US 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,...
CONTINUE READINGEcology Law Quarterly, Volume 37, number 1
We have been remiss in not noting the publication in March of another issue of Ecology Law Quarterly. In this issue are the following articles: Managing the National Forests through Place-Based Legislation, Martin Nie & Michael Fiebig Read Article (PDF) A Comparative Guide to the Western States’ Public Trust Doctrines: Public Values, Private Rights, and the Evolution Toward an Ecological Public Trust, Robin Kundis Craig Read Article (PDF) Fast-Fish, Loos...
CONTINUE READINGOf Electricity Deregulation, Financial Meltdown, and Spilled Oil
As we contemplate the implications of the BP oil spill, California approaches another ominous milestone: the tenth anniversary of the series of electric power price shocks that came to be known as the California Energy Crisis of 2000-2001. Meanwhile, many try to unravel the economic crisis that walloped the U.S. and world economies so decisively over the last two years. Unfortunately, these disasters have a lot in common. First, the oil spill. Yesterday, Californi...
CONTINUE READINGHow Bad is the Spill?
Not as bad as it could be, according to the NY Times, The ruptured well, currently pouring an estimated 210,000 gallons of oil a day into the gulf, could flow for years and still not begin to approach the 36 billion gallons of oil spilled by retreating Iraqi forces when they left Kuwait in 1991. It is not yet close to the magnitude of the Ixtoc I blowout in the Bay of Campeche in Mexico in 1979, which spilled an estimated 140 million gallons of crude before the gusher co...
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