Post-Mortem on Copenhagen
Der Spiegel has a story based on tapes of the behind-the-scenes meetings of world leaders. The headline says it all: The Copenhagen Protocol: How China and India Sabotaged the UN Climate Summit. As usual, the French assessment was the most eloquent: The words suddenly burst out of French President Nicolas Sarkozy: "I say this with all due respect and in all friendship." Everyone in the room, which included two dozen heads of state, knew that he meant precisely the ...
CONTINUE READINGChina’s Growth in Energy Usage Truly Alarming
Cara blogged earlier this week about the fact that U.S. emissions were down "a whopping 7 % in 2009." Just when you might have been thinking that we are headed in the right direction on the climate change front, today's New York Times has a distressing story about Chinese emissions. The take home point: Coal-fired electricity and oil sales [in China] each climbed 24 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, on the heels of similar increases in the fourth qua...
CONTINUE READINGObama’s Science Advisor Speaks at Berkeley
On Earth Day, Presidential science advisor John Holdren delivered the ERG Annual Lecture at Berkeley. His topic was Science and Technology for Sustainable Well-Being: Priorities and Policies in the Obama Administration. He had many insights to offer on science and public policy, particularly with regard to energy and climate issues.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsMyTG4ZXcM&feature=channel]...
CONTINUE READINGUS climate emissions down a whopping 7% in 2009
The arm of the US Dept of Energy that tracks GHG emissions has come out with final numbers for 2009 emissions. Turns out that last year saw the largest absolute and percentage drop in US CO2 emissions since we began tracking the numbers decades ago. The EIA's report is here. Here's a key graph illustrating the decrease: One way to think about these numbers is in relation to the emissions reduction goal embraced by the House-passed ACES bill and the U.S. Copen...
CONTINUE READINGAppeals to Conserve Energy May Backfire with Conservatives
UCLA economists Dora Costa and Matt Kahn just released this paper about whether "nudges" from a utility to conserve energy -- in this case information about energy consumption relative to neighbors and relative to earlier time periods -- succeed in lowering usage. Though the authors find that many factors contribute to lowered consumption, including whether a home is gas or electric, political ideology matters too. In fact, nudges about relative consumption work w...
CONTINUE READINGA New Call for Caution About Chemicals
An advance description of a forthcoming report by the President's Cancer Panel: It [the report] calls on America to rethink the way we confront cancer, including much more rigorous regulation of chemicals. Traditionally, we reduce cancer risks through regular doctor visits, self-examinations and screenings such as mammograms. The President’s Cancer Panel suggests other eye-opening steps as well, such as giving preference to organic food, checking radon levels in ...
CONTINUE READINGEPA dithers on coal ash
UPDATE: Over at CPRBlog, Rena Steinzor and James Goodwin have a nice analysis of the red-lined version of the proposal EPA has posted at regulations.gov, showing the difference between what it wanted to do and what OIRA was able to bully it into doing. Transparency really is a wonderful thing. Looks like EPA was ready to do the right thing, designating coal ash as a RCRA hazardous waste, until OMB got into the act. Sticking with this week's fossil-fuel theme, after mu...
CONTINUE READINGAnother Lesson from the BP Disaster: The Need for Better Risk Assessment
Apparently, the lease grant to BP was exempted from environmental review, according to the Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin: The decision by the department's Minerals Management Service (MMS) to give BP's lease at Deepwater Horizon a "categorical exclusion" from the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) on April 6, 2009 -- and BP's lobbying efforts just 11 days before the explosion to expand those exemptions -- show that neither federal regulators nor the company ant...
CONTINUE READINGThe Public Power Option: Birch Rod or Risky Business?
The election season approaches, and first up in California is a June primary laden with important choices – not the least of which is a ballot measure sponsored by the Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E) designed to make it harder for local governments to exercise the public power option. Referred to as Proposition 16, PG&E’s measure would require that local governments go before the voters and receive 2/3 support prior to creating or expanding a muni...
CONTINUE READINGHow bad? More than bad enough
Earlier today, Dan asked "How bad is the spill?" He quoted a New York Times story which suggested that concerns about the spill were overblown. Not so fast. Probably the only thing we can say with confidence right now is that it's still too early to tell exactly how much environmental or economic damage the spill will do. But there's good reason to think that the NYT's spin may have been too optimistic. First, as Tom Turner points out on Earthjustice's UnEarthed blog,...
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