The Perks of FERC’s Work
Last month, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a ruling that could have a profound effect on the amount of small and medium-sized solar energy generation that states can achieve. Called "distributed generation" or "localized generation," this type of renewable energy has tremendous potential to be generated from the rooftops of our existing buildings and infrastructure. Probably the best policy to encourage distributed generation is the "feed-in ta...
CONTINUE READINGDim Bulbs
Incandescent bulbs may be a waste of energy and money -- but as Politico reports, if you're against them, you're a socialist: Hoping to counter attacks from his right, Rep. Fred Upton is promising to reexamine a controversial ban on incandescent light bulbs if he becomes chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The Michigan Republican told POLITICO on Thursday that he's not afraid to go back after an issue he once supported but that has come under withering a...
CONTINUE READINGSo much for “consensus climate solutions”
Our friend Jon Adler has taken many of us and most progressives to task for not pursuing "consensus solutions" to climate change. What might these consensus climate solutions be? Well, Jon insists that it would look something like a revenue-neutral carbon tax (such as is proposed by the superb Carbon Tax Center) instead of a "big government solution" like Waxman-Markey. I'm quite sympathetic to a revenue-neutral carbon tax. Unfortunately, Jon's allies on the right...
CONTINUE READINGA poor grade for California’s new Rigs-to-Reefs law
Ever gaze up from a Southern California beach and wonder about the fate of the oil and gas rigs dotting the horizon? Fellow blogger Sean Hecht has just published, with UCLA's Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, an assessment of California's new law governing "rigs-to-reefs" conversions--and suggests that lawmakers have much more work to do to get rigs' fates right. AB 2503 authorizes the State, for the first time, to consider allowing oil and gas d...
CONTINUE READINGClimate Change and Providential Irony
Jed suggests that "the belief that climate change can’t be real because God made the earth for us to use is just one instance of a deep and old American practice of enlisting nature to uphold our cultural and political identities – to prove that the world is made for people like us." That may be what people believe, but if so, they have a lousy definition of their own relationship with God. The world can indeed be made for "people like us", but that hardly implie...
CONTINUE READINGWhose Nature? God, the GOP, and Everyone Else
Some Americans say they don’t believe in climate change because they believe in God – or, more exactly, because of what they believe about God. A few weeks ago, the New York Times quoted some Indiana Tea Party activists who explained that, because the world was created for human use and benefit, using its mineral wealth couldn’t possibly be harmful. Then a Republican would-be Chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee turned out to believe that Noah’s ...
CONTINUE READINGGuest blogger Jed Purdy
We're pleased to host Professor Jedediah Purdy of Duke Law School as a guest blogger. Jed is an accomplished scholar and big thinker with a distinctive voice: in his own words, he is a "farm boy (providential laborer), high-country devotee (Romantic), law professor (progressive technocrat), and student of environmental problems." We've had only one guest blogger before - Ken Alex of the California Attorney General's Office - who posted about energy policy, renewabl...
CONTINUE READINGThe Four Corners Coal Plant and Regional Climate Policy
The results of the recent elections in California and elsewhere suggest that the Golden State may be flying solo for many years when it comes to regulating greenhouse gas emissions. While Congress and elected officials in most states have grown even more partisan and climate-theory skeptical, Californians have soundly rejected efforts to cut back on climate regulation. As a result, concerns about “leakage” are likely to grow. Leakage is the term often used to descr...
CONTINUE READINGCalifornia Cap-and-Trade Math
In late October, California Air Resources Board (CARB) released their draft regulations for cap-and-trade under AB 32. I looked at CARB's proposed allocations: the cap, the offset percentage, the reserve percentage and the projected emissions level. Running the numbers allows a few general observations: If covered emitters take full advantage of the 8% allowed offsets, the first year when emitters will need to reduce their actual business as usual (BAU) emissions i...
CONTINUE READINGUCLA Sustainable Technology and Policy Program (STPP): New interdisciplinary program of UCLA Schools of Law and Public Health
The UCLA Sustainable Technology and Policy Program (STPP) has just launched its new website. STPP is an interdisciplinary program based in the UCLA School of Law and the School of Public Health, with partners and affiliated faculty across the UCLA campus. The program's goal is to promote public health and environmental protection by developing and promoting hazard identification methodologies, alternatives analysis techniques, and innovative chemicals policies to ...
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