$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...
CONTINUE READINGGuest Blogger Ken Alex: State of the State
Ken Alex is a Senior Advisor to Governor Jerry Brown and the Director of the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research. The views expressed in this blog post are his own. Thanks to Legal Planet, the UCLA Law Emmett Center and Environmental Law Center, and Berkeley Law Center on Law, Energy, and the Environment for letting me do the series of blogs. Hopefully, I touched on some of the important issues and trends. I want to note that there is a lot more to tal...
CONTINUE READINGThe House Takes Aim at EPA Regulation of Power Plant Pollution
Last week, the House passed HR 1582 on a 232-181 vote. The law is designed to restrict EPA regulation of power plants, but the House also adopted an amendment that takes a swipe at environmental economists. HR 1582 is mercifully brief and to the point. When EPA proposes a rule that would impose over $1 billion in economic costs, the Secretary of Energy has to assess the impacts of the rule on the energy system and decide whether EPA can actually issue the rule. ...
CONTINUE READINGGuest Blogger Ken Alex: 2030 is Calling
Ken Alex is a Senior Advisor to Governor Jerry Brown and the Director of the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research. The views expressed in this blog post are his own. California’s AB 32 is the most important climate change law in the country. We are in full implementation mode to meet the requirement that California’s greenhouse gas emissions fall to 1990 levels by 2020. Renewables will provide at least 33 percent of power to the grid by 2020, and emiss...
CONTINUE READINGGuest Blogger Ken Alex: Big Data and the Renewable Revolution
Ken Alex is a Senior Advisor to Governor Jerry Brown and the Director of the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research. The views expressed in this blog post are his own. Earlier this year, UCLA’s Center for Sustainable Communities launched an interactive energy map for energy use in most of Los Angeles. It was a long time in coming. The LA Department of Water and Power provided UCLA with substantial amounts of data about energy use, which UCLA then combined ...
CONTINUE READINGProtecting the Safety of Food Imports
Food safety, particularly for imported foods, is a serious problems. Help is on the way -- but slowly, very slowly. According to the NY Times: About 15 percent of food that Americans eat comes from abroad, more than double what it was just 10 years ago, including nearly two-thirds of fresh fruits and vegetables. And the safety of the food supply — foreign and domestic — is a critical public health issue. One in every six Americans becomes ill from eating contamina...
CONTINUE READINGGuest Blogger Ken Alex: Saving Electricity for a Rainy Day
Ken Alex is a Senior Advisor to Governor Jerry Brown and the Director of the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research. The views expressed in this blog post are his own. We are making progress in two more key areas, although California, for now, is not in the lead. Thanks to new developments and a key PUC proceeding, California will once again push the country forward on electrical storage. We are also moving forward on the broader category of demand response,...
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