The Good, the Bad and the Ugly about Coal
Coal is in the news these days. Coal is, of course one of the most abundant fossil fuels in the world. It is also one of the dirtiest, both from a conventional air pollution standpoint and from a climate change perspective. Conventional coal-fired power plants emit, for example, about double the carbon dioxide that combined cycle natural gas plants emit. And coal-fired plants in the U.S. release more hazardous air pollutants than any other industrial source. So ...
CONTINUE READINGHow much of the grid can be renewable?
How far can we go in converting our power supply to renewable sources? On June 15th, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory provided a partial answer when it released a “Renewable Energy Futures Study.” The team undertaking this analysis was comprised of experts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as from various national labs, including the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The report finds that we have the ability today to operate th...
CONTINUE READINGEmmett Center and NRDC Publish New Report on the Environmental, Energy, and Fiscal Benefits of Smart Roofs
My colleague and co-blogger Cara Horowitz has just published a new report on the potential benefits of adoption of "smart roofs" throughout Southern California. Looking Up: How Green Roofs and Cool Roofs Can Reduce Energy Use, Address Climate Change, and Protect Water Resources in Southern California, co-authored with UCLA Law alumnus Noah Garrison of NRDC, concludes that green roofs and cool roofs would save energy and money, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and conse...
CONTINUE READINGHow to Turn a Forest Into a Desert
Anyone familiar with the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Massachusetts v. EPA will also know Georgia v. Tennessee Copper, the landmark 1907 decision used by the Massachusetts court to hold that states have standing to challenge EPA's failure to promulgate climate change regulations. Courtesy of the Journal of American History, I have discovered that there is a recent full-length book on the Tennessee Copper decision. The author is Duncan Maysilles, a environment...
CONTINUE READINGThe T-Shirt’s Tale
After letting it sit on my shelf for about a year, I finally got around to reading Pietra Rivoli's book, The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy. The subtitle is "An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade." That's accurate but makes the book sounds pretty dry and academic. The book actually manages to be both substantive and entertaining, a very tricky combination to pull off. Pietra was at a student anti-globalism rally where ...
CONTINUE READINGRed Mitt, Blue Mitt, Old Mitt, New Mitt
Mitt was once the governor of a Blue state. Now he's appealing to voters in Red states. Perhaps it's no surprise that New Mitt's views are the opposite of Old Mitt's views. A NY Times editorial this morning highlights Romney's changes of position and just how far right he has moved on environment and energy issues: The man who once worried about climate-driven sea-level rise in poor countries like Bangladesh now says things like “My view is that we don’t know w...
CONTINUE READINGLegal Planet reviews the IPCC
Congratulations to our LP colleagues Sean Hecht and Dan Farber for having been designated as expert reviewers of the IPCC 5th assessment report, to be published in 2014. They will be reviewing the drafts issued by Working Group II, which assesses climate change impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability. The IPCC's assessment reports, written every five to seven years, have not been without controversy but remain the most authoritative and prominent summaries of ...
CONTINUE READINGLearning About Renewable Energy in Dialogue with Al Gore and Steve Chu
Two of my colleagues, Jennifer Granholm and Steve Weissman, offered an exciting new course this semester, culminating in a visit with the chair of FERC and with Energy Secretary Chu. Each student examined the renewable energy programs and opportunities in one particular state and then worked as part of a regional team to design an initiative to attract a hypothetical pool of federal grants to their region. The result was series of state-specific reports and five compr...
CONTINUE READINGMourning An Uncommon Student of the Commons
Elinor Ostrom, winner 0f the Nobel economics prize, died earlier today. She is best known for her work on how groups manage common resources such as fisheries. The "tragedy of the commons" is a theory that these common resources will inevitably be destroyed unless they are privatized or regulated by governments. Professor Ostrom showed that communities have managed to create and enforce social norms to protect common resources without recognizing private property r...
CONTINUE READINGEJ Advocates Renew Efforts to Block Cap and Trade
Environmental justice advocates continue their campaign to halt a key portion of California's proposed climate regulations. According to Greenwire, they have recently filed a complain with U.S. EPA claiming that the proposed cap-and-trade regulation is discriminatory. Specifically, their complaint is this: "Cap and trade allows them to buy allowances from other facilities or offsets from out of state or even internationally, denying communities next to refineries a...
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