The New Senate Climate Bill
The text plus descriptions are available here. I'm sure there will be a lot of discussion of the merits of the proposal on this blog and elsewhere. For now, I merely wanted to alert readers to a few key features. Goals: Reduce GHCs to 95.25% of 2005 levels by 2013, 83% by 2020, 58% by 2030, and 17% by 2050. Carbon Market: The cap-and-trade component targets firm that produce more than 25,000 tons of carbon pollution annually. (7,500 factories and power plants). Produ...
CONTINUE READINGCongressional review begins
UPDATE: The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is also getting in on the act this afternoon with a hearing on economic and environmental impacts of the oil spill starting at 2:30 EDT. Witnesses include representatives of the three companies, and representatives of fishing, tourism, and state interests. An environmental law perspective will be provided by Meg Caldwell of Stanford's Law School and Center for Ocean Solutions. Tomorrow is the first of what will s...
CONTINUE READINGWhat We Know About Kagan and the Environment
Basically, the answer is "nothing." Nada. Zip. I thought about leaving the body of this post blank in order to communicate that, but I figured that would simply look like I'd pushed the "publish" button by mistake. Anyway, it's not quite true that we know nothing at all. Actually, there are a few tiny straws in the wind: She favors presidential authority over the executive branch, and in particular, judicial deference to agency positions that come from the White ...
CONTINUE READINGA Corporate Culture of Carelessness
[updated 3 p.m. 5/9] According to the NY Times, BP is unusually accident-prone: BP continues to lag other oil companies when it comes to safety, according to federal officials and industry analysts. Many problems still afflict its operations in Texas and Alaska, they say. Regulators are investigating a whistle-blower’s allegations of safety violations at the Atlantis, one of BP’s newest offshore drilling platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. . . . “BP has systemic sa...
CONTINUE READING…in which I become petty and backbiting — sort of
Could this be true? University of Colorado law professor Paul Campos notes in The New Republic that Solicitor General Elena Kagan, former Harvard Law School dean and current front-runner to succeed John Paul Stevens has published very little: three scholarly articles, two shorter essays, two brief book reviews, and two other minor pieces. Compare this record to those of the three other law professors most commonly mentioned as potential replacements for Justice John Pau...
CONTINUE READINGHeads in sand, oil in water
Cross-posted at CPRBlog. As oil drifts on and offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, forcing the closure of wildlife refuges and more fishing grounds, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has called a temporarily halt to new offshore drilling while his staff prepare a report on the disaster and even Republicans in Congress are calling for new investigation of the troubled Minerals Management Service. Clearly, things didn't go as planned on the Deepwater Horizon. Notwithstanding R...
CONTINUE READINGHow Did It Happen?
An article in today's Washington Post has some useful background on oil-well blowouts: Blowouts are infrequent, because well holes are blocked by piping and pumped-in materials like synthetic mud, cement and even sea water. The pipes are plugged with cement, so fluid and gas can't typically push up inside the pipes. Instead, a typical blowout surges up a channel around the piping. The narrow space between the well walls and the piping is usually filled with cement, so t...
CONTINUE READINGPost-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]...
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