5 Things You Need to Know About Africa
Africa is going to be an increasingly important area in the future, if only because a higher percentage of the human race will be living there. Here are some key things you should know about sub-Saharan Africa: Population growth. The African population will reach 1.2 billion by 2025, and 1.9 billion by 2050. Currently, 40% of the population is under 14, which guarantees high population growth as these children grow up and have children of their own. Water. Onl...
CONTINUE READINGStephen Colbert is a National Treasure
Like Tom Tomorrow. Click here for his must watch clip from Monday's show. http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/423268/january-28-2013/the-word---the-new-abnormal Colbert nails conservative views on climate change. First, deny. Second, when the facts belie denial, accept but refuse to acknowledge human contributions. Finally, throw up your hands and say that even if it's human-caused we can't do anything about it anyway. Colbert may be ...
CONTINUE READINGEnvironmental Law and Policy Events for Couch Potatoes
UC Berkeley and UCLA School of Law's joint Climate Change and Business Research Initiative has produced a number of public events featuring experts on pressing environmental law and policy issues. We now have on-line video recordings of many of them, for those of you who prefer not to leave the comfort of your home or office. They include the following events: Daylong conference on "Saving Public Transit," featuring a keynote by Los Angeles Metro CEO Art Leahy and ...
CONTINUE READINGJudging the Environment
It's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it. Covering the Senate Republicans' continuing obstruction of judicial nominees is about as exciting as watching paint dry, but the good folks at Defenders of Wildlife, one of the nation's most venerable environmental organizations, have decided to invest in doing it, with their vital blog, Judging The Environment. It's run by staff attorney Glenn Sugameli. Senate obstruction thrives in darkness: no one knows what is happe...
CONTINUE READINGD.C. Circuit’s biofuels mandate ruling
The D.C. Circuit issued an opinion last Friday in American Petroleum Institute v. EPA, concerning EPA's biofuels mandate. (N.Y. Times; slip opinion). The part of the mandate at issue required refiners to incorporate higher levels of cellulosic fuel into transportation fuel. Cellulosic biofuel is in the class of "advanced biofuels" that could actually offset greenhouse gas emissions, as contrasted with corn-based ethanol, which generates approximately the same level ...
CONTINUE READINGThe NAACP and the Politics of Race and Regulation
There's a bit of a kerfuffle going on about the NAACP's defense of over-sized soft-drinks. In an amicus brief challenging New York City's new ban on the super-size, the NAACP (joined by the Hispanic Federation and an association of Korean grocers) takes a surprisingly libertarian stance against government regulation. It laments that the ban is "a slippery slope towards government-mandated regulations that curtail consumer choice and unfairly threaten small businesse...
CONTINUE READINGCan Anyone Stop the Filibuster?
The DC Circuit's outrageous opinion on Friday essentially banning recess appointments has brought further chaos to the Age of Dysfunction. Now, President Obama will confront potentially dozens of new filibusters without recourse; it didn't help that less than 24 hours beforehand, the Senate scotched the efforts at meaningful filibuster reform. So what to do now? It seems too late for this session, but you don't win political battles by giving up after one round. ...
CONTINUE READINGCalifornia cap-and-trade offsets challenge rejected
Breaking: California has successfully weathered (at least in the lower court) another challenge to its cap-and-trade program. A state court has affirmed ARB's significant discretion to design offsets protocols that rely on standardized additionality mechanisms, denying a petition that had sought to invalidate those protocols. Argus has the first story on this that I've seen. Court opinion here. At the heart of the case is the contention that ARB's offsets protocols ...
CONTINUE READINGA Case of Intellectual Bankruptcy
It pains me to say this about a fellow alum of my high school, but George Will has apparently reached the point of intellectual insolvency. A case in point: his recent Washington Post op. ed. about climate change. Will begins by setting up a straw man. He slams climate advocates like Obama for supposedly basing their claims on Hurricane Sandy and the unusual hot weather of 2012, and he then implies they're idiots for using U.S. events as evidence of global chang...
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