Katrinas Yet to Come
A group of Yale economists have produced a sobering paper about the effect of climate change on hurricane damage in the United States. What makes the report especially notable is that the leader of the group, Robert Mendelsohn, is on the more conservative end of the spectrum in terms of climate economists. Here is the authors' description of the study, with the key conclusion highlighted: A damage function is estimated from historic hurricane data to measure the im...
CONTINUE READINGEnergy Storage in California by 2020: A New Report From the California Energy Commission
Yesterday, the California Energy Commission's Public Interest Energy Research (PIER) program released a strategic assessment of energy storage technologies in California by 2020. The report was prepared by a three-campus University of California team, including Berkeley Law, UC Los Angeles, and UC San Diego. Along with co-blogger Steve Weissman and Jessica Intrator (who did the bulk of the research and drafting on the policy side), I served as principal investigator and ...
CONTINUE READINGAdministration reportedly will put off Keystone XL decision
The Washington Post is reporting that the Obama Administration will study alternative routes for the Keystone XL pipeline, delaying a final decision on the pipeline until after the 2012 elections. There had been a perception that the Administration felt caught between environmentalists and unions on the pipeline issue. Nebraska's opposition to the current proposed route, which would take the pipeline over the Oglalla Aquifer, provides either a convenient excuse for delay...
CONTINUE READINGClimate Change in Living Color
Richard Muller's research group has a video that shows changes in surface temperature over the past two centuries. (He's the physicist who took an independent look at the climate record; climate skeptics loved him until it turned out he had some inconvenient data.) It's pretty hard to miss what's happening: big-time climate change. Here's the link. It's worth watching the whole thing, especially the post-1950 changes....
CONTINUE READINGAnother edition of good news, bad news
The bad news is about climate change (no surprise). The more we learn, the more daunting the problem appears. Cases in point: A column in the journal Nature (subscription required) provided the short version of a report issued this past spring by the California Council on Science and Technology on what it will take for California to achieve the 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels mandated by AB 32 and Executive Order S-3-05. The bottom line? Curr...
CONTINUE READINGEPA sends GHG NSPS rules to OMB
On Tuesday, Nov. 4, EPA sent its proposed GHG rule for power plants to the Office of Management and Budget. Not a widely reported story, perhaps because the internet was too busy misquoting EPA Administrator Jackson, who was speaking at Berkeley Law at the time. Or perhaps because we do not actually get the proposed regulations until OMB gives its approval. Cleantechnica and the LA Times have some background info. The rule, "Greenhouse Gas New Source Performance...
CONTINUE READINGGOP Postmodernism Continues Apace
It's bad enough that Republicans have declared war on science, and war on facts: now they are declaring war on math. Newt Gingrich says that the Congressional Budget Office should be abolished, mainly it will tell him things that he doesn't like. As Brian Beutler of TPM notes, any attempt to repeal health care reform will increase the deficit, and the Republicans don't want to have that headline. But this is more than short-term politics: it is long-term ideology, a...
CONTINUE READING2012 California Water Law Symposium: register now
Registration is now open for the 2012 California Water Law Symposium, to be held Saturday, January 21, 2012. The Symposium is a remarkable event, launched in 2005 by a consortium of law students from Bay Area schools. This eighth edition is made possible by the cooperative efforts of students from Berkeley Law (this year's host), Golden Gate University School of Law, University of San Francisco School of Law, UC Davis School of Law, and UC Hastings College of the Law. In...
CONTINUE READINGUC Berkeley / UCLA Law Conference on Local Government Climate Change Policies
The UC Berkeley and UCLA Schools of Law are holding a free public conference at UC Berkeley on Friday, December 2nd to discuss local government climate change policies. Conference speakers include some of the state's top policy, business, and environmental leaders, who will report on promising ways that cities and counties can address climate change and clear the path to a local clean energy future. The two law schools present this conference as part of the Business ...
CONTINUE READINGWho Killed the Ozone Rule?
It seems that Bill Daley did: Obama’s surprise move to block an ozone regulation from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) followed immense pressure from industry trade associations, which made numerous personal appeals to White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley. Daley met with the heads of several business groups more than two weeks before Obama withdrew the regulation — an unusual level of senior White House involvement in the regulatory process. “We saw...
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