What Does Climate Change Mean for Water Rights?
Dan Farber and I, along with Berkeley economist Michael Hanemann, have a new report out on climate change and water rights in California. The report—Legal Analysis of Barriers to Adaptation by California’s Water Sector—was prepared by Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment, and it can be downloaded here. The report was released by the California Energy Commission's Public Interest Energy Research (PIER) Program. The idea behind the rep...
CONTINUE READINGDrive a Stake Through Ethanol’s Heart!
Okay, that's even worse than a mixed metaphor: that's a Friedmanism. But it still applies today. Reuters reports: Two U.S. governors asked the United States government on Tuesday to waive this year's mandate for making ethanol from corn, adding pressure on it to relieve meat producers from high corn prices spurred by the worst drought in more than 50 years. As legendary Hollywood screenwriter William Goldman once commented, "nobody knows anything." But even then, eve...
CONTINUE READINGInterior, Defense and Energy Departments Team Up to Advance Renewable Energy on Public Lands
The renewable energy side of President Obama’s “all-of-the-above” energy strategy received a significant boost in the past two weeks, with a veritable relay of Department of Energy, Interior and Defense actions on clean energy. On July 24, the Department of Energy (DOE) and Department of the Interior (DOI) released the Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) for solar energy development in six southwestern states—Arizona, California, Colorado, N...
CONTINUE READINGEnergy Forecasts, Accuracy and Climate Change
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) provides very important forecasts of energy prices, consumption, efficiency and so forth. The EIA produces short, long term and annual outlooks that are widely regarded as among the best and most independent forecasts of the state of the nation's energy use. The agency even has statutory authority to operate independent of political influence in order to ensure accurate forecasts. And yet, the EIA forecasts are only...
CONTINUE READINGThe Puzzling Silence Surrounding Richard Mourdock’s Consulting Business
Richard Mourdock, as you may recall, is the Tea Party candidate who defeated Richard Lugar to win the Republican Senate nomination in Indiana. In the course of researching Mourdock's positions, I took a look at his career to see how that may have helped shape his views. In doing so, I ran into a bit of a puzzle. Mourdock is a former oil company geologist and coal company executive. But his most recent job before running for public office is a bit mysterious. I found a...
CONTINUE READINGWill Driving a Prius Save the Planet?
John Voelcker says no, and he is right (h/t TPM). In fact, he is so clearly right that I am not sure why one would write this piece. Indeed, I'm a little suspicious of the hidden agenda here. Voelcker points out five things that make driving a Prius Not The Savior Of Planet Earth. They are, essentially: 1. It's better to drive an electric car, which is a Zero Emission Vehicle. To be sure, as Voelcker acknowledges, this will turn on the nature of the power g...
CONTINUE READINGThe role of science in climate politics
Jonathan in his recent post and his comments to that post made a big point of emphasizing the importance of science as the basis for action in terms of climate change. He also emphasized his belief that the denial of climate change by leading Republicans in the current campaign is an unprecedented rejection of science (at least since World War II). I don’t disagree with any of Jonathan’s points. But I also don’t think that science is going to be what (if anyth...
CONTINUE READINGCruz, Fischer and Mourdock: Three Tea Party Senate Candidates Versus the Environment.
Tea Party candidates defeated less extreme conservatives in three GOP Senate nominating contests. Their environmental views are ultra-Right Wing. These candidates should be right on your wavelength -- if you think that there's a plan for U.N. world domination, that EPA should be gutted or abolished, and that climate change is a deliberate hoax by scientists. Ted Cruz is running in Texas. He says cap and trade is “the largest energy tax in history, which would take t...
CONTINUE READINGPaul Ryan, Big Oil, and the Environment
Now that Romney has announced his choice of Paul Ryan as his running mate, I thought it would be worth taking a quick look at his environmental positions. Environment and energy haven't been signature issues for him, but he's consistently been a good friend of the oil industry. On general environmental issues, apart from his budget cutting efforts, there's not much to report. His House website's environmental tab is mostly devoted to local Wisconsin issues (maintainin...
CONTINUE READINGCan We Evaluate the Likely Effects of Safety Regulation Before the Regulation is Implemented?
California's DTSC is proposing important new consumer product safety regulation. The details about this regulation are posted here. My prospective economic analysis of the regulation is posted here. An earlier draft of this analysis was co-written with Professor J.R DeShazo of UCLA....
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