…in which I become petty and backbiting — sort of
Could this be true? University of Colorado law professor Paul Campos notes in The New Republic that Solicitor General Elena Kagan, former Harvard Law School dean and current front-runner to succeed John Paul Stevens has published very little: three scholarly articles, two shorter essays, two brief book reviews, and two other minor pieces. Compare this record to those of the three other law professors most commonly mentioned as potential replacements for Justice John Pau...
CONTINUE READINGHeads in sand, oil in water
Cross-posted at CPRBlog. As oil drifts on and offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, forcing the closure of wildlife refuges and more fishing grounds, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has called a temporarily halt to new offshore drilling while his staff prepare a report on the disaster and even Republicans in Congress are calling for new investigation of the troubled Minerals Management Service. Clearly, things didn't go as planned on the Deepwater Horizon. Notwithstanding R...
CONTINUE READINGHow Did It Happen?
An article in today's Washington Post has some useful background on oil-well blowouts: Blowouts are infrequent, because well holes are blocked by piping and pumped-in materials like synthetic mud, cement and even sea water. The pipes are plugged with cement, so fluid and gas can't typically push up inside the pipes. Instead, a typical blowout surges up a channel around the piping. The narrow space between the well walls and the piping is usually filled with cement, so t...
CONTINUE READINGPost-Mortem on Copenhagen
Der Spiegel has a story based on tapes of the behind-the-scenes meetings of world leaders. The headline says it all: The Copenhagen Protocol: How China and India Sabotaged the UN Climate Summit. As usual, the French assessment was the most eloquent: The words suddenly burst out of French President Nicolas Sarkozy: "I say this with all due respect and in all friendship." Everyone in the room, which included two dozen heads of state, knew that he meant precisely the ...
CONTINUE READINGChina’s Growth in Energy Usage Truly Alarming
Cara blogged earlier this week about the fact that U.S. emissions were down "a whopping 7 % in 2009." Just when you might have been thinking that we are headed in the right direction on the climate change front, today's New York Times has a distressing story about Chinese emissions. The take home point: Coal-fired electricity and oil sales [in China] each climbed 24 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, on the heels of similar increases in the fourth qua...
CONTINUE READINGObama’s Science Advisor Speaks at Berkeley
On Earth Day, Presidential science advisor John Holdren delivered the ERG Annual Lecture at Berkeley. His topic was Science and Technology for Sustainable Well-Being: Priorities and Policies in the Obama Administration. He had many insights to offer on science and public policy, particularly with regard to energy and climate issues.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsMyTG4ZXcM&feature=channel]...
CONTINUE READINGUS climate emissions down a whopping 7% in 2009
The arm of the US Dept of Energy that tracks GHG emissions has come out with final numbers for 2009 emissions. Turns out that last year saw the largest absolute and percentage drop in US CO2 emissions since we began tracking the numbers decades ago. The EIA's report is here. Here's a key graph illustrating the decrease: One way to think about these numbers is in relation to the emissions reduction goal embraced by the House-passed ACES bill and the U.S. Copen...
CONTINUE READINGAppeals to Conserve Energy May Backfire with Conservatives
UCLA economists Dora Costa and Matt Kahn just released this paper about whether "nudges" from a utility to conserve energy -- in this case information about energy consumption relative to neighbors and relative to earlier time periods -- succeed in lowering usage. Though the authors find that many factors contribute to lowered consumption, including whether a home is gas or electric, political ideology matters too. In fact, nudges about relative consumption work w...
CONTINUE READINGA New Call for Caution About Chemicals
An advance description of a forthcoming report by the President's Cancer Panel: It [the report] calls on America to rethink the way we confront cancer, including much more rigorous regulation of chemicals. Traditionally, we reduce cancer risks through regular doctor visits, self-examinations and screenings such as mammograms. The President’s Cancer Panel suggests other eye-opening steps as well, such as giving preference to organic food, checking radon levels in ...
CONTINUE READINGEPA dithers on coal ash
UPDATE: Over at CPRBlog, Rena Steinzor and James Goodwin have a nice analysis of the red-lined version of the proposal EPA has posted at regulations.gov, showing the difference between what it wanted to do and what OIRA was able to bully it into doing. Transparency really is a wonderful thing. Looks like EPA was ready to do the right thing, designating coal ash as a RCRA hazardous waste, until OMB got into the act. Sticking with this week's fossil-fuel theme, after mu...
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