The BP Deepwater Horizon Blowout and the Social and Environmental Erosion of the Louisiana Coast
In a lecture that I gave last week at the University of Minnesota, I discussed how the Louisiana Coast was under grave threat from erosion, rising seas, and pollution even before the explosion on the British Petroleum Deepwater Horizon platform. Whole communities have vanished under the rising water, and the livelihoods and communities of people who depend on fishing for income has been threatened. The oil spill is a critical blow to these struggling comm...
CONTINUE READINGHear Sean on KCRW discussing tonight’s California gubernatorial debate
The last of the Meg Whitman / Jerry Brown debates is happening tonight and promises to be a doozie (& not just because of the recent uproar over name-calling). By all accounts the election remains up in the air, with much at stake for environmental regulation in California (see here and here, e.g.). For post-debate analysis on environmental issues, blogger Sean Hecht will be commenting live tonight on KCRW's Which Way LA . Debate at 6:30pm, panel commentary immed...
CONTINUE READINGUncertainty and Climate Models
Fred Pearce has a useful post on the uncertainties of climate predictions, including speculation that the next IPCC report may report greater uncertainty than in the past: We are all — authors and readers of IPCC reports alike — going to have to get used to greater caution in IPCC reports and greater uncertainty in imagining exactly how climate change will play out. This is probably healthy. It is certainly more honest. But it in no way undermines the case that w...
CONTINUE READINGGreener on the Other Side?: An Occasional Series Regarding California’s Green Chemistry Regulations
This is the first in a series of postings about Assembly Bill 1879 (AB1879), California’s “Green Chemistry” program. This summer California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) issued draft regulations, the comment period for which is currently open. Let’s start with the mega-view of the nascent program. In the organic statute, AB1879, DTSC was charged with developing a regulatory program for identifying, prioritizing, evaluating and ultimately re...
CONTINUE READINGAnother Senator paddling backwards on climate (are we up a creek yet?)
News reports yesterday have the moderate Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), at a meeting in his home state, expressing firm opposition to EPA's regulation of greenhouse gases. Here's a link to the short video clip on YouTube. Up in the air is whether this means he will support any of the formal measures being considered by the Senate to strip EPA of some regulatory powers under the Clean Air Act, such as Sen. Rockefeller's proposal for a two-year delay in regulating GHGs...
CONTINUE READINGClimate Change and the Royal Society
There seems to be a story going around that the Royal Society has backed down on climate change. I've seen several internet comments to this effect, and there's a posting making this claim at something called IPCC News. I dutifully went to look at the Royal Society's guide to climate science. The main conclusion of the report is There is strong evidence that the warming of the Earth over the last half-century has been caused largely by human activity, such as the b...
CONTINUE READINGUpdate on Mountaintop Removal: Gov. Manchin Sues EPA
West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin announced Tuesday that West Virginia is filing suit to, as the Governor put it, stop EPA's "attempts to destroy the coal-mining industry and our way of life." The Charleston Gazette has a good summary of the suit. The suit seeks to invalidate EPA's recent review of Clean Water Act permits for mining and block EPA from implementing a stricter water quality standard. Front and center will be the Spruce Mine mountaintop removal (MTR)...
CONTINUE READINGJonathan’s Crazy: Prop. 23 Is the Most Important Environmental Initiative
Jonathan claims in this post that Prop. 23 -- the California ballot initiative that would prohibit the state from implementing its climate change legislation -- is NOT the most important environmental initiative on the California ballot this fall. That honor, he says, goes to Prop. 25. Prop. 25 reforms California's rules for passing a state budget. I agree with Jonathan that Prop. 25 is crucial for restoring a modicum of budget sanity to the Golden State. But he...
CONTINUE READINGYes on Proposition 21
Proposition 21 on next month's California ballot seems like a pretty easy call: it would raise the state's Vehicle License Fee by $18, with the money being dedicated to the state's park system (it would also end parking and user fees to enjoy those parks). That system remains one of the nation's best but is in serious trouble because of the state's permanent budget crisis: it faces a $1 billion backlog of deferred maintenance, and Governor Schwarzenegger closed several...
CONTINUE READINGThe Most Important Ballot Measure for the California Environment
...might not be Proposition 23, although I'm cheating somewhat because climate change is more about the global environment than the state's. So maybe you're thinking of Proposition 21, which raises the Vehicle License Fee by $18 in order to fund state parks? Important, yes, but not the most important. Proposition 19, which supports the growing of, uh, weed? Nice try, but no. The most important initiative is Proposition 25, which reduces California's archaic and dy...
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