Energy & Environment in the Indiana Governor’s Race
Whither the Hoosier State?
Governors’ races don’t get as much publicity as the national contests. Most governors’ races are off-year elections, giving them even less visibility, but a minority of states do hold these elections in presidential election years. Despite their lack of national visibility, the outcomes matter. We live in a federalist system, and states have a significant ability to shape environmental and energy policy. They can cooperate with and even go beyond federal policy, o...
CONTINUE READINGBattle for the Senate: A Ten State Roundup
The stakes for environment and energy policy are high in this year's Senate elections.
Control of the Senate is important for many reasons, including the majority party’s control over the agenda and its power to launch investigations. Given that the Republicans are in such a strong position in the House, it matters even more than usual which party controls the other chamber. The parties are far apart on many issues, notably including environmental and energy policy. This is the last in a series of blog posts on the critical races. Previous posts ha...
CONTINUE READINGWhat’s The Future Of California’s High Speed Rail System?
Join My KALW Radio Conversation Tonight With Authority Chair Dan Richard At 7pm
California's high speed rail system has been moving at a low speed since voters approved a bond issue to launch it in 2008. That ballot measure authorized a bullet train from San Francisco to Los Angeles and eventually Anaheim, at speeds of 220 miles per hour and stops in Central Valley cities like Fresno and Bakersfield. The total trip time would be no more than 2 hours and 40 minutes between the two big cities, at fares less than airplane travel. The rationale for t...
CONTINUE READINGOctober 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...
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