Popular Support for “Cap and Dividend”
According to a poll by Public Opinion Strategies, there seems to be strong public support for cap and dividend, at least if the question is framed positively. Here is the question along with some key results: “Some Democratic and Republican Senators have proposed an overhaul to America's energy system. The goal is to reduce pollution, make America less dependent on foreign oil, and create jobs. The proposal would make oil and coal companies pay for the pollution they...
CONTINUE READINGSchroeder Confirmed Despite Refusal to Limit Judicial Appointments to Androids.
The Senate has just confirmed Chris Schroeder as head of the Office of Legal Policy by a 72-24 vote. He was apparently controversial because he had spoken favorably of empathy as a judicial virtue -- the opposing position apparently favors the appointment of androids to the bench, such as Star Trek: New Generation's Commander Data. Alas, even on the show, Data is a one-off, and no one knows how to build additional androids. Actually, Schroeder is a long-time envir...
CONTINUE READINGFuture Oil Prices
The Energy Information Agency at DOE has some really interesting projections of future oil use and prices. According to the EIA, in their baseline scenario, "the price of light sweet crude oil in the United States (in real 2007 dollars) rises from $61 per barrel in 2009 to $110 per barrel in 2015 and $130 per barrel in 2030." The reason is rising demand in the developing world: "Total non-OECD energy consumption increases by 73 percent i...
CONTINUE READINGWarmest March on Record
NOAA reported late last week that this March was the warmest since records have been kept (circa 1880). Here's a map of "temperature anomalies" on land, showing where the temperature was warmer or colder than usual: Note that the biggest deviations are in the arctic, which is the area most sensitive to global climate change. Surface sea temperatures were also above normal....
CONTINUE READINGThe 1906 San Francisco Earthquake Revisited
104 years ago today, the earth shook in San Francisco, igniting devastating fires that destroyed the city. But the impact of the fire was greater than just the loss of property and life: Robert Righter argues that the nationwide sympathy for San Francisco helped revitalize the otherwise flagging campaign in the United States Congress to dam the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite. Many people blamed the fire on the lack of a good water supply in the city, as the existing sys...
CONTINUE READINGShould We Run Some Controlled Climate Change Experiments?
I've posted a lost about the uncertainties associated with climate change. A very interesting Yale360 article by Jeff Goodell about geoengineering had a remark about experimentation that started me thinking. Here's the remark: Virtually everyone at the conference agreed that further research into geoengineering is a good idea. “We need to figure out what works and what doesn’t,” David Keith argued. Not surprisingly, conflict arose when the discussion moved on ...
CONTINUE READINGUnintended Consequences and Environmental Policy
Last summer, Los Angeles experienced a rash of water main breaks that at the time baffled city officials responsible for the 7000 plus miles of underground pipes. In a new report, a panel of experts concluded that the city's 2009 water conservation program, which limited lawn watering to Mondays and Thursdays during the summer, increased the number of "dramatic pipeline failures known as blowouts." These blowouts occured, the experts surmise, because of lar...
CONTINUE READING20-year whaling moratorium on the chopping block
You wouldn't know it from the headline of this week's NYT article ("US Leads New Bid to Phase Out Whale Hunting,") but the worldwide commercial-whaling moratorium that has been in place since 1986 is under seige. Countries are meeting this week to work out details of a deal in which the world's three leading whaling nations, Iceland, Norway, and Japan, would for the first time win the blessing of the International Whaling Commision, the whaling world's governing body ...
CONTINUE READINGGleick’s New Water Blog
Readers with an interest in water issues should take a look at Peter Gleick's new blog with the SF Chronicle. Gleick is the head of the Pacific Institute -- and, I'm happy to say, an ERG graduate....
CONTINUE READINGIs Solar Power a Greyer Shade of Green?
Talk about green power is often colorblind, minimizing the darker side of the technologies. Land use and ecological concerns are sometimes raised about wind and solar, but we don't often hear about the toxics and occupational health issues raised by these renewable energy sources. In 2009, the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition issued its a report--Toward a Just and Sustainable Solar Energy Industry--detailing environmental and health concerns associated with this indus...
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