The 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...
CONTINUE READINGThe Sting of the Long Tail: Climate Change, Delayed Harm, and Backlash
In the comments to Ann’s earlier post, the question was raised as to why global temperatures haven’t declined in response to the decline in carbon dioxide emissions from Europe in the past year. I made a quick response to this question in the comments, but I wanted to elaborate on that response here. What follow is a brief summary of a recent article I wrote on the issue, which you can find here. The basic problem is a common one in environmental law – there ca...
CONTINUE READINGGambling on Climate Change
Paul Krugman had a great article about climate change in the NY Times magazine on Sunday. It provides a really useful primer on the economics of climate change. In particular, Krugman emphasizes that uncertainty is a reason for action, not a reason to to allow unchecked global warming: We’re uncertain about the magnitude of climate change, which is inevitable, because we’re talking about reaching levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere not seen in millions of ...
CONTINUE READINGJustice Stevens: Architect of Modern Environmental Law Doctrine
When I sat down write this blog posting, I started by going through my environmental law casebook and noting down the cases in which Justice Stevens had written the majority opinion or a major dissent. When I got done, I was startled by the central role Justice Stevens had played in creating modern environmental law. I’ll explain that central role in a minute, but first, why I was startled? Two reasons. First, Justice Stevens still retains some of the “bri...
CONTINUE READINGInteresting Lessons from the EU Cap and Trade Scheme
In a really interesting recent post by Sandbag, a UK-based organization that buys and retires credits from the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, the organization analyzed newly released 2009 data about drops in the emissions covered by the EU scheme. On the good news front, emissions that are covered by the EU scheme have dropped 17 percent over a two year period. Not surprisingly, however, the large drop in emissions appears to be driven largely by the recession, no...
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