On light bulbs, politics, and psychology
Dan has (understandably) been quite outraged at efforts in the Republican-controlled House to eliminate energy efficiency standards for light bulbs (which have been inaccurately portrayed as a flat ban on incandescent bulbs, even though new substitutes are being developed). While these efforts might be seen as purely ignorant orjust politically-opportunistic showboating, I think they in fact reveal a more fundamental problem in environmental law. Traditional incande...
CONTINUE READINGClimate protester DeChristopher gets 2-year sentence
Tim DeChristopher, the young man who bid on federal oil and gas leases as a form of protest against global warming, was sentenced yesterday to 2 years in prison, 3 additional years on probation, and a $10,000 fine. DeChristopher was convicted in March of placing false bids at a federal auction, after his attempt to assert a necessity defense was rejected. There's no question that DeChristopher was properly convicted. I explained earlier that the necessity defense is a l...
CONTINUE READINGAn Unlikely Environmentalist: Samson Raphael Hirsch
Orthodox Judaism today has presented several strong views on many issues, usually centering on hot-button social issues such as gay marriage, or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That's why it was a real surprise for me to read about the strong environmentalist stance of Samson Raphael Hirsch, the founder and true intellectual giant of Modern Orthodox Judaism. Hirsch was anything but a progressive. He loudly condemned Reform Judaism and castigated any Jews who str...
CONTINUE READINGThe Greening of South Korea
Lincoln Davies has a nice post over at Environmental Law Prof about clean energy in South Korea. He discusses a conference relating to Korea's planned change from a feed-in-tariff to a renewable portfolio standard as means of promoting clean energy. Most Americans aren't aware of this, but Korea has embraced "green growth" as a national goal. According to the government: [W]e believe that green growth is the only option if we are to surmount the difficulties the ...
CONTINUE READINGWhite House science advisors call for better ecosystem information
Cross-posted at The Berkeley Blog. If you've never heard of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, you're not alone. It's not a group that's often in the news. But its new report, “Sustaining Environmental Capital: Protecting Society and the Economy," is worth a read. This report does two important things. First, it defends the role of government in protecting the nation's environmental capital, explaining why private actions alone cannot be ...
CONTINUE READINGUnexpected Environmental Heroes
Mammoth Lakes is one of the more popular resort areas in California’s Sierra Nevada, and also one of the more beautiful. It’s popular in part because it as at one of the low points in the Sierra Nevada, allowing for relatively easy backcountry access to both the east and west sides of the mountains. (That is one of the reasons I am here right now!) While much of the Sierra has rugged peaks between 11,000 and 14,000 feet high, here at Mammoth, the crest of the S...
CONTINUE READING“Too Darn Hot”:The Summer of 2011 and the New Normal
DotEarth, the NY Times environmental blog, has a nice posting about how the current heat wave fits into climate-change predictions. It seems clear that the "summer of 2011 is emblematic of the new climatological norms that are emerging as conditions neatly echo longstanding projections of the consequences of steadily raising the concentration of heat-trapping greenhouse gases." Maybe we should change the national anthem to the old Cole Porter song, "It's Too Darn Ho...
CONTINUE READINGA New Environmental Journal
Transnational Environmental Law (TEL) is a peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the study of environmental law and governance beyond the state. It approaches legal and regulatory developments with an interest in the contribution of non-state actors and an awareness of the multi-level governance context in which contemporary environmental law unfolds in a global context. (Full disclosure: I'm on the editorial board.) The first issue will include contributions by, among...
CONTINUE READINGSome Worried Thoughts About Congressional Paralysis
Congress seems on the point of collapse as a viable branch of government. The budget crisis in Washington may yet cause a government shut-down and interrupt basic obligations such as payment of Social Security. In the past, raising the debt ceiling has been routine, but such routine activities have now become nearly impossible. Nate Silver points out that this is not an isolated phenomenon: "Just 23 bills have been signed into law by the president this year, a stagge...
CONTINUE READINGBring Out Your Dead!
A current chant of anti-regulatory zealots is that EPA's programs only prevent "statistical deaths," rather than real deaths. Apparently, they want EPA to provide something like Monty Python's "bring out your dead" scene, which is pictured on the left. Michael Livermore has a good response to this line of argument in Grist: The science showing the harmful effects of particulate matter, or soot, is very strong. The microscopic bits spewed out of smokestacks around ...
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