Natural Gas Fracking: Don’t Worry, Be Happy!
When George Washington Law School's Richard Pierce talks about energy, I listen. And a few days ago he posted a short piece with the provocative title, "Natural Gas Fracking Addresses All Of Our Major Problems." (emphasis in original!). If you want to read the nutshell case for why fracking is good, then this is your logical first stop. It's well-argued, well-cited, well-organized, and well-written. How much it addresses the problems with fracking, however, is...
CONTINUE READINGFifth Circuit reverses Gulf of Mexico moratorium contempt ruling
You might remember that after the Deepwater Horizon blowout the Department of Interior issued a six-month moratorium on new deepwater exploratory drilling. An industry consortium challenged the moratorium, winning a preliminary injunction against its enforcement from District Judge Martin Feldman. (I criticized that decision here.) Interior withdrew that first moratorium but subsequently issued a second, nearly identical in its terms. Industry again sought relief from Ju...
CONTINUE READINGLastest IPCC assessment of future climate changes leaked in draft form
We knew the coming Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC, which I discussed briefly here, would make waves--just not this soon. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change produces these assessments every five to seven years. They are the most rigorous and prominent summaries of the science of climate change, crafted by leading scientists from many nations and used by policymakers worldwide. A draft of the Working Group I report, which is not due in final form u...
CONTINUE READINGA new twist in the Christmas tree debate — GloTrees!
(Warning -- tongue firmly in cheek.) Megan and Dan have written on how an environmentally-minded winter holiday enthusiast should choose between a real and an artificial Christmas tree. The comparison already isn't easy, but it could get even more complicated. What if the "natural" tree were genetically engineered to glow in the dark? Two UK graduate students say it could be done. Remember GloFish ("available in five striking colors"!)? The principle is the same -- p...
CONTINUE READINGJane Lubchenco to leave NOAA
Cross-posted at CPRBlog. NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco has announced that she will leave her post at the end of February. Her letter to NOAA employees, reprinted in the Washington Post, cites the difficulty of maintaining a bi-coastal family life. Dr. Lubchenco, a distinguished marine biologist, has put in four years at the helm of NOAA, as much time as reasonably could be expected. She was one of President Obama's earliest nominees, named before his inauguration...
CONTINUE READINGThe Current U.S. Energy Pathway is Paved with Coal, Oil and Natural Gas
How well are we doing, in our efforts to strip fossil fuels from our energy mix? If you want to believe the most recent estimates from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the answer is: not so well. As EIA prepares its 2013 report on the impact of various proposed policy changes, it asks itself: what will the energy mix look like if current law and policy stay in place? EIA has released its answer, and it looks like this: In 2011, the U.S. met 82% of its ...
CONTINUE READINGMayans! Apocalypse! Climate Change!
Mayan apocalypse: panic spreads as December 21 nears Fears that the end of the world is nigh have spread across the world with only days until the end of the Mayan calendar, with doomsday-mongers predicting a cataclysmic end to the history of Earth. That's from a British newspaper, the Telegraph, but you only have to Google "Mayan Calendar" to find lots of similar items. There seems to be no basis at all for the idea that the Mayans thought the world would end at thi...
CONTINUE READINGInternational Trade in Renewable Power Equipment
In the absence of global carbon pricing, how will the growing world economy decarbonize? We all hope that emissions per dollar of GNP will decline faster than GNP grows but how does this happen when explicit incentives to decarbonize aren't embraced? The magic of international trade offers one possibility. In this recent Energy Policy paper, Aparna Sawhney and I argue that one quite optimistic trend is the major growth in exports of wind turbines and solar panel...
CONTINUE READINGShould Environmentalists Oppose Susan Rice for Secretary of State?
My RBC colleague James Wimberley thinks so -- and not because of the fake, nothingburger scandal over Benghazi that the Right has cooked up. Instead, James' argument centers on climate change. As we all know, NRDC's OnEarth broke the story a couple of weeks ago that Rice and her husband hold fairly massive investments in fossil fuels in general, and tar sands in particular: Rice owns stock valued between $300,000 and $600,000 in TransCanada, the company seeking a f...
CONTINUE READINGThe Economist Magazine’s Feature on Climate Adaptation
After a two year delay, I'm excited that reasonable people in the mainstream media (including this week's The Economist Magazine and the Huffington Post ) are willing to talk in a calm intellectual spirit about the ideas presented in my 2010 Climatopolis book. When the book was published, many environmentalists dismissed it as nutty free market stuff that would unintentionally sentence the world's poor to more suffering. You might be surprised to learn t...
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