Senate Fails to Act So What’s New in the World of Geoengineering?
With the depressing news that the Senate will not go forward on a climate bill, I thought it worth revisiting a question I posed a year and a half ago: is geoengineering inevitable? If we assume that U.S. leadership is crucial to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent over the next forty years, and if the U.S. Senate can't act even with a 60-40 Democratic majority and even in the face of the worst oil spill in U.S history, well, the answer seems closer than e...
CONTINUE READINGUpdate on Gulf sea turtle hatchlings
A few weeks ago, I mentioned that the Fish and Wildlife Service planned to collect eggs from sea turtle nests on the Gulf coast to move them to the east coast of Florida. Well, the plan is in process. All known sea turtle nests in Alabama and the panhandle of Florida are being marked, and when the eggs are sufficiently mature they are being removed, packed in replicas of the nests constructed in Styrofoam boxes, and transported by FedEx to incubation facilities at the Ke...
CONTINUE READINGClimate Integrity
A major British report has been issued relating to the famous pirated emails from East Anglia. The report concludes: Climate science is a matter of such global importance, that the highest standards of honesty, rigour and openness are needed in its conduct. On the specific allegations made against the behaviour of CRU scientists, we find that their rigour and honesty as scientists are not in doubt. In addition, we do not find that their behaviour has prejudiced the ba...
CONTINUE READINGAdios, Federal Climate Change Legislation
We hardly knew ye (in the Senate, anyway). Reports indicate that Senate Democrats will be scaling back their energy legislation to a bill that addresses oil well leaks and energy efficiency, but nothing on carbon emission more generally. In many ways, the failure of comprehensive energy reform can be traced to two things: 1) health care reform taking up so much of the agenda for too long, making other comprehensive reforms less likely, and 2) the politically unpalat...
CONTINUE READINGDraft Delta flow criteria issued
Last year's California water reform legislation directed the State Water Resources Control Board to issue new flow criteria for the Delta to protect public trust resources, which include but are not limited to the fish species protected by the federal Endangered Species Act. The deadline for the Board to adopt those criteria is next month. This week, the Board staff issued a draft flow criteria report, which reportedly will be considered by the Board on August 3. The re...
CONTINUE READINGFinally, a national ocean policy
Cross-posted at CPRBlog. Last year, I noted that the interim report of the Interagency Ocean Task Force appointed by President Obama marked a promising step toward a national ocean policy. Now the Task Force has issued its final recommendations, which the President promptly began implementing. A national ocean policy has been a long time coming. Back in 2003, the Pew Oceans Commission called for a new "unified national ocean policy based on protecting ecosystem healt...
CONTINUE READINGHow To Increase Deployment of Energy Storage To Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions
The white papers keep coming. Today, UC Berkeley and UCLA Schools of Law released a new report, “The Power of Energy Storage: How to Increase Deployment in California to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions,” to examine policies that California and federal leaders can implement to increase the state's energy storage capacity. As California seeks to expand solar and wind power, storage of that energy for use at any time, day or night, becomes critical. The many ener...
CONTINUE READINGNew White Paper Released on Local Government Land Use Planning and Climate Change
UC Berkeley and UCLA Schools of Law released a new white paper today called “Plan for the Future: How Local Governments Can Help Implement California’s New Land Use and Climate Change Legislation.” The paper looks at steps that policy-makers and local government leaders can take to improve land use planning in California to meet the increasing demand for "sustainable development," typified by compact, walkable communities near transit, and the state’s greenhous...
CONTINUE READINGThe environmental community mourns the passing of climate science giant Stephen Schneider
Dr. Stephen Schneider, the pioneering Stanford climate scientist whose passion for the topic and concern for the earth's future led him to become an outspoken public advocate for the role of scientific evidence and scientific judgment in shaping climate policy, has died at age 65 of an apparent heart attack. Andy Revkin of the New York Times, Ben Santer of Lawrence Livermore Laboratories (at Real Climate), and Stanford University have published obituaries or appreciati...
CONTINUE READINGEconomists against Prop 23
As Ann has reported, California's global warming law, AB 32, is under attack. Proposition 23 on the November ballot would suspend AB 32 until unemployment in the state falls below 5.5% for four consecutive quarters (currently, unemployment in California is over 12%). Opponents of environmental regulation often argue that too much regulation kills jobs and the economy. Certainly that's the primary argument of the pro-Prop 23 camp, which calls the proposition the "Californ...
CONTINUE READINGJoin Our Mailing List
Climate policy is changing rapidly. Stay in the loop with expert analysis via email Monday - Friday.
