The Environment and the California AG Race
My original plan was to do four posts, each covering a major party candidate for Governor or Senator. But the California Attorney General race is also significant in environmental terms. Under Jerry Brown and his predecessor Bill Lockyer, the AG has been a major player on environmental issues -- in particular, providing national leadership on climate change litigation. So the California AG race has more importance than it might in a typical state. The Democratic c...
CONTINUE READINGBarbara Boxer and the Environment
This is the fourth and final installment in a series about the environmental views of candidates for major office in California. (The others covered Meg Whitman, Jerry Brown, and Boxer's opponent Carly Fiorina.) Boxer's environmental views are easy to summarize: she's very green. Her campaign site lists a long list of environmental accomplishments. It's also the only one of the four campaign sites to have a video on environmental issues. [youtube=http://www.youtube....
CONTINUE READINGCarly Fiorina and the Environment
Carly Fiorina's website devotes considerable attention to energy and environment. Here are the high points: She opposes cap-and-trade, which she says (based on a Heritage Foundation study) would cost each American family $2700/yr. She favors improvements in energy efficiency and "development of all domestic forms of energy, including nuclear, solar, wind and clean coal, and the exploration and drilling for oil and natural gas." Drill, baby, drill! The Central Val...
CONTINUE READINGMayor Villaraigosa, This is NOT How You Do Environmental Policy
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa likes to talk green at every opportunity, but most of his environmental initiatives fall flat due to lack of follow-through (no one has ever accused him of too long of an attention span), his own political incentives, or both. He pushed a charter amendment to mandate the development of solar power for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, but voters rejected in when it became clear that it was a payoff for the Departme...
CONTINUE READING10 Wasted Years of Subway Service to the San Fernando Valley
The Source, the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority's in-house blog, proudly links to an article on the ten-year anniversary of the opening of Red Line subway service to the San Fernando Valley from Hollywood. Blogger Fred Camino notes that ridership on the route is well below initial projections (153,000 daily boardings compared to a hoped for 200,000). But he expresses belief that "we still have yet to see its true impact on the region.... I’m really ...
CONTINUE READINGNews Flash: Richard Lazarus to be Executive Director of Deepwater Horizon Team
DOE has announced: The co-chairs of the bipartisan National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling have selected a highly regarded Georgetown University law professor to serve as the commission's executive director. Richard Lazarus, the Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., Professor of Law at Georgetown, will lead the staff of the commission and work at the direction of co-chairs - former two-term Florida Governor and former U.S. Senator Bob ...
CONTINUE READINGNot Working on the Railroad
Thies, where I was staying on my American Jewish World Service delegation trip to Senegal, is about 36 miles from the Senegalese capital, Dakar. That might not seem like a lot, but with typical Global South infrastructure, it is: often it can take more than 2 hours to get from one place to another. Plodding along in traffic, I couldn't help wondering where the rail is. If that seems like the fantasy of a coddled American, then think again. The old railway from Dak...
CONTINUE READINGEconomy v. Environment Directly at Issue in Lifting of Drilling Ban
As oil continues to gush into the gulf -- more bad news on that front today -- a federal judge with financial ties to the oil drilling industry has issued an injunction lifting the federal government's moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf. The legal intricacies of the lifting of the ban, while interesting to law nerds, are in my view completely subservient to the values clash the court case raises. The judge made that clear in his order lifting the ban: "oi...
CONTINUE READING“Africa Is Dying”
This was the sobering message I received last week as part of a delegation to Senegal from the American Jewish World Service. Senegal is in the Sahel, a 1,000 kilometer-wide African region between the Sahara on the north and the sub-tropics to the south. It is relatively well-watered, but is nevertheless a poster child for desertification that is chewing up millions of square miles across the globe. We think of places like Darfur as a desert, but it has not always b...
CONTINUE READINGAs the Gulf Bleeds Crude Oil, Alberta’s Tar Sands Provide a Test
If you were President Obama, what would you do about the tar sands fields in Alberta? He is being asked to approve or reject a pipeline extension that would carry 900,000 barrels per day of Canadian crude deep into the United States. It has to be exceedingly tempting to just say “yes”. After all, Canada is our biggest and friendliest source of oil, and at least the oil wouldn’t be coming from offshore. And no one expects the U.S. to cut off its demand for o...
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