The Looming Political Battle Over AB 32 & California’s Environmental & Economic Future
Today, proponents of an initiative measure designed to "suspend" California's landmark Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB 32) are scheduled to submit signatures to state election officials designed to qualify the measure for the November 2010 ballot. Bankrolled by two Texas-based oil companies, Tesoro Corporation and Valero Energy Corporation, the initiative measure would preclude California environmental regulators from implementing AB 32 until state unemployment ...
CONTINUE READINGThe Odds of Failure
A couple of key observations about the oil rig blowout, based on my work on disaster issues. First, "human error" is a cop-out when you're dealing with major technology. It's not like human fallibility is a surprise. Training, good management, and smart design should be the responses, not whining after the fact that the workers weren't perfect. Or, if human error is unavoidable and the outcome would be catastrophic, you'd better rethink the project. Second, it's ...
CONTINUE READINGA great case for worst case analysis
Cross-posted at CPRBlog. The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is the nation's look-before-you-leap environmental law, intended to make sure that we understand what environmental problems we might result before we act. To that end, federal agencies must prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS) before they take, authorize, or provide funding for actions that may have significant adverse environmental impacts. Useful as NEPA analysis is, the Deepwater Horizo...
CONTINUE READINGMoby Slick
Knowing that the area of the Gulf of Mexico covered by the BP oil slick is important habitat for sperm whales, I'd been wondering about effects of the oil spill on those whales and on marine mammals generally. Sperm whales were long hunted (Moby Dick is the most famous specimen) and are listed as endangered under ESA throughout their range. One of my former colleagues, Michael Jasny of NRDC, has a good post on the issue here. Turns out (unsurprisingly) that short-...
CONTINUE READINGEnergy Conservation, Southern Style
A new report finds lots of room for energy efficiency in the American South. Here are the main findings. Energy efficiency improvements could: 1. Prevent energy consumption from growing over the next 20 years. In the absence of such initiatives, energy consumption in these three sectors is forecast to grow by approximately 16 percent between 2010 and 2030. 2. Generate new jobs, cut utility bills and sustain economic growth. Overall utility bills would be reduced by ...
CONTINUE READINGClimate Change and Two Forms of Justice
Via David Brooks today, Jim Manzi from several months ago makes an intriguing argument regarding the equities of international climate change policy. Developing nations consistently say that developed countries should pay for the lion's share of climate mitigation because developed countries have caused the problem. But says Manzi, What this ignores is that the reason the U.S. and Europe have historically emitted carbon dioxide is that they invented the modern econom...
CONTINUE READINGGulf oil spill update
The Deepwater Horizon oil rig rig explosion was bound to put some pressure on the Obama administration to renounce the plan it announced just three weeks earlier to open new areas to offshore drilling. Today, the President ordered Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to report on how to reduce the risk of oil spills from offshore rigs, and ordered that no new leases go ahead until adequate safeguards can be assured. That delay is not likely to have any practical impact, becau...
CONTINUE READINGSurprise! Words don’t save biodiversity
The Convention on Biological Diversity was adopted in 1992 and entered into force in 1993 amid much fanfare. It's been a rousing success in attracting adherents; it currently has 193 parties, with the only major outlier being the United States, which has some of the strongest conservation laws in the world. But a new report in Science (subscription required) makes it clear that the Convention is not meeting its conservation goals. In 2002, the parties to the Convention ...
CONTINUE READINGUC San Francisco Throws Its Hat Into the Nanotechnology Policy Ring
The UCSF Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment recently released a draft set of policy recommendations to address nanotechnology meeting for comments on May 5 in Oakland, CA. The report is in draft form and the authors are seeking comment, so there will likely be a fair amount of modification as commenters with different perspectives and experience weigh in, but on the whole it does not seem to advance the ball very far. The report provides useful, ass...
CONTINUE READINGOcean acidification gets new attention
Although EPA is beginning to pay attention, the rapidly increasing acidity of the oceans remains a little-known consequence of global atmospheric CO2 loading. But two recent events may be raising the public profile of ocean acidification. First, a National Research Council committee convened to examine the consequences of ocean acidification and make recommendations for a federal research program issued its report. Among its conclusions: The chemistry of the ocean is ch...
CONTINUE READING