California full-steam-ahead on cap and trade
Whether or not Californians focused on climate change in voting on Proposition 23 (as Ann and Sean discuss), their rejection of 23 means full steam ahead on climate change regulation. Notably, while the rest of the country leaps back from cap and trade (here's Obama throwing it under the bus in his post-election comments), California is moving ahead with cap and trade policy. Under the state's overall plan for reducing greenhouse gases back to 1990 levels by 2020, th...
CONTINUE READINGProp 23 and What It Says (Or Doesn’t) About Californians’ View of Climate Change
What conclusion should we draw from the drubbing that California gave to Prop. 23, the ballot measure that would have overturned our landmark Global Warming Solutions Act? Andrew Leonard at Salon applauds our voters for affirming "their commitment to tackling the challenge of climate change and our dependence on fossil fuels." But Sean, in his birdseye view of what the election means overall for the environment, is a bit more skeptical. I think I'm with Se...
CONTINUE READINGDoes Proposition 26 Undermine California’s Climate Change Law?
No. Not at all. Legally, we are still all systems go for AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act. First, take a look at the careful analysis that Cara, Sean, and Rhead produced a couple of weeks ago. It notes one extremely important fact about Proposition 26: its retroactive provisions only go back to January 2010, and AB 32 was enacted in 2006. AB 32 explicitly authorizes the California Air Resources Board to impose regulatory fees. Since Proposition 26 ...
CONTINUE READINGElection review: what message did voters send about the environment, and how will politicians react?
It's natural, in reflecting on the recent election, to ask whether and to what extent the results reflect public values about protection of the environment. (Well, at least for me, since I spend my time thinking about these things.) My answer: not much. But the election's impacts on environmental issues will still be significant. While some commenters (such as Joseph Romm, here branding the California election a "climate trifecta") view the defeat of Proposition 2...
CONTINUE READINGFunny, It Doesn’t Look Bluish
The initial results in California last night make it seem like a sane drop of blue in the country. Jerry Brown won for Governor; Barbara Boxer was re-elected; and Proposition 23, which would have reversed the state’s landmark climate change law, was resoundingly defeated. Voters also approved Proposition 25, which allows the state budget to be approved by a simple majority — although retains the 2/3 requirement for tax increases. But look closer. Voters reject...
CONTINUE READINGTipping Points and Feedback Effects
From the title, this could be a posting about the election results. It isn't -- although I do wonder whether the relatively rapid changes we've seen in the House over the past decade are a sign of increased feedback effects. My topic, however, is climate science. The curve at the left shows how feedback effects can reinforce changes. RealClimate has another excellent post discussing the operation of feedback effects in the context of climate change. f is the fee...
CONTINUE READINGTop Ten Reasons To Vote Against Proposition 23
10. To send the nasty Koch brothers a message to stay out of California politics. 9. To send the nasty Texas-based Valero oil company a message to stay out of California politics. 8. To send the nasty Texas-based Tessoro oil company a message to stay out of California politics. 7. To send Meg Whitman a message that California wants environmental leadership (just in case she's elected governor). 6. To tell Congress that leadership on climate change legislati...
CONTINUE READINGWhat Would Conservative Environmental Policy Look Like?
Now that the Republican Party is set to take control of the House, and maybe the Senate, we might want to ask what we might mean by a "conservative" environmental policy. I was thinking about this question the other day, and then by chance came across this passage from Russell Kirk's major work, The Conservative Mind: From to Burke to Eliot. First, here's a little of Burke: One of the first and most leading principles on which the commonwealth and its law are consec...
CONTINUE READINGThe California Attorney General race and the environment
This New York Times article notes why the California Attorney General's race is very important for our state and national environmental and energy policies. As a close observer of that office's work on environmental issues and as a former California deputy attorney general myself, I believe the reporter is surely correct. This race will matter from an environmental perspective. (Co-blogger Dan Farber blogged about this race several months ago, noting that candidat...
CONTINUE READINGRepublicans vow to attack federal climate change efforts
The New York Times reports that senior Republicans are saying they will aggressively attack our administration's environmental and climate change initiatives if their party wins a majority in the House of Representatives. EPA will be on the defensive, using its resources to defend against these attacks rather than move forward with regulatory initiatives that both have been required by the courts and are supported by evidence. At the same time, industry lobbyists - es...
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