High Speed Rail To…Corcoran?
The saga of high speed rail in California continues. Since state voters approved a bond measure in 2008 to authorize construction of a system linking north and south, the California High Speed Rail Authority has faced lawsuits over its unfortunate planned route away from the population centers of the northern Central Valley, opposition from wealthy suburbanites south of San Francisco to the portion that would link the city to San Jose, and a huge funding shortfall to...
CONTINUE READINGWhat If They Gave a Climate Summit and Nobody Came?
Last year about this time, everyone was excited about Copenhagen. UCLA Law School even sent its own delegation. President Obama was going to come. It was the biggest thing in climate since Kyoto -- maybe bigger, since now the US had an administration that believes in science. Now? Not so much. The coverage of Cancun is about as empty as the picture to the right. Take a look at your newspapers. Wikileaks. Don't Ask Don't Tell. President Obama's morally out...
CONTINUE READINGBottles and cans, bisphenol-A, and chemical regulation
The online magazine Yale Environment 360 has published an informative and rather frightening interview with Frederick vom Saal, a biologist at the University of Missouri’s Endocrine Disruptors Group, about bisphenol-A and what he sees as a completely broken regulatory system for managing hazards from chemicals. Elizabeth Kolbert, known recently for her stellar journalism in the New Yorker about climate change's causes and impacts, interviewed Professor vom Saal, a l...
CONTINUE READINGNY Times Triples on Climate Change
The NY Times has three op-eds this morning dealing with climate change: An op. ed. by Bruce Usher argues for a clean energy strategy: "The United States still has a very long way to go to curtail emissions, but the states are heading in the right direction, and national energy policy must build on their efforts. Congress should extend federal financing, tax credits and loan guarantees for renewable energy projects and for upgrading transmiss ion lines. It should also d...
CONTINUE READINGOur strawberries’ safety: will California approve methyl iodide this year?
As Margot Roosevelt reports in the Los Angeles Times, California's Department of Pesticide Regulation has signaled that it will make a decision before Governor Schwarzenegger leaves office about whether to approve the use of methyl iodide as a strawberry fumigant. Farmworker advocacy groups and environmental advocates fear the pesticide will be approved, and are planning to make a pitch to incoming Governor-elect Jerry Brown about why the pesticide shouldn't be approve...
CONTINUE READINGBlack Friday Reflections on Happiness, Consumption, and Sustainability
As discussed in a fascinating new book by Derek Bok, psychologists have been busily researching a new set of issues relating to happiness. As a result of this research, psychologists are beginning to develop a deeper understanding of the factors that control well-being. Well-being is a multi-dimensional concept that includes objective factors such as health, but a key factor is subjective happiness. People tend to overestimate the effect that life events like winning the...
CONTINUE READINGCommunity Planning: What Do People Want?
Gallup has published an interesting poll about the qualities that people value in communities. They conducted a poll to find out what made people feel attached to their communities. The top three on the list are: Social offerings are the top driver of attachment in 2010. . . . This includes the availability of arts and cultural opportunities, availability of social community events, the community's nightlife, whether the community is a good place to meet people, and wh...
CONTINUE READINGEmpty Plates
Many of us will have plenty of food on the table tomorrow. Indeed, many of us will eat more than is really good for us. But the U.N. reports that the global food situation is quite different, as explained by the NY Times: Global grain production will tumble by 63 million metric tons this year, or 2 percent over all, mainly because of weather-related calamities like the Russian heat wave and the floods in Pakistan, the United Nations estimates in its most recent repor...
CONTINUE READINGGreen Housing, High-Tech Aspirations
For some holiday-time green inspiration, be sure to check out Lumenhaus, a dynamic new housing concept developed by Virginia Tech grad students, and currently on display in Chicago's Millennium Park....
CONTINUE READINGCEQ finalizes guidance for categorical exclusions
Cross-posted at CPRBlog. The White House Council on Environmental Quality has issued the first of three expected final guidance documents for federal agencies implementing the National Environmental Policy Act. This one, which covers the use of categorical exclusions, is an excellent start. NEPA is the "look before you leap" environmental law. It requires that federal agencies publicly evaluate environmental impacts before taking action. That means preparing an Environ...
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