Meg Whitman Would Suspend AB 32
In a rather stunning and little-noticed op ed last week, California GOP gubernetorial candidate Meg Whitman -- former CEO of EBay - called on Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to suspend the implementation of AB 32. Her rationale? To create jobs in California. AB 32, also known as the Global Warming Solutions Act, cuts California's greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. The bill also contains a provision , Section 38599, that allows the Governor to susp...
CONTINUE READINGA third is a third is a third?
On the last day of its term, the California legislature did wind up passing SB 14, the hotly debated bill to boost the state's renewable energy supply requirement to 33% by 2020. But its prospects don't look good -- the Governor announced within hours that he would veto (SacBee story here). Presumably in its stead, he has also just signed a new executive order mandating that 33% by 2020 be reached via an alternate route, namely regulation under AB 32, California's...
CONTINUE READINGOld MacDonald Had a Farm . . .
But unfortunately, the farm wasn't as bucolic as you might imagine, as the NY Times reports: Agricultural runoff is the single largest source of water pollution in the nation’s rivers and streams, according to the E.P.A. An estimated 19.5 million Americans fall ill each year from waterborne parasites, viruses or bacteria, including those stemming from human and animal waste, according to a study published last year in the scientific journal Reviews of Environmental Con...
CONTINUE READINGThe new and improved EPA
Since I've suggested elsewhere on this blog that EPA might not yet have achieved full vertebrate status with respect to mountaintop removal mining, I should acknowledge some of the positive steps the agency has taken recently. Three examples: EPA and the Department of Transportation jointly proposed new fuel efficiency/greenhouse gas emission standards for cars and trucks, effective with model year 2012 (fact sheet here, proposed rule and other information here). Acc...
CONTINUE READINGEPA (indirectly) wins a turf war
Think the executive branch is one big happy family under the benevolent direction of (any) president? Think again. Power struggles over turf and substantive outcomes are frequent, and success in those struggles depends on a lot more than just who has the ear of the president at the moment. Sometimes it takes litigation, which has to be brought by outsiders because executive branch agencies don't run around suing each other. The Ninth Circuit just resolved one such battle...
CONTINUE READINGIt’s Déjà Vu All Over Again
Since opponents can’t seem to come up with any new arguments against climate change legislation, they seem determined to recycle the old, discredited ones. Here’s today’s example, straight from the GOP press release: Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif, today urged the Environmental Protection Agency to include several relevant studies in its decision-making record for a major finding on climate policy after it was made public that a seni...
CONTINUE READINGHerein of Regulatory “Czars”
Some conservatives like Glenn Beck are now raising alarms about the power of "czars" within the Obama White House. Although the rhetoric is ridiculous, there is a serious question here. A long-term trend has been for Presidents to exert more centralized control over the bureaucracy, and as a practical matter that control has to be exercised through staff. This is a bipartisan trend -- indeed, the most strenuous efforts were made to centralize authority under Bus...
CONTINUE READINGDelta blues
California's legislature ended its session Saturday morning without doing anything to address the problems of the Bay-Delta, or more generally of the state's dysfunctional water governance system. As Rick explained last month, water was at the top of the agenda this year for both the Republican Governor and the Democratic leaders of the legislature. This spring, the combination of a third year of drought with widespread agreement that the state's water delivery syste...
CONTINUE READINGDunking the Big Apple
The IPCC considers it likely that climate change will increase hurricane intensity, and New York may be particularly vulnerable to flooding from hurricanes and other storms, as Climate Progress reports: Sea level may rise faster near New York than at most other densely populated ports due to local effects of gravity, water density and ocean currents, according to four new forecasts of melting ice sheets. The forecasts are the work of international research teams that inc...
CONTINUE READINGCalifornia Legislature may decide L.A. football stadium can go forward, despite allegations of inadequate environmental review
Great minds may disagree about whether a new professional football stadium (or team, for that matter) would be good for Los Angeles. But a new last-minute bill that the California State Senate is considering today, which would eliminate further environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act for a newly-approved stadium complex in the City of Industry, east of downtown LA, has put a new spin on this question. The bill appears to have created wides...
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