan War veteran who is currently Secretary of State. Kander doesn’t have much of a track record on environmental issues. His website he endorses renewable energy and bemoans a rollback of the state’s renewable portfolio standard. He also...
CONTINUE READINGHope in Kigali
How one step could avoid 0.5°C of warming
Today, with what could be very little fanfare, the world may take one of its largest steps yet to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, all by phasing out a little-discussed chemical used in refrigeration and air conditioning - hydroflourocarbons. Hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, are considered a "short-lived climate pollutant" or "super climate pollutant," a category of pollutants that do not stay in the atmosphere nearly as long as CO2, but that have many times CO...
CONTINUE READINGCalifornia’s Zero-Emission Vehicle Mandate In Need Of Reform
Long-term climate goals depend on addressing the current "glut" of compliance credits
California leads the nation in plug-in electric vehicle sales, with about 40% of the nationwide total happening in the Golden State. While some of that progress is related to the sheer market size here, much of it is due to state policies. And the biggest of those policies is the "zero emission vehicle" (or "ZEV") mandate, which the California Air Resources Board first adopted by regulation in 1990 under its Clean Air Act authority. The program has been modified over ...
CONTINUE READINGBattle for the Senate: Florida
Failed presidential candidate Mark Rubio fights to keep his Senate seat in the Everglade State.
Anyone over 30 probably remembers Florida's role in the 2000 election, when a few hundred votes (and five Supreme Court Justices) swung the election to Bush. Florida remains a swing state today. This race will be closely watched for that reason, as well as the strong contrasts between the candidates' policy views. Compared to most Senators, Mark Rubio has an unusually high national profile, beginning with his surprise path to his Senate seat against more experienc...
CONTINUE READINGBattle for the Senate: Illinois
This race features an environmentally leaning Republican versus a Democratic war hero.
Mark Kirk is an outlier among his fellow GOP Senators. His lifetime score from the League of Conservation voters is 57% -- compare that with many republicans who are at 3% or lower. His opponent, Tammy Duckworth, is a war hero with a lifetime score of 85%, still comfortably above Kirk's. So there's a difference on environmental issues, though less extreme than in many other Senate races. Kirk was born in Champaign, Illinois -- U of I country (Go Illini!) - and g...
CONTINUE READING