Signs of the (NY) Times
The Times has two interesting environmental stories today. Both are worth reading. They relate in different ways to climate change, but they're both interesting even if climate change isn't an issue that excites you. The first and most important story is about melting of permafrost in the Arctic. Huge amounts of carbon are locked up in the permafrost. Current estimates are that carbon releases due to warming of the permafrost could equal 10-30% of current human ...
CONTINUE READINGGovernor’s Conference on Extreme Climate Risks & California’s Future
Today I attended the California Governor's Conference on Extreme Climate Risks and California's Future, held at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. It was a lively event with speakers including Governor Brown, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, Chair of the UN IPCC, Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Group, former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and a host of distinguished scientists, economists, and policymakers. The backdrop of the California Academy of Sciences set...
CONTINUE READINGMore Forest Greenwashing: Asia Pulp & Paper and Fake Certifications
In the firmament of environmental organizations, the World Wildlife Fund is about as centrist and mainstream as you are going to get. For many years, it was associated with the sorts of Republicans that Dan highlights in his post below: those who took the "conserve" part of conservative seriously. That's why the report it issued yesterday, slamming forest despoiler Asia Pulp & Paper, carries such a wallop. (One is tempted to say that it is learning from that oth...
CONTINUE READINGCongressional Dim Bulbs at Work Again
The House of Representatives is continuing its campaign to increase electricity bills, harm a domestic industry, and create regulatory uncertainty. According to E&E, the House appropriations bill "Eliminating funding for light bulb efficiency standards is especially poor policy as it would leave the policy in place but make it impossible to enforce, undercutting domestic manufacturers who have invested millions of dollars in U.S. plants to make new incandescent bul...
CONTINUE READINGWhy The Expiration Of The Payroll Tax Cut Hurts The Environment
As Congress wrangles over the expiration of the payroll tax cut at the end of this month, environmentalists should note that the impacts of the expiration go beyond economics. Some environmental goodies will die with the soon-to-expire package of tax benefits, barring congressional action. For starters, I received this message in an email from my employer-sponsored transit benefit service, which allows me to purchase transit passes with $230 worth of pre-tax income eac...
CONTINUE READINGFour Great Republican Environmental Leaders
Teddy Roosevelt was an early conservation, who fought even as a young man to help preserve Yellowstone National Park from commercial exploitation. As President, he created the national forest system, TR created the Tongass and the Chugach forest reserves in Alaska. In Hawaii, he set several small islands aside as the Hawaiian Islands Bird Reservation, and in Florida he created the Pelican Island Bird Reservation. Other protected areas included Mount Olympus (Washingt...
CONTINUE READINGRethinking Job Searches for Environmental Lawyers
A couple of people have written to me wondering why I posted the RGGI job. It isn't really a law or a policy position, they say: really more like a glorified administrative assistant. I don't read it that way, but there are two ways to respond to the complaint, with the second one providing some important advice for public interest-minded environmental lawyers in today's job market. The first answer is the easiest: why do we assume only that lawyers and policy pro...
CONTINUE READINGRGGI, RGGI, RGGI…..
As long as we're at it, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative has posted an announcement for a potentially important job opportunity: RGGI, Inc. seeks to hire a program coordinator to support the implementation of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a cooperative effort of Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector. The Program Coordinator will provide administrative, project management and program coordin...
CONTINUE READINGHLS ISO PD
Our friends at Harvard Law School asked us to spread the word about their search for a senior attorney to serve as policy director for their environmental law program. The Policy Director will lead the policy component of the HLS Environmental Law and Policy Program and work closely with environmental law faculty, who will determine the Program’s priorities. More details here....
CONTINUE READINGHow Environmentalism Can Strengthen the Middle Class
At the end of an interesting and constructive piece, David Frum stumbles on the idea: [T]he U.S. needs to reconsider the way it finances Medicare and the Social Security retirement system. The payroll tax has become more and more important to U.S. finances since 1980. Before the crash, payroll taxes supplied almost 40% of all federal revenues. These taxes fall heaviest on middle-income Americans. President Obama's payroll tax holiday expires at the end of this year. As...
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