Improving ESA consultation
In early May, I wrote about the Obama administration's decision to take up Congress's invitation to recall the last-minute Bush revisions to the ESA's section 7 consultation rules. At the time, the new administration also requested public comment on "ways to improve the section 7 regulations while retaining the purposes and policies of the ESA." Today is the deadline for comment submission. Together with Center for Progressive Reform scholars Mary Jane Angelo and Dan Roh...
CONTINUE READINGResearching Environmental Law
Having trouble researching an environmental law issue? Berkeley's law library has a handy research guide that may help you. And don't forget that some environmental law reviews, including the Ecology Law Quarterly, are now available on-line for free. Recent articles at UCLA's Journal of Environmental Law and Policy, including this particularly brilliant example, are also available on-line....
CONTINUE READINGManaging Technology and Dangerous Climate Change
The risk of catastrophic climate change puts uncertainties associated with innovative energy and carbon sequestration technology in a new light, and the short time for effective greenhouse gas emission reduction challenges public decision-making processes. Interest in this topic has been spurred by the drive to bring new energy and green house gas emission reduction technologies to market rapidly, although some are untested at scale and others are still in the laboratory...
CONTINUE READINGThe Death of Yucca Mountain
Over twenty years ago, the Supreme Court accepted the Nuclear Regulatory Agency's assurances that it would find a safe method for long-term disposal of nuclear waste. Consequently, the NRC was allowed to assign a zero to the risk of any radioactive discharge. As it turns out, this was an empty promise. The solution that the government settled on was permanent underground storage at Yucca Mountain. Many years of planning and litigation and many billions of dolla...
CONTINUE READINGAmerica’s Energy Future: A New Report
The National Research Council has released a new report (available for purchase here) on America's energy future. Here are some key take away points: Use of existing energy-efficiency technologies is the nearest-term and lowest-cost option for moderating our nation’s demand for energy, especially over the next decade. The potential energy savings available from theaccelerated deployment of existing energy-efficiency technologies in the buildings, industry, and tran...
CONTINUE READINGOffsets and Waxman Markey
Will the massive number of offsets allowed under the proposed Waxman-Markey climate change bill destroy its effectiveness? Waxman-Markey allows for a huge number of offsets from both domestic and international sources - up to 2 billion tons. Some analysts estimate that if all of these offsets are used domestic emissions will not begin to decline until 2030. Even more problematic many worry that due to gaming and administrative difficulties, a large percentage...
CONTINUE READINGFisheries optimism
Three years ago, Boris Worm at Dalhousie University was the lead author on a study published in Science magazine that predicted the total collapse of global fisheries by the middle of this century under a business as usual scenario. That study drew a lot of media attention, but also criticism from other fisheries experts. Now Worm and 19 co-authors, including Ray Hilborn, one of the most vocal critics of that earlier paper, have a new more optimistic paper in the latest ...
CONTINUE READINGI’ll gladly tell you Thursday if your beach is safe today…
Each year, NRDC publishes a report on the sometimes-foul state of our beachwater nationwide. This year's Testing the Waters analysis shows that people are still regularly swimming in water with unsafe levels of E Coli and other pathogens, and that thousands of people likely get ill every year from a day at the beach. In the northeast and Great Lakes regions, combined sewage overflows after rainstorms are a prime cause; here in California, surface runoff is a big ...
CONTINUE READINGSemi-good news from the Gulf Coast
NOAA this week released the latest survey of the "dead zone" just off the Gulf Coast. The dead zone results from fertilizer pollution brought down from midwest farms and cities by the Mississippi River. That nutrient influx fuels phytoplankton blooms. The subsequent decomposition of dead plankton consumes oxygen, leaving the levels of dissolved oxygen in the dead zone's waters too low to support aquatic life. The good news in this year's survey is that at 3,000 square...
CONTINUE READINGThink About Carbon First, Act Later
The Worldwatch Institute reports on a new policy recently announced by the World Bank -- before approving future projects, the Bank intends to develop an estimate of likely greenhouse gas impacts. At a minimum, this will provide greater transparency concerning the implications of a World Bank decision. Hopefully, it will encourage projects more likely to improve energy efficiency or promote renewable energy. This leads to an important question -- shouldn't governmen...
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