A New/Old Jewish Environmental Ethic: Don’t Go About Like a Merchant
Even the most cursory look at Jewish ethics will reveal a vehement -- at times almost obsessive -- concern with preventing gossip. Even little kids grow up being warned against לשון הרע ("Lashon Hara"), literally the "evil tongue" -- a horrific sin in traditional Jewish ethics. The great rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan (1838-1933, and no relation as far as I know although it would be cool) wrote an entire book about it, the Chofetz Chaim, which is still studied to...
CONTINUE READINGFresno High Speed Rail Lunch Event — Tuesday August 20th
Forget Elon Musk's Hyperloop -- high speed rail is coming to California. Construction is slated to begin in California's San Joaquin Valley in the next few months (and possibly sooner). What will the impact be on the Valley’s cities, farms, and pocketbooks? How can Valley leaders ensure that the system maximizes the economic and environmental benefits for residents? Join the UC Berkeley and UCLA Schools of Law for a lunchtime forum in downtown Fresno on high speed r...
CONTINUE READINGThe Long, Losing War Against Government Regulation
Since the time the laws were passed, the anti-regulatory movement has fought to roll back the health and safety regulations of the 1970s. The battle has been fierce. As with the trench warfare of World War I, there have been many loud and hard-fought battles, but the outcome has generally been to move the lines only a small distance. Moreover, anti-regulatory forces seem to be very slowly giving up ground. The trend is for new legislation to expand and strengthen regulat...
CONTINUE READINGGetting Permission to Go Solar
Last summer, Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment (CLEE) issued a report, at the request of Governor Jerry Brown, identifying barriers to the accelerated deployment of “distributed” renewable energy projects. This document was the result of a stakeholder conference hosted by the Governor, located on campus at UCLA, and substantively managed by Berkeley Law’s CLEE. One of the key findings was that as the cost of solar photovoltaics continued to ...
CONTINUE READINGThe Future of California: An Economist’s Perspective
On Tuesday August 13th, I will give a Chair's Lecture at the California Air Resources Board on the "Future of California". All of the details (including my slides and key points) are posted here. ...
CONTINUE READINGIt Really IS A Big Sky!
For the last few days, I have been at my wife's family reunion in northwestern Montana, where her great-grandfather and great-grandmother came as homesteaders in the late 19th century. I had never been to Montana before, and at least this area is often stunningly beautiful: no wonder many Montanas have taken to calling their state the "Last, Best Place." Right now, I am looking over Flathead Lake, the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi, which is really...
CONTINUE READING$60 Trillion Dollars in Damage Revisited
Read this new entry about the $60 Trillion dollars of damage expected to be caused by the melting Arctic. "And what of Miami? It contributed $263 billion to gross domestic product in 2010, according to the Bureau of Economic Advisors. Caught between rising seas to the east and the Everglades to the west, the city is doomed to drown. Abandoning Miami means not only moving or abandoning the businesses who create its gross domestic product, but walking away from its pric...
CONTINUE READINGLawrence Summers as Fed Chair: The View From Climate Policy
Lots of debate in Blogistan and elsewhere about President Obama's apparent desire to appoint Larry Summers as Fed Chair. We know (or at least we think we know) that he is brilliant, but he has a strange tendency to get matters of judgment wrong. He supported the abolition of Glass-Steagall, endorsed deregulation of the financial industry, and seems to have little desire to admit that he got these things wrong. Plus, there are sexist overtones to the seeming refus...
CONTINUE READINGRoping in the GOP on conservation
In few policy contexts has the right's shift rightward been more apparent, over the last few decades, than on environmental issues. Not that long ago, environmental values fit nicely within the GOP. Teddy Roosevelt created the national parks; the National Environmental Policy Act, one of our mainstay federal environmental statutes, passed the Senate unanimously, won all but 15 votes in the House, and was signed into law by Nixon. As some contemporary but outnumbered R...
CONTINUE READINGREINS or SPURS?
When it's not busy passing yet another bill to repeal healthcare reform, the House of Representatives likes to pass an even more sweeping attack on effective government called REINS. REINS is one of those bills that seems suspect from reading the title alone -- it's one of those gimmicky titles ("Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act") that usually signals a lack of serious thought by legislators. REINS basically requires congressional approval for a...
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