Why Monitoring Matters
There’s been a lot of discussion here about the failings of the latest Supreme Court environmental decision in Los Angeles County Flood Control District v. NRDC. I don’t really want to pile on with those criticisms – though it is baffling to me that the Court wasted its very limited judicial resources correcting the Ninth Circuit’s interpretation of the Clean Water Act in a case where the stakes of that interpretation were so low, and where the real problems in...
CONTINUE READINGDarwin and Climate Change Adaptation
The Stanford Press Office has released a blurb about new research examining what types of coral are most nimble in adapting to climate change. In the case of humans, it is self evident that more educated, higher income people and nations will have an easier time adapting to climate change. If we anticipate this point, what policies do you embrace? 99% of economists support a carbon tax or cap and trade but given political realities what feasible policies do you ...
CONTINUE READINGWhat to expect from President Obama’s inaugural address
The countdown to President Obama’s January, 21 2013 inauguration begins: there are only ten days left for the President’s speechwriters to put the finishing touches on the President’s second, and final, inaugural address. The inaugural address is the first of two important opportunities President Obama will have in the coming months to describe the course of his second term to the American public (the other being the State of Union, expected sometime in Februar...
CONTINUE READINGUC Berkeley report demonstrates need for strict resource shuffling rules in cap-and-trade
The Energy Institute at Haas, part of UC Berkeley, has a new study that looks at California's rules for regulating electricity importers in the cap-and-trade program. These rules attempt to keep importers from gaming the cap-and-trade system via resource shuffling. The Energy Institute has simulated different counterfactual cap-and-trade rules using 2007 electricity market data. The report makes a good case for setting the default emissions rate rather high, at the ra...
CONTINUE READINGLA River Supreme Court opinion: narrow or broad-reaching?
As Sean posted yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its rather short opinion in Los Angeles County Flood Control District v. NRDC. Rather unsurprisingly, the Court ruled that water that flows from an improved (channelized) portion of a river to an unimproved portion of that same river cannot be considered a "discharge of pollutants" under the Clean Water Act. No party nor amicus, to my knowledge, argued otherwise. The Court asked and answered a question with wh...
CONTINUE READINGMore About the Distributional Impacts of a Carbon Tax
I've posted before about the equity effects of pricing carbon. A new paper from Brookings provides further evidence on the subject. The main conclusions are that a carbon tax is indeed regressive, but the problem could be fixed by spending about 10% of the proceeds on social welfare programs. The authors find that the direct incidence of the tax is regressive in terms of low-income households; the indirect incidence is also regressive but less so. The level of reg...
CONTINUE READINGWhat More Does it Take to Get the U.S to Act on Climate Change?
One standard explanation for why the U.S. has failed to act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is that it isn't worth it for us economically. Conventional wisdom has held that we would experience fewer consequences from a warming planet and could adapt more easily to a changing climate than countries in the developing world. Reducing emissions would, therefore, probably cost us more than we would gain. As Eric Posner and Cass Sunstein wrote in a 2007 article: ...
CONTINUE READINGSupreme Court agrees to hear TX-OK water dispute: Tarrant Regional Water District v. Herrmann
On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review Tarrant Regional Water District v. Herrmann (No. 11-889), an appeal from the 10th Circuit regarding apportionment of the Red River, which forms the southeastern border between Oklahoma and Texas. At issue before the Court is whether it is “OK” for a Texas water supplier to obtain Texas’ allocation of a shared river from within Oklahoma. The Court may also evaluate the constitutionality of Oklahoma statutes th...
CONTINUE READINGSupreme Court overturns Ninth Circuit decision that held L.A. County Flood Control District liable for stormwater pollution in a poorly-reasoned, but narrow, decision
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its opinion in Los Angeles County Flood Control District v. Natural Resources Defense Council. I've blogged about this case before, noting that the Supreme Court's grant of review in this case was based on a completely mistaken premise. (If you're unfamiliar with the case, the linked post explains in detail what the case is about, and may be useful for context. And Rick Frank posted his thoughts about the oral argument here.) T...
CONTINUE READINGEnvisioning the Earth
Here are some cool images from earth satellites. Fans of Benoit Mandelbrot may detect a fractal quality to many of them. The subject of this particular photo ois the Namib-Naukluft National Park, which includes Namibia’s Namib Desert. Here, southwest winds have created the tallest sand dunes in the world, with some dunes reaching 300 meters in height. Despite the lack of water, the park's denizens include oryx, hyenas, jackals, and springbok. As primates, huma...
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