And You Think Health Care Is Controversial?
In watching the insanity of the debate over health care reform in the past couple of weeks I can't help but wonder what the debate over climate change legislation will bring. Lest you think the right wing opponents of health care reform can't be beat in their intensity and rhetorical outrage, consider the following two pieces of information. First, Talkingpointsmemo.com revealed today the existence of a memo from the American Petroleum Institute urging member oil com...
CONTINUE READINGAnd You Wonder Why People Don’t Respect Lobbyists?
A cap-and-trade bill was defeated in Australia yesterday. As the New Republic points out (here), it's not clear that this is anything more than a temporary setback. An interesting sidelight, however, concerns the sources of the opposition -- some of which are U.S.-based: Incidentally, one of the largest, most influential opponents of the Australian bill was U.S. coal behemoth Peabody Energy, whose CEO Gregory Boyce seems to think global warming is all hokum and is b...
CONTINUE READINGMeat and climate change redux
Back in January, I blogged about the link between meat production and GHGs. Grist.org has taken up this issue recently, with an interesting article by Tom Philpott making the case that U.S. livestock production is a significant contributor to GHG emissions, and a rebuttal from farmer Eliot Coleman. As Philpott's article notes, a U.N. FAO report from a couple of years ago, Livestock's Long Shadow, found that 18% of global GHG emissions are caused by meat production wo...
CONTINUE READINGMore on reengineering – what about the oceans?
Regarding Dan's post on reengineering the planet, one more shortcoming of the commonly discussed geoengineering solutions (even assuming they work exactly as designed and have none of the unintended consequences Dan, and others, fear) is that they are far from complete, leaving out entirely any remedy for ocean acidification, the "other" greenhouse gas problem. More info on acidification here, accompanying yesterday's release of "Acid Test" on Planet Green. New find...
CONTINUE READINGCourt to Interior: Not so fast on rule change
In April, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar asked a federal court to vacate a last-minute Bush administration rule relaxing stream buffer zone requirements for dumping waste from mountaintop removal mining. Salazar said that the rule didn't pass the smell test, and that it had been improperly issued without ESA consultation. Environmental groups which had challenged the rule welcomed Salazar's announcement, but the National Mining Association, which had intervened in suppor...
CONTINUE READINGCalifornia’s Integrated Waste Management Board: Goodbye and Good Riddance
Shortly after taking office as California's Governor, following a tumultuous recall election in 2003, Arnold Schwarzenegger famously promised to "blow up the boxes" of state government in favor of a more streamlined governance structure. That commitment has since largely been sacrificed on the alter of ever-contentious California politics. But this summer's belated and painfully-negotiated California budget process has produced one major change in the state's environ...
CONTINUE READINGShould We Reengineer the Planet?
RealClimate has an interesting, detailed posting about geo-engineering as a response to climate change, mostly emphasizing the areas that would require more research before it could be seriously considered. Here's the conclusion paragraph: The real consensus, as expressed at the National Academy conference and in the AMS statement, is that mitigation needs to be our first and overwhelming response to global warming, and that whether geoengineering can even be conside...
CONTINUE READINGNudging Smart Growth
There are lots of problems with Sunstein and Thaler's book Nudge, but its central premise has potentially powerful applications to a host of problems. Sunstein and Thaler posit that in many policy areas, "choice architects" can help people make better choices without impairing their actual ability to make that choice -- a philosophy that they call (misleadingly but ingeniously) "libertarian paternalism." The land use and smart growth area could serve as a fruitful ...
CONTINUE READINGLooking Back: Three Decades of an Environmental Law Casebook
Ann Carlson and I have just sent West the manuscript for the 8th edition of"Environmenal Law: Cases and Materials." (The third member of our author team, Jody Freeman, didn't participate in the revision because of her White House duties.) Some thirty years ago, Roger Findley and I started work on the first edition of the book. This seems like an apt time for some retrospective reflection. What has changed in thirty years (apart from my graying hair)? Not as much ...
CONTINUE READINGChina, Congress and Climate Change
This week brings two related and interesting stories on the prospects for domestic climate change legislation and progress in Copenhagen when the international community gathers in December to try to hammer out a post-Kyoto treaty on climate change. The first is that China's top climate negotiator is "optimistic" that the international community will reach agreement on a new treaty in Copenhagen. It's unclear what the basis for his optimism is given that he also rei...
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